Weekly Q&A: Answers | Week of November 27, 2023

R2R DACs, Resolution, & "Marketing Bits"

Q: The popularity of R2R DACs seems to be growing. How does this "lower resolution" technology work with high-resolution streaming services like Qobuz and Tidal? Does it defeat the purpose of high-res, or do high-res streams still sound better somehow when using R2R?

-Dave

A: Robert Harley replies:

It’s worthwhile to review what an R/2R DAC is. This is an older technology that some listeners feel offers better sound quality than the more modern DAC architectures.

Here’s an excerpt from my book The Complete Guide to High-End Audio, sixth edition explaining how an R/2R ladder DAC works:

“A common type of DAC is the multibit ‘ladder’ or “R/2R” DAC, both names describing the same operating principle. Multibit ladder DACs have ‘rungs’ of resistors, each rung corresponding to one bit in the digital code. A 16-bit DAC will thus have 16 resistor rungs, which allow 65,536 (216) possible input codes. The effective resistor value of each rung is twice the value of the adjacent resistor, thus the name…