I've mentioned it before here on this forum, but it's entirely possible to have music that has intersample peaks beyond +6 dBFS, or one whole bit. It was mentioned again later on this thread by @LTig.
Here is a 30-second excerpt of "Get Away" from the Electronic Soundtrack album Code Lyoko by the Subdigitals. The audio is from track 9 on the CD I've ripped myself, and the excerpt is from the 3:10 mark in the track. This track contains a lot of clipping, as is common in the genre and modern music, unfortunately, but it is of note because unlike other clipped tracks, this track contains not one but multiple intersample peaks that exceed +6 dBFS.
I have over 12,000 tracks in lossless format in my music collection, and a few of them hit a peak above +6 dBFS, while hundreds have peaks above +3 dBFS - the headroom in the Benchmark DAC3. I chose this particular example because it exemplifies the issue multiple times in the same track. I can post more examples if necessary.
I'm posting about this because I'm pretty disappointed with DAC digital filter design. It is this forum which has highlighted this problem, Many thanks to @amirm's measurements. Most DACs on the market don't even attenuate properly at the Nyquist frequency for 44.1 kHz audio, which comprises the entirety of CD digital audio and many, many more digital music files. On top of that, all of these intersample peaks that exceed 0 dBFS means that a digital filter needs headroom to properly oversample. Lots of headroom, not a wimpy 3 dB, but at least 6 dB (one whole bit), and ideally 8-9 dB to cover these fringe cases too. So, I'm calling out all the manufacturers who don't do any of this properly: this isn't rocket science, folks. It's 2020 and the math has been beaten to death. #MakeDACFiltersGreatAgain
Here is a 30-second excerpt of "Get Away" from the Electronic Soundtrack album Code Lyoko by the Subdigitals. The audio is from track 9 on the CD I've ripped myself, and the excerpt is from the 3:10 mark in the track. This track contains a lot of clipping, as is common in the genre and modern music, unfortunately, but it is of note because unlike other clipped tracks, this track contains not one but multiple intersample peaks that exceed +6 dBFS.
I have over 12,000 tracks in lossless format in my music collection, and a few of them hit a peak above +6 dBFS, while hundreds have peaks above +3 dBFS - the headroom in the Benchmark DAC3. I chose this particular example because it exemplifies the issue multiple times in the same track. I can post more examples if necessary.
I'm posting about this because I'm pretty disappointed with DAC digital filter design. It is this forum which has highlighted this problem, Many thanks to @amirm's measurements. Most DACs on the market don't even attenuate properly at the Nyquist frequency for 44.1 kHz audio, which comprises the entirety of CD digital audio and many, many more digital music files. On top of that, all of these intersample peaks that exceed 0 dBFS means that a digital filter needs headroom to properly oversample. Lots of headroom, not a wimpy 3 dB, but at least 6 dB (one whole bit), and ideally 8-9 dB to cover these fringe cases too. So, I'm calling out all the manufacturers who don't do any of this properly: this isn't rocket science, folks. It's 2020 and the math has been beaten to death. #MakeDACFiltersGreatAgain
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