RP91 audio DAC's (1 Viewer)

[DanG]

(Also posted at AVS)
The last couple of days I've spent listening to classical music with my RP91. Normally I wouldn't crank the volume on my Denon 4800 much past -26db in fear of damaging the mediocre back surround speakers. The lack of analogue bass management by the RP91 just exacerbates the situation.
However the sounds were nice to listen to, I knew I had to HT the situation.
John Kotches replying to a previous post of mine in this forum offered me some salient advice. Get the Outlaw ICBM or upgrade your surrounds. So yesterday I HT'd it. I bought new back surrounds.
The front Celestion Ditton towers have no problem with what the Denon dishes out. The Paradigm Titan Centre seem to be up to the task in analogue and the Titan middle surrounds are only used in DD-DTS5.1 playback so they are protected by the Denons bass management. The sub is a large Miller&Kreisel, tomorrow I'll be HT'ing the current amp with a Marantz MA-500. It was the back surrounds that were the problem. So I bought a pair of Paradigm Monitor 3's ($477) that go to 36Hz DIN -150 watt power handling for DVD-A analogue mode. When I choose analogue mode on the Denon it switches to SPKR-B the Monitors and when I go Digital it switches to SPKR-A the old Canton surrounds.
So I started listening this afternoon and started cranking up the volume til I had -14 db. Sounded great. Then I noticed someting odd. The analogue mode sounded noticeably better than DTS 6ch mode.
I was playing NAXOS -Vivaldi Four Seasons DVD-Video audio disc. In one movement I can hear a harphichord more clearly in analogue than digital. Also the violins seemed to be sharper and have more "attack" in analogue than digital. Also as the violin section comes to a pause the sounds seem to take longer to die out than in digital.
I bought the Denon because of the Analog Devices DAC's and Burr-Brown and have been pleased with the sound. But apparently it seems for classical music I prefer the RP91's audio DAC's.
Again, thanks John and a nod to TedM.
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[Zack]

Could be 2 things - first, the digital output will "downconvert" any audio to 16 bits with probably a max of 48k. This is to "protect" the music from being digitally copied with bit-for-bit accuracy. So your analog outputs are giving you whatever the disc was mastered at - up to 24 bits at 192k, although most likely it's more like 20-24 bits at 96k.
The second reason could be that the dacs in the Panny are newer and better than the ones in the Denon (although I doubt it). They do resolve to 192k, where the Denon is limited to 96k, but that shouldn't affect anything too much.
Now that I think about it, has anyone used the Panasonic to do any real audiophile listening with DVD Audios and CDs? I'd be interested to hear the results...

 

[DanG]

The problem I've had with A/B'ing DVD-A discs (all my DVD-A's so far are 24b/96kHz 6channel) that in digital mode all I can get is two channel stereo and a downconverted 48kHz 16 bit signal, but using analogue mode I get 24b/96kHz 6channel. Hardly a fair comparison. Clearly though DVD-A is far superior to any classical CD's that I own, even when played in 7channel stereo mode.
Again, the discs I used for comparison are DVD-VIDEO discs, produced by NAXOS in DTS 6channel. So when I am playing the NAXOS DVD-Video in digital 6channel mode on the Denon, it will be downconverted to a 48kHz 16bit digital DTS 6 channel output?
Yes I suppose that would be an unfair to compare it to the 24b/96kHz 6channel analogue output.
If I set the the the RP91 digital output to PCM, then I should be able to force the RP91 to do DAC and compare that to having it set to BITSTREAM which would then invoke the Denon to do the DAC.
I'll give that a try tonight.
Regardless, I do like the analogue sound of the RP91.
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[Andrew Pratt]

Could be 2 things - first, the digital output will "downconvert" any audio to 16 bits with probably a max of 48k. This is to "protect" the music from being digitally copied with bit-for-bit accuracy. So your analog outputs are giving you whatever the disc was mastered at - up to 24 bits at 192k, although most likely it's more like 20-24 bits at 96k.

Actually unless Panasonic has changed something from the last two model years the panny's will output a true 96.24 signal via their digital connections (I've done it with me A320) so I doubt thats the issue. I've never listened to my panny's DAC's (I've got the Link DAC) but I did listen to my previous players DAC's and they sounded noticablly thinner then the Denon's...this doesn't mean much to you but it might be that the Panny's DAC's are a little less warm and you like that sound for those classical movements..just a guess
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