Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8a
Part 8b
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11

This series has flipped back and forth between talking about high resolution audio files & sources and the processing that happens in the equipment when you play it. For this posting, we’re going to deal exclusively with the playback side – regardless of the source content.

I work for a company that makes loudspeakers (among other things). All of the loudspeakers we make use digital signal processing instead of resistors, capacitors, and inductors because that’s the best way to do things these days…

Point 1: This means that our volume control is a gain (a multiplier) that’s applied to the digital signal.

We also make surround processors (most of our customers call them “televisions”) that take a multichannel audio input (these days, this is under the flag of “spatial audio”, but that’s just a new name on an old idea) and distribute the signals to multiple loudspeakers. Consequently, all of our loudspeakers have the same “sensitivity”. This is a measurement of how loud the output is for a given input.

Let’s take one loudspeaker model, Beolab 90, as an example. The sensitivity of this loudspeaker is set to be the same as all other Bang & Olufsen loudspeakers. Originally, this was based on an analogue signal, but has since been converted to digital.

Point 2: Specifically, if you send a 0 dB FS signal into a Beolab 90 set to maximum volume, then it will produce a little over 122 dB SPL at 1 m in a free field (theoretically).

Let’s combine points 1 and 2, with a consideration of bit depth on the audio signal.

If you have a DSP-based loudspeaker with a maximum output of 122 dB SPL, and you play a 16-bit audio signal with nothing but TPDF dither, then the noise floor caused by that dither will be 122 – 93 = 29 dB SPL which is pretty loud. Certainly loud enough for a customer to complain about the noise coming from their loudspeaker.

Now, you might say “but no one would play a CD at maximum volume on that loudspeaker” to which I say two things:

1. I do.
   The “Banditen Galop” track from Telarc’s disc called “Ein Straussfest” has enough dynamic range that this is not dangerous. You just get very loud, but very short spikes when the gunshots happen.
2. That’s not the point I’m trying to make anyway…

The point I’m trying to make is that, if Beolab 90 (or any other Bang & Olufsen loudspeaker) used 16-bit DACs, then the noise floor would be 29 dB SPL, regardless of the input signal’s bit depth or dynamic range.

So, the only way to ensure that the DAC (or the bit depth of the signal feeding the DAC) isn’t the source of the noise floor from the loudspeaker is to use more than 16 bits at that point in the signal flow. So, we use a 24-bit DAC, which gives us a (theoretical) noise floor of 122 – 141 = -19 dB SPL. Of course, this is just a theoretical number, since there are no DACs with a 141 dB dynamic range (not without doing some very creative cheating, but this wouldn’t be worth it, since we don’t really need 141 dB of dynamic range anyway).

So, there are many cases where a 24-bit DAC is a REALLY good idea, even though you’re only playing 16-bit recordings.

Similarly, you want the processing itself to be running at a higher resolution than your DAC, so that you can control its (the DAC’s) signal (for example, you want to create the dither in the DSP – not hope that the DAC does it for you. This is why you’ll often see digital signal processing running at floating point (typically 32-bit floating point) or fixed point with a wider bit depth than the DAC.