Are there any good books to learn about DAC and ADC design? I understand the basics but want to learn more about the nitty gritty like noise, jitter, distortion, etc.
Yes. There is the famous IEEE "Green Book," in both the 1st and 2nd editions. They are different, so good to have both.
Title is, "Understanding Delta-Sigma Data Converters," by Richard Schreier.
Other books to read would include this one: https://www.analog.com/en/resources/technical-books/data-conversion-handbook.html
Also, there is a very good thread here in this forum about an RTZ DSD DAC. Better the do some reading first if you want to understand the details though.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/return-to-zero-shift-register-firdac.379406/
Title is, "Understanding Delta-Sigma Data Converters," by Richard Schreier.
Other books to read would include this one: https://www.analog.com/en/resources/technical-books/data-conversion-handbook.html
Also, there is a very good thread here in this forum about an RTZ DSD DAC. Better the do some reading first if you want to understand the details though.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/return-to-zero-shift-register-firdac.379406/
I have this one in a cheap Chinese edition : https://www.amazon.com/-/he/Konstantinos-Doris/dp/0387304150. Its not specifically about audio DACs and focusses more on architectures and internal design of DAC chips.
You can download DAC white papers from chip makers, sometimes the bibliography lists publications. Some in professional journals may be useful, those are not really books.
The issue is that rapidly changing technology means the books are obsolete in a short time, for example I have a book called "Modems for Dummies".... and the fastest ones are in kbps.
And a lot of DAC work is in software using general purpose CPUs.
So please focus on your object, why do you want to learn about a subject where you have to continuously update your information?
It can be argued that players like Winamp are really a DAC program, as they convert digital files to analog......
Winamp is just an example, I use it to play audio files, no other ties to them.
Real Player, Audacity and many others exist, again no ties to them.
The issue is that rapidly changing technology means the books are obsolete in a short time, for example I have a book called "Modems for Dummies".... and the fastest ones are in kbps.
And a lot of DAC work is in software using general purpose CPUs.
So please focus on your object, why do you want to learn about a subject where you have to continuously update your information?
It can be argued that players like Winamp are really a DAC program, as they convert digital files to analog......
Winamp is just an example, I use it to play audio files, no other ties to them.
Real Player, Audacity and many others exist, again no ties to them.
And what would you say the prerequisites are in order to understand the contents of such a tome?
It's a very good book, but it is written for electronics engineers, so you need to have a good general knowledge of electronic design.
If there is a university of technology nearby, you could see if they have a library where you can have a look at it. At least you then know whether it is understandable before buying it. There may also be fragments online.
If there is a university of technology nearby, you could see if they have a library where you can have a look at it. At least you then know whether it is understandable before buying it. There may also be fragments online.
Not really. A sound card does the actual conversion from digital to analog.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Btw there is a thing to be said about some media players vs others. Not every player can play audio directly, some dither no matter what. Also idk if there's any sound cards which have non-dithered volume controls. So even with a player which allows it, at 100% volume, if your master volume isn't at 100% it'll dither. Which is a problem that higher bitrates mitigate by having enough bits that the noise floor doesn't increase too much. And pretty much the only reason why 32bit audio is a thing
Btw there is a thing to be said about some media players vs others. Not every player can play audio directly, some dither no matter what. Also idk if there's any sound cards which have non-dithered volume controls. So even with a player which allows it, at 100% volume, if your master volume isn't at 100% it'll dither. Which is a problem that higher bitrates mitigate by having enough bits that the noise floor doesn't increase too much. And pretty much the only reason why 32bit audio is a thing
Modern DS DAC chips operate at 32 bits internally so using the volume control of the dac chip is probably the best option for digital volume control. In USB Audio (UAC2) the device (i.e. DAC) can be set to provide the volume control. In this fashion e.g. the Windows volume slider sends only volume control requests to the dac but keeps the streaming data as is.