Hey there Outlaws, I have two questions that I'm hopeing you guys will answer. I've been doing a lot of research into HT gear lately and have been wondering about what the numbers mean with DAC specs?
IE) 24/96 and 24/192

Also, I live in Canada which can add some serious costs to buying items from the US. I was wondering if I would have to pay tax and duty on a purchase if it was made from an individual?
If not, does anyone have a nice 950/7100 that they would like to get rid of for a good price?

Thanks!

There are some gunslingers around here with more knowledge of the inner workings of DAC's than I can claim, but here's a little info that might help you. A 96/24 DAC is 96kHz/24-bit -- other common options would include 192/24 and 48/24. That's samples per second (Hz) and signal resolution (bits). An audio CD is encoded at 44100 Hz (samples per second) and 16 bits. I'd be curious to hear what others feel the potential benefits (if any) are of uncreasing the sampling rate when used with CD and DVD sources. I didn't turn up much particularly helpful information in a few web searches, but this link was fairly interesting and may make things clearer than this post does.

If you buy from an individual, I would not expect to pay duty, but I've never tried it to know. Tax should not enter in at all.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

Thanks for the reply. That was a good article if not over my head a bit.
So does that mean that 24/192 is better or worse that 24/96?

In theory, 24/192 is superior to 24/96 -- twice as many samples per second. In reality, the benefits may be very difficult to hear, especially when decoding sources encoded in 16/44.1 (CD's).

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

24/96 means a sampling rate of 96KHz with 24 bits used to describe each digital word.

24/192 means a sampling rate of 192KHz with 24 bits used to describe each digital word.

All else being equal, a higher sampling rate is generally more desireable than a lower one. That is, up to a point, after which it doesn't matter. In the case of audio, a 192KHz sampling rate CAN give a meaningful sonic improvement over a 96KHz. sampling rate.

Paul

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the 1derful1

Huffer,

Re the tax question: I import lots of stuff into Canada from the US - for personal use. Some is bought from companies; most from individuals. If not done properly you will get KILLED by the duties, taxes, and brokerage fees.

For the simple reason that I would not put it past Canada Customs to be scanning for posts like this, I will not post my simple tricks of the trade directly. However if you post your email address I will contact you directly.

Regards.

Jeff