The output frequency spectrum of the DACs shows some inherent attenuation due to their sample-and-holdnature. The output of the DAC is normally seen as the signal sample held over the sampling time in a stair-stepmanner. In the time domain, this step-like output can be thought of as an impulse sample of some valueconvolved with a unit-square pulse with a duration of the sampling time. In the frequency domain, this translatesto the frequency response of the discretely sampled signal multiplied by the sinx/x frequency response functionof the square pulse. The sinx/x function has a null at every integer multiple of the sampling rate. This is shown in Figure 20 for various data rates at 4 × interpolation.