Talk:Digital-to-analog converter

Unbalanced article

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived: These issues appear to have been addressed ~Kvng (talk) 16:28, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

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The article is focussed way too much on audio DACs. It should contain more balanced information about other important types of DACs, mostly high speed (100MSPS to 1GSPS) DACs: flash DAC, pipeline DACs, switched capacitor DAC, dual DACs used for I/Q upconversion etc. see Analog Devices AD9777A for example.

And technically, the chip pictured at the beginning of the article is an audio CODEC, not an audio DAC. difference: DAC chip = only contains a DAC; CODEC = contains several DACs, several ADCs, muxers, gain controls, interpolators (to support multiple sampling rates), and so on, providing a complete bidirectional analog <==> digital interface. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.132.120.254 (talk) 17:27, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. DACs are vital in communications. Faster DACs are being developed every year. There is no mention of DDS!!!--B. Srinivasa Sasidhar 18:34, 21 July 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bssasidhar (talk • contribs)

Intial discussion

Why are switching capacitor style DACs such as those implemented for VGA and TV signal generation left out? This article seems to concentrate entirely on DACs for the purpose of audio signal generation.

DACs are used in analogue signal processing circuits to replace potentiometers

I know what the writer is getting at, but these circuit elements are not really DACs, they are digitally controlled potentiometers ;-) In other words they do not create an analogue signal from a digital one, asa DAC does, but controls a purely analogue signal under digital control. Such devices are interesting and deserve an article, but they do not belong under DAC. Graham 05:50, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I've now made a start on this article based on the text copied from here. Graham 06:00, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I miss a history section..

Could someone with knowledge write one? Electron9 01:10, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

The fact that practical DACs output a sequence of piecewise constant values or rectangular pulses

Rectangular pulse output was used to avoid the sinc roll-off of zero-order hold circuits. That is, rectangular pulse was used as an approximation of a dirac pulse. See for example this discussion: [1] So the use of the term "rectangular pulse" in the context of Nyquest-rate zero-order hold circuits is confusing: rectangular pulse DAC circuits are not Nyquest-rate zero-order hold circuits.150.101.166.15 (talk) 08:36, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

ring DAC

Dear fellow Wikipedians,

Is the "ring DAC" [2] significant enough to mention in this article? Or is it merely a minor variation of the "thermometer coded DAC" combined with a "oversampling DAC"? --68.0.124.33 (talk) 04:24, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Modem

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived.

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There is an obvious problem on Modem that most people think a Modem converts digital signals to analog signals. The modem article is already too long to include a tutorial on the difference between analog and digital signals, and there isn't any good place to reference -- so any suggestions would be welcome.203.206.162.148 (talk) 08:05, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

You say "there is an obvious problem" but it is far from clear what you think the problem is. It is also unclear why you are posting on this page, which is for discussion improvements to the D/A article. Why are you not discussion this at Talk:Modem which is the "obvious" place to get the Modem article improved. SpinningSpark 14:56, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Superfluous section?

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived.

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Is the section "Some vocabulary" really needed? --Mortense (talk) 15:15, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

No. Binksternet (talk) 17:33, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

External links

An edit war prompted me to review the Further reading and External links sections. I did not change Further reading. The ADI handbook appears be a valuable and accessible resource - lets not remove it. There were some things in External links that might be useful as references but the glssary link was the only thing that struck me as potentially valuable. Here are the links I removed. --Kvng (talk) 04:08, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

• High-Resolution Multiplying DACs Handle AC Signals
• Controlling the X79000 FlexDAC with a Rotary Encoder
• Audio Hi-Fi DAC build See a high quality audio DAC being built.
• R-2R Ladder DAC explained with circuit diagrams.
• Resistor/PWM Hybrid DAC for hi-fi audio from cheap microcontrollers.
• INL/DNL Measurements for High-Speed ADCs explains how INL and DNL are calculated.
• How to build a Digital to Analog converter A cheap, simple, yet reliable home-made solution!
• Dynamic Evaluation of High-Speed, High Resolution D/A Converters Outlines HD, IMD and NPR measurements, also includes a derivation of quantization noise

This article mentioned…

FWIW, this article is mentioned very-slightly critically in this video. --Gmaxwell (talk) 01:38, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Odd paragraph in the introduction

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived: This appears to have been addressed ~Kvng (talk) 16:37, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

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Does the long paragraph in the introduction mentioning a digital revolution really belong in this article?18.62.28.75 (talk) 06:06, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

The lead should summarize the content of the article. This is something different. I have reverted the recent changes by CPES. ~KvnG 13:53, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you should have reverted my changes, as the statement about complexity was not factual. However my broader point is that the introduction is very strange given the context of the article. IMO it should be rewritten to focus more on the actual technology and less on someone's opinions about digital technology. The language is also probably not appropriate for a technical article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.62.17.224 (talk) 17:39, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Typical long distance telephone call

The text in the application section in no way describes a typical long distance telephone call. The voice public switched telephone network is not a packetized network. Phone calls over land lines have dedicated bandwidth from one end to the other. This section describes a voip system, which typical long distance calls are not. 73.177.133.8 (talk) 04:07, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't be so sure about that. VoIP techniques are definitely in use by telephone carriers for long-distance calls. I'm not sure what's considered typical at this point. Long-distance calling is a bit dated and doesn't say much about this. ~Kvng (talk) 12:51, 8 December 2016 (UTC)