No more 16 bit 44 khz; external dacs anymore?

I was surprise that i could not found any new 16 bit dac to buy in the stores in Sweden.

What happen ?
Are we never going to see any well done 16 bit 44khz dac, in the future?

Ps. Even 24bit 48 khz, seems to beguin to " dissapear"

O o

I expect it is due to the DAC chip makers not producing them any more.

Probably a case of what chipsets are available - no one is going to put a 24 bit DAC chip in and go to extra effort to truncate the bottom 8 bits, better to use it as is and advertise it as 24 bit.
Discreet component bespoke DACs maybe, I think I saw an R2R 16 bit DAC advertised recently but it was big money made to order as I recall.

Could be done with an FPGA of course, but again if going to the effort of doing that, it will be big money, which means most who might purchase will expect the “best” i.e. as great a bit depth as possible.

Just my thoughts as an interested observer :slight_smile:

1 Like

Sad

Some soundcards still use 16 bit dac, so there is still hope.

Maybe for more cheap Price we will see still in the near future some few 16 bits/44khz dacs in external soundscards

Project did some One onle few year back

Hope for what? Curious why you are interested in an older-standard DAC. There was a period where I felt that it mattered if you used a resolution-specific DAC for specific sorts of recorded material, but that period has likely passed.

2 Likes

well nowadays i have a 24/96 bit dac :blush:

1 Like

You can look at those cheap DACs from MHDT Laboratory (http://www.mhdtlab.com/mhdt%20dac%20families.htm), which sound awesome for the money.
I personally listened to the Pagoda at an high-end audio store (https://cdfaudio.com/) in the city of Montreal (Canada) and it was amazing. The owner told me they were selling out like crazy.

Who knows, may be the guy is willing to sell you only the chips - you can always send an email.

1 Like

Curious. Can’t imagine why you’d want to saddle yourself with a red book DAC incapable, by design, of supporting any of the high-rez formats. Nothing prevents the use of modern 24-bit chipsets for red book playback, btw. I have zero problem playing CD rips with my Bryston BDA3.

interesting;

i felt that a 16bit 44khz dac would be the best for my cd files because it doest oversample, but i read in this forum that “guru” Smith said a 16 bit 44khz dac cut the upper limit of the frequency or something like that :thinking:

that is a expensive dac :flushed:

$3,500 MSRP for a Stereophile Class A+ Recommended Component DAC with superb sound and versatility is reasonable.

1 Like

Roughly half the price of a DSDac! Not expensive.

1 Like

The Stereophile Digital Product of the Year for 2019 (and 2017) is the Mytek Brooklyn DAC at $3,000, and it has huge capability including line and phono inputs. Also on the list is the Chord Qutest, a purist FPGA DAC at $1,900. Makes the Bryston look expensive.

2 Likes

I had Mytek Brooklyn DAC before the DSD. I owned both for a period of time and it was easily outpaced by the DSD. More interestingly, Mytek added a bridge and guess who makes it? ConversDigital. I hope that Mytek gets them to do updates more rigorously than our experience with the Bridge II.

You forget the rest of the DACs on the 2019 Recommended Components list, the bulk of which make the Bryston BDA-3 look cheap at $3495:

Ayre Acoustics QX-5 Twenty: $8950
Chord Electronics DAVE: $10,988
dCS Rossini DAC: $23,999
EMM Labs DV2: $30,000
Luxman DA-06: $4995
Meridian Audio Ultra DAC: $23,000
Moon by Simaudio 780D: $15,000
Mytek Manhattan II: $5995
Playback Designs Sonoma Merlot: $6500
TotalDAC d1-tube-mk2: €9100
PS Audio PerfectWave DirectStream DAC: $5999

Possibly because I don’t have much time for DACs. I’ve owned two of them, a total of about 3 years, one from PS Audio. I never saw the point of separating the DAC from the media source, so I have CD players until 2009 and then streamers since then.

Every man and his dog used to make a DAC, now a lot of the mid-market seems to be disappearing for streamers and all-in-one players. So it does not surprise me that most of the products you list are expensive units for the high-end market and that a 16/44 DAC cannot be found.

1 Like

Class A+ DACs have always been expensive. Thus the Bryston is an excellent buy and inexpensive in light of its inclusion in this list.

You missed out this A+ one:
Benchmark Media Systems DAC3 HGC: $2195
A bargain !!!

It is an excellent buy as well.

This is why I responded to Owlsalum and his position the Bryston is expensive by noting one must consider the company it keeps.

Edit: It is interesting the affordable A+ DACs are from the pro audio world.

1 Like