Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by adrian_b 990 days ago
Sorry, it is what you say that is wrong.

Because the end result is standard PCM, the quantization can be only worse, not better.

Oversampling ADCs push a much greater quantization noise into the inaudible range, and then, by low-pass filtering, reduce the quantization noise to the level of standard PCM.

Oversampling ADCs are not better, they are much cheaper, because 16-bit or 24-bit quantizers with enough speed and accuracy are extremely expensive.

Oversampling, i.e. sigma-delta modulation, in both ADCs and DACs, allows the use of much cheaper quantizers with low resolution, of only a few bits, or even of only 1 bit, and of much cheaper filters, which do not have to be very steep, without degrading too much the quality in comparison with real PCM conversion done at the Nyquist frequency.

1 comments

Nothing you said refutes my assertion.