anyone have any info on which DAC's the 997 will have?

an upgrade over the 990 DACs?

thanks

Not anything that I can find.

Bump?

I'm interested to know. The new Onk's and Integras are 32/192k and if the 997 isn't I don't think I'm gonna wait anymore.

"32/192k"? Not 24/192k? I've not heard about that. Is the processor upsampling as well?

i dont see the point. no source matieral is available at that bit rate, nor will any. and what advantage would this make, added headroom only matters in the mastering process? i dont get it...

Please explain the DAC numbers. I was under the understanding that the sampling frequency was the 192 KHz and the output limit was the bit level as the exponent of 2 (2 to the 24th power). It would seem that as long as the sampling frequency was greater than or equal to the original imprint, the sound would be output faithfully. I always thought anything over the original was oversampling. Please correct my thoughts on this.

I would not assume that these DAC's are going to automatically mean better sound quality than a 24-bit/192kHz DAC. For one thing, there is no 32-bit source material and I can't find much online to explain what practical benefit the extra bits provide when dealing with 16-bit and 24-bit signals. For another thing, the overall design of the analog circuit is very important - two separate implementations of the same DAC can (and frequently will) sound different.

I've understood that 24 vs. 32 bit means that there are more levels of sound volume.

So if a dial had fixed detents from 0-10 with a detent every 1 a higher resolution would have 20 or 30 detents enabling a finer adjustment.

I though I would ask the question because the Onkyo companies have chosen to upgrade their DAC's and the 997 hasn't been completed yet for approximately the same money (adjusted for brand equity) I would figure the 997 would include this feature.

Not really volume. More bits of resolution means that an analog signal is broken into smaller pieces, but that is the greatest benefit comes from the analog-to-digital process (when you take that analog source and convert it to digital). Your CD's are 16-bit no matter what your DAC can do. You can get 24-bit from DVD-Audio and Blu-ray. You aren't going to get a 32-bit source. I would be curious to know what the practical benefits of a 32-bit DAC are. Barring some sort of upsampling to 32-bit, I am just not sure what value exists (aside from perhaps marketing hand-waving).

The hardware design for the 997 and R-972 was probably finalized quite a while ago. If it has any similarities to the Model 990's analog section, it will use a Cirrus DAC. I don't know that Cirrus has a 32-bit DAC yet, and I'm sure they didn't when the R-972 hardware design was finalized. TI's Burr-Brown brand appears to have started offering a 32-bit DAC pretty recently. Since Onkyo was already using Burr-Brown DAC's, it was probably easy to switch over when they developed the new model year.

the more bits per sample the more accurately it can be processed. but again with no source material available then its a lost cause. if they are dithering to the higher bit-rate that process alone can cause more problems than its worth, i just dont see the point. im not even sure i would want that in any gear i own.