I am the happy owner of a Refernce DAC bought when it was launched and of Reference DD which was added eleven months ago.
I have today five input cards : 1 Renderer, 1 AES/EBU, 1 Quadrate USB (not used at present) and 2 S/Pdif.
I contemplate the acquisition of the future HDMI input card when available. so ultimatley 6 input cards. Hence a compulsory limitation to use 4 out of 6. While the DAC provides for 2 free slots, unused.
Since the addition of the DD to the system, why not allowing the use of the 2 free slots on the DAC in order to insert additional input cards to have more than 4 inputs on the system ? Before the intro of the DD to the market, this was the default usage of the DAC and we were all happy.
I’d gladly insert for example an S/Pdif in the DAC free slot even if I wouldn’t benefit from what the DD brings, over this dedicated card. I may not need this improvement when watching a TV program with the sound carried by a fiber into the Tos input but I would benefit from the DAC processing, by far better that the TV built-in cheap dac chipset.
Can the design of the DAC+DD architecture allow for a future FW upgrade to open up this possibility ? You could limit the use of the free slots on the DAC to S/Pdif cards only, if you wish, but it would be a great improvement already (with a differentiated labelling when more than one type of input cards is used : see my other post/question on this matter). Thanks
Hello Abascal,
We had this idea when developing the digital director but it’s just not a viable option in our opinion for two main reasons.
First, when connected to a digital director the DAC enters a “digital director” mode and all the parameters are changed. It becomes an endpoint to the digital director. We still allow the analog and extra analog inputs to be selected in the DAC. For those, they digital portion still stays in endpoint mode.
Secondly, performance. The obvious loss of performance is not having the director for these inputs, but as you said, these are lower quality sources. The true and important loss of performance is you have extremely noisy sources(TVs, etc…) connected directly to the DAC chassis. This make your high performance sources suffer as they are now losing the added benefit of the extra isolation.
Hi @Jonathan_Gullman
Allow me to come back on this topic. I understood that having input cards in the DAC (instead of in the DD) would create a loss of performance. However, when used in Video Mode, my understanding is that the DD is bypassed. So if I want to use an MSB input card for video inputs (TV or SetTopBox or BluRay player), I do not need to have this input card in the DD.
If my reasoning is correct, then nothing would prevent inserting the MSB input card used in video mode, into the Reference DAC, freeing a slot for another digital input card that would benefit from the DD high performance. In other words, the free slots in the Reference DAC would be reserved for SPDIF cards used in video mode. A schematic is better than a long speech. I would be interested to understand is the future set-up I have in mind would work if you can enable the DAC to host cards when paired with a DD in a subsequent release, allowing to have more than 4 input cards but with restrictions for those lodged in the DAC slots. Or am I missing a fundamental mode of operation of the DAC+DD combo that forbids this set-up ?
The firmware of the digital director does not allow this configuration. This in theory could work but the software won’t allow it.
While yes, those video inputs don’t benefit from the filtering of the DD but they still get the added isolation. Also, just being connected to the DAC can cause a performance loss of the rest of your sources if connected. The isolation of the DAC with the fiber is a HUGE performance increase so we don’t want any other digital sources or input modules connected even if not actively selected.