what about replaygain and external dac?
Answered
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.
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Official comment
RG adjusts the tracks in the NODE and sends the altered signal out.
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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?
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As it’s altered its technically not bit perfect, RG can have the undesirable effect of clipping if the values increase the gain too much.
For an external MQA DAC playback volume level has to be fixed, tone controls and RP also have to be disabled otherwise the track is no longer original.
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