How do you get that?

I am talking about the simple act of crossing over, delays are a separate issue entirely.

Digital is digital, and analog is analog. With a well done analog crossover, it is impossible to lose any information. For digital, no matter how high the sampling frequency is, you will always lose something.

We can argue about whether it's audible or not, but it is always preferrable to stay as much in the analog domain as possible.

Ain't no jitter in the analog world!

Actually there are problems with both analog and digital processing. There are losses in even the best analog crossover. CD and DVD information is digital to start with. Bass management requires summing information (say from 5 different channels into the bass channel), as well as doing crossovers and both can be done more accurately in the digital domain than in the analog domain.

In theory, you lose very little information compared to the original CD and DVD information in well thought-out digital processing. The resulting information has less data loss if you process the information digitally, and DAC it to analog, than if you instead, DAC it to analog and then do analog processing (summations, crossovers, delays). In either case, the information can't be any more accurate than the original CD and DVD information, which is digital.

It's different if the original information were analog, e.g., vinyl, or if the digital processing is done badly. I would prefer analog processing over bad digital processing. The flaws associated with analog processing are usually more pleasing to the ears than the flaws of bad digital processing.

[This message has been edited by Will (edited August 15, 2002).]

Scott

Thank you for the reply. This is the type of news I wanted. Although it doesn't give an actual time, and although it basically restates what the last update said, this note seems to hit home more than the last one (probably due to the fact that it is not a last minute newsletter). It is good to see you posting on a thread again.

Or a few threads, as the case may be. :-)

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

Will- I hope we would both agree that:

1) There is nothing intrinsically better or worse crossing over digitally vs analog-ly.

2) It is better to cross over in the native format: PCM for DVD-A (or MLP) and CD, DSD (?) for SACD, analog for lps, tuner, or the analog outputs of a DVD-A/SACD player that has no internal bass management.

3) Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to do an A-to-D conversion, then bass management, then a D-to-A conversion if the original format was analog.

There are obvious benefits to doing it digitally such as being able to adjust channel levels, time delays, DSP processing, etc. But. All these things can be done with analog circuits just as well, just that it's more expensive.

Yes, and if you own a DVD-A/SACD player with internal digital bass management (which more and more DVD-A/SACD players have), you're probably better off doing bass management there, than in an external analog crossover like an ICBM, if you have the choice.

Perhaps in theory. But I don't know anyone, no matter how wealthy, using pure analog circuits for DPL II or DTS processing (DSP).


[This message has been edited by Will (edited August 16, 2002).]

Agreed. But..., remember that when DPL processors first came out in the late '80s, early 90's, a lot of them were analog only. In fact, the analog ones way back then consistently outperformed the digital ones. Fosgate, Shure, etc, were repeatedly more highly reviewed, praised, and measured better than those from Pioneer, Yamaha, Sony, etc.

I recently had an old (analog) Fosgate model 3 DPL processor that finally took a dump, which is one of the reasons I'm getting the Outlaw 950. Gotta tell you, the DPL on the Fosgate was orders of magnatude better than the DPL in my (newer) Sony Dolby 5.1 digital processor. Hands down, no frigg'in contest. On the Fosgate, I went in analog and the processing was analog, on the Sony, digital, and the DPL was done in the digital domain, using the same DVD. I guess nobody told the folks at Fosgate that digital was 'perfect"....


[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited August 17, 2002).]

The Fosgate Model 3 was a great Servo-Logic surround processor. Since then, Jim Fosgate went on to design 6-Axis processing and after that he went on to design DPL II. DPL II was designed by Jim Fosgate. As far as I know, DPL II is only implemented digitally.

As I understand it, Jim Fosgate was chosen to design DPL II because the folks at Dolby liked what they heard with Fosgate's 6-Axis.