Impulse testing done for DACs or CD players was historically done to determine the presence of linear phase (oversampling), non-oversampling and the overall polarity of the DACs (inverting or non-inverting).
A single 0dBfs sample was played by the device and the resulting waveform captured by a 'scope.
In reality, such a signal is illegal,as it cannot be captured in “nature”. It cannot exist in the real analog world. It can only exist in the digital or electrical domain as a manufactured signal- a bit like a perfect square wave.
There are plenty of test discs and programs that can create such signal and I use ask me for the file (Denon standard test disc) to quickly check polarity etc. In the present day, there are plenty of oversampling DACs that can apply whatever “flavour” they want to the FIR filtering to resemble NOS DACs or whatever they want.
As the QA403 is analog in and out, the ADC will apply its filtering and the DAC does the same, so you cannot drive a single sample impulse into a device to see its response in the analog domain.
Sure, you could create a file, “play” it via the mirroring function into a DAC and capture the DAC’s output, but the waveform you would collect would be limited/affected by the QA403’s ADC filtering AND and the sample rate restrictions as well at the DUT DAC’s own impulse response. With the QA403, the sample rate of the “mirrored” source signal must match the analyzer sample rate too.
The best device for capturing an impulse is a 'scope with a decent bandwidth:
It is clear your explanation and match with the info I have
But if the 403 is a instrument even it has the ADC and DA from ESS.
When I plot a FFT at 1 kHz (just an example) coming from a dac I see the real until it is generated with a samplng frequency that is 1/2 of the max (192kHz) in theory
This is an impulse read with AP Sys2 , 48 kHz of sampling test impulse