A lack of demand? They're consumer devices after all, not lab equipment.
Depends. I think it would be difficult to find a DAC that plays flat to 100kHz.
Some audiophiles always demand everything and anything anyway. A simple reason is modern DAC chips are mostly delta-sigma, so there would be gradual rise of noise at higher frequencies. The older ones like CS4272 quickly rises beyond 25kHz or so, the newer/higher grades one would have this doubled + a gentler slope, so the analog filters also need to gradually tame the ultrasonic noise and the result is some high frequency droop.
www.audiosciencereview.com
I disagree.
I’m so glad that I already had found one without realising that I had.
www.audiosciencereview.com
JA at stereophile typically tests FR up to 192 khz rates. His results would indicate you are probably wrong. The great majority of DACs show flat or nearly flat response to 80 khz at those elevated rates. Of course a DAC at 192 khz isn't flat to 100 khz, you'd expect it to be flat to 80 khz.
A consumer DAC's job is to let humans consume audio. Humans cannot consume audio past 20kHz. As long as the DAC is flat to 20kHz, it fulfills that part of its job.
According to that graph, the Benchmark DAC3 is flat(ish) to just above 80kHz, let alone 90, let alone 100. Please tell me what DAC you had found that is flat to 100.
About what? That it would be difficult to find a DAC which plays flat to 100kHz? How do his results disprove that? You said that many of the DACs that he tested play nearly flat to 80kHz. That's not what I claimed.
Nyquist at 192 khz is 96 khz. So you cannot have 100 khz and meet Nyquist rules. Since you also need a transition zone for filters you attempt to get flat to 20 khz with 44.1 or 48 khz rates. 4 times that is 80 khz. And typically that is what you see, response to around 80 khz at 192 khz sample rates. You need higher than 192 khz rates before you can get 100 khz flat. As few devices on the ADC side do more than 192 khz you'll find measurements of that scarce.
I suppose I had in mind your earlier post that fewer than half the DACs meet Nyquist at the higher sample rates.
I suppose instead of "meet Nyquist", "come close to Nyquist" would've been the better wording.
I don't have a way to test for it. I don't care. Again very few ADC's go beyond 192 khz. So measurements are scarce. I could do a measurement with a dedicated meter or O-scope. I haven't done such a thing. We are now far afield of the OP's question about response to at least 26 khz. Plenty of mic pres, and line level analog devices based upon chips are dead flat to 200 khz. Toppings pre is flat to 200 khz and confirmed by JA. I don't see a reason their DACs don't have an analog output capable of it. I suppose I could try one DAC I have which is 384 khz capable by measuring with my 50 year old analog Simpson 260. Those were supposed to be -1 db down at 100 khz on the 2.5 volt scale. Who knows if it is still accurate at that frequency.
Topping's flagship D90SE DAC starts rolling off at ~15kHz according to their own specs.
Welcome
That DAC has 7 filters. One of them starts a roll off at 15 khz at 44.1 khz sample rates. The other 6 are flat to 20 khz. More than likely if tested one filter would be rolling off at 60 khz at 192 khz and the others at 80 khz. Of course it could be different until you test it.
No. The graph on Topping's website shows bandwidth to 40kHz and beyond so oversampling filter response at 44.1kHz is not a factor here.
Okay, great, you win pedantic poster of the day.
The nyquest frequency of a 192kHz sampling rate is 96kHz. That is the theoretical frequency. 44.1kHz sampling is used for 20kHz and 2kHz is left for the LP filter to work. Interpolate that to 4x sampling you need at least 8kHz for the filter to work. That gives you 84kHz possible bandwidth, which is how the DAC3 is measured.
Perfectly clear. I still haven't found a DAC with flat response to 100kHz. Obviously sample rate support of >192kHz would be required for that. The Benchmark DAC3 supports up to 210kHz sample rate.
I didn’t realise you were looking for such a device. OP was looking up to 26kHz, which is not a limit on any device that I know.
You claimed that a 100kHz signal path would surely be not a problem.
You are now being pedantic.
I and @Blumlein 88 show you at least one that was measured at 80kHz. At 192kHz sampling, which is the maximum for M2 works at. You now increased sampling to 8x 16x. It is obvious you are now arguing for the sake of arguing.
