hi.

Does anyone have any knowledge of what brands have 24bit decoding opposed to the normal 1bit. As im looking for SQ id rather source a good head unit to start with. Do people agree in the price difference between 24 bit and 1bit, just wanting to notice exactly how noticable it is. :?

Model numbers and rrp (if possible) would be much appreiciated. try to keep the prices below 600 street price.


I know of the Clarion DXZ835MP and thats all atm.

Thanks,
Neil

People say they can hear the difference... I'm more than 100% dubious... IMO you'd even struggle to measure the difference between a 1bit DAC system and a 24bit DAC (of which 8bits are wasted anyway!)

New Eclipse decks 8443 and 8053 are 24bit DAC I think...

weather or not the 24bit DAC's on the Clarion 835MP make a diffrence SQ wise it still sounds better then any headunit in that price range, i was considerin the 9815 or 835 and went the 835 because

1. 2 year warrenty rather then alpines 1yr
2. Looks better (alloy face colours customize 2ur dash)
3. There slightly cheaper can pick one up for $650
4. All the sales person recomended them over the 9815 (NO i didnt get salesmend look at my 3rd point of purchase )


hope that helps

My personaly belief is if the rest of you system is uptoscratch (especially teh front stage) upgrading to a 24bit DAC headunit will provide a noticeable improvement in SQ.

As you pointed out the Clarion 835 is in your price range and would be the one I would get.

as suggested, 24-bit 'alone' will not maketh a HU. it has to have equally good design and electronics elsewhere; the sum of all parts.

having said that, it may help to have 24-bit.

eclipse, nak, clarion, alpine F1, denon...spring to mind.

match it with equally high-end components and you'll potentially have awesome SQ. no point overcapitalising though, where the splits are not up to the job (for example).

exactly your system is as only good as your weakest link

i thought that the 835s were 1 bit and only clarions 935 was 24bit

Nope, 835's feature a 24bit DAC's for sure i got one :wink:

atm.
im thinking clarion 835 head unit an audison amp and either focal hertz or bostons for front rear and sub. im looking for SQ afterall.

should work well?

does anyone with an incar dvd player listen to dvd audio ? can you notice a difference at all?

From what ive heard - and it makes sence, DVD Audio should be left to home theatre where u can really appreciate the quality theres just too much outside and engine noise with cars. id rather hear the quality to its full advantage where i can truly appreciate it.

The Nakamichi CD400 is a 24 bit DAC unit. It retalis for $1199. Most people who have this unit will tell you that they can hear the difference.

it may be the overall headunit design that your hearing rathering than just the dac that is making the difference.

there is a lot more processing that is happening inside the headunit besides what the dac does

And most of the time the weakest links are your speakers and the recording....

This came up on the New Zealand forum and after lack of information i went and posted up on american site.

http://www.carsound.com/UBB/ultimatebb.php...c;f=18;t=006040

From there you get to another american site where i guy named Werewolf goes into a crap load of detail about 1 bit, 24 bit, multi bit etc.

Man... that is a crapload of info. I lost the motivation to read it all. Did he actually say if there was an advantage in 24bit over 1?

depends really. Did you read the carsound one or the elite car audio one?

24bit is the best esp with the burr browns. I bit can still sound amazing esp if you get a /u that sounds like the alpine 7949

For re-assurance, try to get 24 bit, if not 1 bit 24 resolution

I saw mention of that burr browns a bit, what exactly is that? - how do you know if a HU has it?

BurrBrown are an electronics manufacturer, renowned for their various high end DACs.

you would think from a design standpoint that serial 1 bit dacs would have an advantage. BASically the 1 bit dac represents a digital state in a Pulse width modulation. Just the same as your power supply does. From there its just a low pass filter to cahnge this on off pulse to an analogue waveforem.

where as the multi bit dacs represent the outout as a current so its an effort to represent the 2^24 different currents using a resistor ladder network. As with all parallel data transfers timing is absolutely critical to accuracy.

i have to say there is lots of respect to the manufacturers of 24bit multibit dacs. ITs an awesome achivement.

now the 1 bit dacs are simpler in design. You are only required to use a low pass filter opamp setup. Where as the multibit dacs require a current to voltage converter then the post filter (low pass filter based on an op-amp...generallly 12db/oct)

now other factors

accurate external clock source. for example a clock chip vs the simple old crystal ocsillator. heat is also a factor in accuracy.

circuit desgn to reduce rf, emf and crosstalk.

use of ground plains to reduce noise.

isolation of analogue and digital circuits

shielding (usually in the form of copper sheeting)

power supply noise.

components used ( accuracy). Some of the parts does not make up for circuit design. Its all about implementation rather than high quality parts(both is better).

i would go so far as to say that the circuit layout designer is more important than the circuit designer.

in the end EVEN if you can not hear the difference there has been a lot of time money and effort placed into these high end dsp dacs like the pioneer p9 and the like. The odr and old sony xes we could say "paved the way" for the cheaper dsp/dacs we see in our head units now. NOt only have chips improved over time but the application. Unfortunately something that might look great on papaer is a different thing when tested in real life. Previous testing and expereince is the only way to overcome problems in real world design. It all boils down to design test then redesign.

sorry i can not go into too much details its been along time since i have studied dsp which heavily relies on dacs and adcs

btw one change that has happened in dsp since the first odr and xes stuff were released is the jump from iir algorithms to fir algorithms. IIR isnt "meant" to be as good as the FIR style (now to my knowledge the iir style isnt used today..but i coould be wrong on that point). Both styles have different drawbacks and inherent design flaws.

anyway hope this helped a bit