The only real advantage that DSD has is that a lot of high end mastering equipment is based on the technology. So your avoiding the convert to PCM step.
In effect every Delta Sigma DAC is converting PCM back to DSD when it’s played.
I was a big SACD fan, but a lot of the difference over DVD Audio was in better masters.
As others have mentioned the primary benifit of dsd over other lossless formats is not the format itself, rather exclusive masters.
A lot of modern dsd is mastered in dxd afaik, so it’s literally pcm>dsd
I made this point earlier.
The DSD I mainly listen to are transfers from analogue master tape. Mainly 50s and 60s Jazz/blues.
Audirvana allows me to up-sample everything to DSD256 to make some real comparisons.
I was wowed by DSD not long ago. Those tracks I heard now sound very weird. My old setup was not great but experiencing upsampled PCM, there was just greater clarity, especially in the treble.
Now that I think about it, my best dac doesn’t even support dsd, tbh I don’t really care what format it is as long as it sounds good lol
If it doesn’t support native DSD, I’d be worried.
Even the mid-range stuff these days do native.
Your DAC must be really old.
Well it is an r2r, so even the modern ones that support dsd cant play it natively. My spring2 kte can play dsd but it sounds like shite on dsd (awesome with pcm), so I just concert to pcm on the fly. The my main dac is an upgrade from that and I understand why they didn’t even bother with dsd
The Denafrips Ares 2 is R2R and does native DSD no?
A r2r dac by design would not be able to handle dsd. It has to be converted into pcm in the end. You can put a USB implementation that supports receiving native dsd, but it has to be converted to pcm to be used by a r2r dac.
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you should make a video about this or write an article, it’s very intriguing
Most R2R DAC’s that support DSD have a separate implementation, which likely isn’t of the same quality as the PCM implementation.
Yeah, I haven’t heard a r2r that dsd sounds as good as pcm yet, I would assume dsd is hard to get right on a r2r
When you hear DSD compared to PCM what specific differences do you hear ? Clarity ? Lower Noise Floor? Some people say its better but I want to get an idea what to listen for. Maybe my Sundaras on my Chord MOJO are not detailed enough or I just don’t know what better sounds like. I’m struggling to hear the difference or its possible that my one or two DSD files are just converted from PCM to start with.
Free samples from CD-quality to over-the-top hi-res, for comparison.
Obviously your DAC must support “hi-res audio”.
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None of the downloads work for me, giving me a server too long to respond error. But thank you for the link. I will try again later.