what about replaygain and external dac?

I would appreciate some clarification, for my better understanding, of the way replaygain works when using an external dac.

I play Flac files, with track/ album replaygain tags embedded, over my Node2 (N110) with the setting for track or smart gain activated. Volume is normalized as expected.

Recently I bought a Cambridge cxa61 (sorry guys @ NAD) that has a ESS Sabre SE9010K2M dac. Out of curiosity I connected the digital input of the amplifier to the Node, using a coax cable.

My question is, is the digital signal sent by the Node still normalized as I'm no longer using the dac of the Node? Or, is the flac+replaygain tag being processed by the dac of the amplifier?

I was wondering how it is possible to have still the same audible volume, as the cambridge ampli has no settings for replaygain.

Alain DW

Lossless

February 20, 2024 05:00

Hi Seppi, thanks for taking time to respond. It must be like you said, since the volume does not change after switching input from analog to coax. So if I understand well, the RG is not processed in the dac of the Node but in some other part of the DSP. Doesn't this mean that the coax signal is not a bitperfect rendering of the FLAC?

what about replaygain and external dac?

Comments

Didn't find what you were looking for?