Technical question

[tonyc2002]

What makes a good digital to analouge converter on a soundcard? i.e. why is one "supposedly" better than another?

[TechMouse]

Shifting digital signals around is lossless, which means that no matter what you do the data is what it is and nothing can change that.

When you convert between analogue and digital (in either direction) a certain amount of colouration can happen. This is usually to do with the quality of the components involved.

Colouration isn't necessarily good or bad, but it is subjective.

[tonyc2002]

Thanks :biggrin:

[stjohn]

the better the converters, the better representation of the analogue sound you can get.

this could depend on the timing clock of the converters.. the better the clock, the more hope you having an accurate recording as the phase of the recording will not shift around giving a false reading. the usual aspects such as bit depth and sampling rate would also apply. to minimize quantize error :: which occurs when your converter plays 'join-the-dots' to form a waveform. it effectively just joins from one block to another, and inaccurate jumps from block to block creates a distortion is isnt really desirable for recording.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Quanterr.png

so the better clock and better a-to-d algorithm would determine a better recording. along with other aspects im sure.

[tonyc2002]

Top dollar. Thanks man :wink: