[vorbis] 24/96 ?

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2001 at 07:27:30PM -0100, fungus wrote:
[snip]
> You *could* argue that the DAC is better in the expensive
> unit, but you'll have a hard time convincing me. I believe
> that the best consumer DAC on earth can't possibly cost more
> than $100 to produce, besides most discmen use a 1-bit DAC
> so it's down the the quality of the capacitor used to filter
> the output. I defy you to find a capacitor in the microfarad
> range worth thousands of dollars (or even hundreds).
> 
> You could also argue about power supplies, but again
> you'll have a hard time convincing me. A stable power
> supply to produce a couple of volts with negligable
> current requirement isn't exactly difficult to make
> (just put a $0.10 capacitor across the output).
> 
> Finally there's the old "clock stability" argument.
> I'm not buying that one either. A crystal in the mHz
> range divided down to produce a 44.1kHz clock will be
> unbelievably stable. This will also cost cents to make.
[snip]

You make good points about the price of making good quality parts, but you
are still missing something important: That kind of quality is not demanded
by the consumers and the cost of achieving it goes well beyond the cost of
the parts. It's pretty expensive and difficult to design boards with low
signal leakage, etc.. It gets even worse for things like timebase, because
the awareness of the problem class is low and the test gear is expensive.

Since all of this extra quality is only important in 'audiophileish'
hardware, it is only this hardware which gets these slightly more expensive
(to make) parts.

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