Which DAC is used in the 1055?

[Ludwig Van Beethoven]

Hi Guys,

Which DAC is used in the Rotel RSX-1055?

[Andrew Pratt]

The 1055 and 1066 use a AKM 4364 24bit/96KHz DAC, AKM 5351 20bit/48KHz ADC and a Crystal 49326 DSP processor.

[Ludwig Van Beethoven]

Thanks, how do those compare to other DAC's out there like the Furr Brown and the higher end ones?

[Andrew Pratt]

I've never heard Furr Brown's but I suspect they likely have a fuzzy soundstage with a warm soft sound.

Bur Brown's on the other hand are some of the better DAC's available The DAC's in the Rotel 1055/1066 are pretty good but personally I find the Bur Brown DACs in my Denon DVD player (1600) slightly superior to even those in my 1098. Its very close though and the differences are subtle.

[aud19]

There are newer chips out there but implemntation has a lot to do with how a component sounds overall. Using the latest and greatest chips but not supporting them with other quality components and taking things like signal paths etc in to consideration will not likely produce better results.

Jason




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[Ludwig Van Beethoven]

Thanks for the info guys Furr Brown ops:

Hmm, so the Denon 1600 is going to sound alot better than the 1055 I presume.

[Andrew Pratt]

Better is a judgement call... but yes it will sound different and in my room with my speakers and my ears I prefer the Denon 1600's DACs

[aud19]

I too found the sound to be a little dry and lacking some weight using the digital out from my Denon 1600, though they were pretty close. That could also be attributed partially to the 1600 only having an optical out which I prefer not to use if given digital coax as an option.

Jason




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[Ludwig Van Beethoven]

Is there really a diffrence between optical and coax? They both are sending the same exact digital info to the reciever, if all else i would think that the optical would be better since there is no inteference or noise affecting light.

[aud19]

Oooh...can open...worms everywhere... :LOL:

The general concensus is that people prefer coax over optical, I'll try to give you a few reasons for that.

While coax is more succeptible to interference in inexpensive cables, good quality coax cables are much more affordable than good quality glass optical cables. You can get pretty good 3'-6' coax cables for under $100 that should offer better quality and performance than equivelantly priced optical cables that are most likely plastic, not glass. Optical cables also tend to very delicate not liking to be bent etc and depending on where you have to route your wires through that could be a bad thing. Coax's can be beaten and smacked around like that blonde guy in Fight Club and keep on working like nothing happened. A couple of other things I've read but can't confirm is that coax has a larger bandwidth which reduces "jitter" as compared to optical. Also that the conversion from electrical signal to light and back can have an effect on the sound in relation to the quality of components used at either end to do the converting.

Hope that clears it all up for ya

Jason




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[Andrew Pratt]

The other thing that hurts optical is that any signal must get converted to light and then from light to electric again so there's an extra step involved vs digital coax connections. IMO if there are differences they're very minor and hardly worth loosing sleep over

[Ludwig Van Beethoven]

Well, my Sony 300 disc changer and Panasonic XP-30 DVD player only have optical output on them. Im using a $8 optical cable i got off ebay , the brand is called NXG.

Im actually going to be ordering a Monarchy SM-70 Pro Class A solid state amp here in a few weeks and im going to use Tara Labs Prism RCA interconnects on it as well.