Is there a sonic signature to Sigma - Delta Design DACs vs. Ladder Design DACs?

[caesar]

Can one easily tell one design from another? In all cases? In some cases?

 

[Empirical Audio]

Can one easily tell one design from another? In all cases? In some cases?

The answer is: it depends.

It depends on what designs and time period of each.

The latest D/S designs are actually superior to the older ladder chips. Some new custom ladder designs are better than most D/S designs.

Older ladder designs are very musical, but lack precision, so they are not as resolving in the high-frequencies as modern D/S designs.

Some new custom ladder designs have more precision, so they are as good as many modern D/S designs.

Both types of designs benefit from elimination or optimization of digital filtering.

The devil is in the details though. All of them have the sonic signature created by their implementation, power subsystem and digital filtering. Because of these, one cannot make broad conclusions that one is better than the other. It is easy to create a D/A or ladder design that is mediocre. It is more difficult to make either stellar or world-class.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

 

[Al M.]

The answer is: it depends.

It depends on what designs and time period of each.

The latest D/S designs are actually superior to the older ladder chips. Some new custom ladder designs are better than most D/S designs.

Older ladder designs are very musical, but lack precision, so they are not as resolving in the high-frequencies as modern D/S designs.

Some new custom ladder designs have more precision, so they are as good as many modern D/S designs.

Both types of designs benefit from elimination or optimization of digital filtering.

The devil is in the details though. All of them have the sonic signature created by their implementation, power subsystem and digital filtering. Because of these, one cannot make broad conclusions that one is better than the other. It is easy to create a D/A or ladder design that is mediocre. It is more difficult to make either stellar or world-class.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Excellent post, thanks, Steve.

 

[ack]

Yeah, we can't easily tell one from the other, as there are a number of parameters involved: digital filtering, jitter in various places, noise, the I/V section, the analog output, power supply quality, etc

 

[morricab]

I think that there is a readily audible difference between the two technologies and this is why there was a divide in the perception of these DAC types almost from inception that persists to this day. I personally have never been able to live with any DS containing DAC, even though I have had a nice one (Audio Aero Prima DAC (same as Capitole 24/192 without drive)) and had plenty of exposure to various high end models...the difference was always plainly audible despite the inherent DAC to DAC variability within a given architecture.