DS DAC – higher res via combined AES and Coax inputs?

G’day @tedsmith

I’ve seen a few devices lately that can use two AES/EBU connections simultaneously to transfer audio data at up to 24-bit/384kHz or DSD128 between transport and DAC. For example, the dCS Network Bridge. Just out of curiosity, would such a thing be hypothetically possible to support on the existing DS DAC using an XLR-to-RCA adaptor and a software update?

Yes. (And the TSS has two AES inputs just for that purpose.)

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Ted that is great news. One question: does the dual-AES rely on proprietary protocol, or will it work with any source that sports dual-aes outputs?

That question is actually sort of backwards: if there’s documentation on how the source uses two AES connections I can match it. I will probably see if I can auto detect if there are more than one “standard” out there: I know of some that use one AES for the left channel and the other for the right channel and another protocol where the even samples are on one AES and the odd samples on the right. Something like the bit perfect test files can be used to “feel out” the usage: i.e. when I detect the test file being played I could configure the inputs. I don’t know if we’d need a UI for some reason or not to do this.

The hardest part would be for me to get an example of each possible source to test with.

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I can see your pain here. Treading undocumented ground is always so difficult. Right now, I only know of dCS and chord using these types of protocol.