The Next Step Towards Ideal A/D and D/A Converters

Though conversion of analog audio signals to and from digital data is supposed to be a mature technology, the correlation between audibility and type of imperfection in the converted signal is only partly covered. Test signals from available records explore only a small part of the converter characteristic with sufficient detail. Bias-dependent glitches, slew-rate distortion, noise-switching, clock-jitter and crosstalk which can seriously degrade the signal are mostly ignored. Especially low signal level reproduction requires differential linearity to be much better than usually specified.