I'm new to riocar, but I know that I want to play DVD-Audio and I was wondering if it is possible to upgrade the DAC to a 24-bit, 192 kHz, 8-Channel D/A Converters such as these?

Thanks,

George

It would require more than just changing out the DAC chip. It would also require writing completely different software for the player, software that was coded directly to the new DAC. And from what I understand, these DAC chips aren't exactly pin-for-pin drop-in replacements for each other. A significant amount of hardware engineering would be needed as well.

In other words... if you're going to go to that much trouble to hack up the main board of your one-of-a-kind, never-to-be-made-again empeg car player, the energy is probably better spent on making your own homebrew digital player with the capabilities you're looking for.

Question: Why do you want to play digital copies of DVD-Audio files on your empeg? Is that really what you want to do? Or do you just want to use a DVD player in your car?

If all you want to do is use a DVD player in your car, just daisy chain the DVD player and the empeg using the line-in and line-out connectors on each unit. The empeg doesn't need to decode the DVD audio.

If all you want to do is play the DVD audio track ripped from a music DVD, just use Total Recorder to do that, and convert it to MP3. Or use any of the DVD ripping tools that are available.

there are dvd-audio discs. i guess its some format of digital audio way better than cd and it is also sometimes in 5.1

It would require more than just changing out the DAC chip. It would also require writing completely different software for the player, software that was coded directly to the new DAC. And from what I understand, these DAC chips aren't exactly pin-for-pin drop-in replacements for each other. A significant amount of hardware engineering would be needed as well.

From what I remember, there is no provision in the existing hardware for multichannel audio, beyond the SDATA 1 and 2 lines. IIRC, there is no DAC chip in the Empeg per se. It is built into the DSP. You would have to completely bypass the DSP and all of it's features and of course rewrite the software as Tony suggests. DACs are rarely drop in replacements for one another. The one referenced in the original post in this thread does not have particularly good channel isolation and requires separate SDATA lines for each stereo pair, which of course are not available in the stock Empeg. Making eight separate channels of audio work well inside the Empeg or similar device would be quite a feat. To get really good performance would require at least 4 separately packaged DACs.

Anyway, as Tony said, it's not really worthwhile to attempt given the complexity involved.

Stu