What is a DAC and why is it so important for your music?

Music, movies and even podcasts that you hear are in digital format. This means a crazy arrange of zeroes and ones to be translated for our brains to understand it as sound. That’s is why DAC is so important for us. A DAC or Digital to Analog Converter is a device to translate this information to hear it as music or comprehensible sound.

All modern devices have an important Digital to Analog Converter incorporated. From your television set to your mobile phone or video game console. But not all DACs are the same. Quality, speed and precision of each data transformation, changes depending on your device DAC. And the result is how you listen to the music or audio content.

How does the DAC work and why is it important?

Those who love music, or sound in general, need to know why a DAC is important and how it works. It’s the key to understanding how to get the best sound quality possible. The Digital to Analog Converter takes the digital information, the bits of songs and sounds, and turns it to analog signals. These analog signals can be read by your speakers or headphones. It’s a technical process but think about it in the following way:

The music you download or listen through streaming consists in numbers. You want to hear a guitar or a voice, not binary code. Thanks to the Digital to Analog Converter the numbers transform into electric waves that your speakers turn to vibrations inside your ears. Depending on the DAC quality, the listening experience changes. A Digital to Analog Converter is important because it can make the audio lose quality or include strange noises.

When you press the Play button in Spotify, for example, the digital data travels the Internet to your mobile phone. The DAC reads the data and turns it to an electric signal for your headphones and then to sound.

It’s the same when you are watching a TV series in your Smart TV. The TV set downloads the digital files and the TV DAC turns them to audio for you to hear it through the integrated speakers.

Not every DAC is the same. The mobile phone DAC may be designed to save battery and space, and the sound quality is different. But a Digital to Analog Converter from a external device for your computer or TV set may be of higher quality.

External DAC and sound lovers

Although every device has a DAC on its own, there are users who love sound quality and choose external DACs in order to enjoy the best sound quality possible. The main reason is that integrated chips tend to be lower quality than external dedicated DACs.

An external DAC is usually bigger and the components are specially made for high quality audio. The external DAC is an important independent device for users who love music and high sound quality. There are some small designs such as little boxes or pendrives that connect directly to your music player or speakers–

Thanks to an external Digital to Analog Converter you can turn the digital sound to analog in a more precise and clean way. That means that sound reaches your ears with less noises and richer. High fidelity lovers usually have an external DAC with high end headphones. There’s a big difference on how music sounds with this combination. It can also make movies and video games sound extremely different.

In a few words, an external DAC in comparison with your device’s DAC is more powerful and precise when turning digital to analog data. An internal DAC is usually basic because the design saves space. Sound quality is not the main key here. The connection of an external Digital to Analog Converter is also important and very easy. You need to connect it to the electric source and then to your speakers or headphones. There are some models working with Bluetooth technology.

Amplifiers and DACs are not the same but work together

It’s relatively normal to mistake a DAC with a sound amplifier. Both devices are born with the objective of you listening better. However, their functions are pretty different. The DAC transforms digital data to analog signal, but the signal tends to be weak and insufficient for speakers or big headphones.

The amplifier is also nec working in tandem with the Digital to Analog Converter. It takes the analog signal and powers it up to reach with strength and quality to the speakers. Some devices include DAC and amplifier integrated. Others use a separate configuration to improve quality even more. For example, professional music sets have a DAC and amplifier unit on their own to improve maximum output and getting purer sound.