Bitzie: 24 bit or not?

Stewboss wrote: No Graham, it's a great product and I've written that on here several times before. I loaned it last year and was lucky enough to loan the Solo ULDE at the same time and that combo has got to be the best I've ever heard from a headphone system! John should verify this if he can remember our encounters. Last year my uncle had a Naim V1 DAC which was getting rave reviews at the time. I tried my cans on the headphone output and it sounded like the music was playing under water. I thought my cans were broken! Anyway, keep making the great products

Sorry for my error and thanks for your support - it is appreciated!

I too am delighted with my two Bitzies. The sonic performance is excellent. Can a USB DAC sound any better than this?? I only had one minor niggle with my Bitzie but it doesn't change the fact that it is a saviour of digital audio, especially for an OTG user. Good luck finding something that sounds better after several hours powered on. I have noticed that following a life of ridicule and criticism, Graham has become very defensive of his work even towards people who are not actually condemning his products.

Fatmangolf wrote: I will gladly confirm Stew's listening pleasure from both Bitzie and Solo. We met in supermarket carparks on a number of occasions in 2013 and I heard his praise for the Bitzie. It echoes my own view on ths tiny giant killer of a USB DAC.

Stewboss wrote: I was 'worried' that the Bitzie was downsampling the 24bit files to 16bit as this is what the software was suggesting.

Remember that 24 bits is 20 bits of audio (the other 4 are info-bits). The Bitzie certainly ignores the lowest 4 bits of those 20 bits for conversion to S/PDIF (my reason for labouring the point on S/PDIF), Burr Brown are open about that and so am I and I posted "For the playback, all possible data rate source is converted to 16-bit stereo format at the same source data rate" regarding S/PDIF.

But how the chip converts to analogue is one of their deepest secrets, and so is the "adaptive" part of the "adaptive isochronous" decoding - it must be a good variation of isochronous to be able to deliver 0.0025% THD at both 1kHz and 10kHz when separately powered (i.e. not from the dirty USB bus) - if only there was an AP "J-test" for USB jitter...

Sometimes a chip is avoided by the masses because the manufacturer will not divulge how it works - which is the case here in USB audio - but Burr Brown are still investing in it as it is now in its E suffix version, keeping up with every OS update, at least in Windows (including 8).

Therefore I am not able to say any other than what I (and those I consult with) have found, and that is the Bitzie accepts 24 bits. Whatever way the USB chip achieves its purpose, I know it is extremely tweakable to produce an audio performance few full-blown DACs are capable of.


Edited by Graham Slee - 08 Apr 2014 at 8:25pm