They do if your DAC is only 16 bits and if it starts reading from the LSB or MSB. Shifting bits to the left = padding with zeroes, and it does mean you need to compensate by attenuation (thus allowing headroom).
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=82970
These people seem to agree that the last 4 bits are padded, and with a 6dB attenuation to account for it.
So you think 24 bit hi-rez is excessive?
Wow this is turning out to be more involved than I thought. (Having other people) doing the math is cool, and I guess so are DBTs.
Why did you sell your Parasound?
I've had stuffed shipped to me from Europe before, the shipping amount is pretty hefty and seems about right (iirc the Surrounder is pretty big, even if it doesn't weigh much).
There's more noise due to the dithering compared to normal 16 bit redbook, is what I think they're trying to say.
And... the point of software is it can be written and modified to do almost whatever you want, as opposed to dealing with set hardware. I'm gonna spend the next couple of days reading the PMD100 spec sheet and then figure out a good time to meet so we can play some of your HDCDs through the Parasound 1100 (have you heard one before)? Weekend after next?
Edit: Cool thrad http://www.diyhifi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2056
Cool thanks for the write-up. Wikipedia seems to say a maximum of 20 bits of dynamic range, the 16th bit being the control bit, and I guess it's used to re-dither back to 16 bits for non-HDCD players, which should be better than truncation to 15 bit resolution.
The extremely limited reading I've just done seems to imply there's just an extra bit for improved dynamic range, but when played through a non-HDCD player only has 15 bits? What does any of that have to do with a dip in frequency response at 8kHz? I don't know much about Steve Hoffman but it's starting to sound like he's one of those special "audio artists." Audio engineers as a whole seem somewhat dubious to me.
Uh they did 4 years ago in my class... same teacher that made us go through K maps and other logic crap and build circuits with switches and LEDs to count in binary back when I didn't even know wtf a circuit was. Maybe she was just trolling us.