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Anyone started to use DSD yet if so would you mind sharing some expressions
:eek: :doh: and :stalks: are a few expressions I'll happily share with you.
And here's a yorkshire expression for you: It's nut jannock
Supposed to be hard to set up right but good sounds sorry to hear its been a complete nightmare
Supposed to be hard to set up right but good sounds sorry to hear its been a complete nightmare
Hi John, I have heard DSD set up correctly in a very good system but it was not cheap to do! DSD can sound very good indeed but it can also sound crap very much like CD and 24bit etc. it all depends on:
1. How well the original material was engineered and then transferred to Digital.
2. How good your system is (NAS, cables, Amp,DAC, Music streamer)
Like all other Digital formats it does have its own sound but when good can sound less synthetic than CD / 24bit etc. However the main difficulty will be obtaining DSD material that sounds good in the first place and it will be expensive. I have heard CD rips and 24bit that sound as good as DSD. As far as I am concerned they are all just different flavours of Digitally encoded music and if you get compressed or poorly engineered material it will sound crap. You must also trust that what you are buying is also what it says it is. It is a minefield! I am sure others will tell you the same.
Still not as good as the best vinyl and to my ears no Digital format ever sounds as real as the best analogue recordings in my opinion.
Thanks James
Yes I guess the lack of material always limits stuff like this I guess I just see how it develops
I've been having a bit of a play with DSD recently. My PS3 has been gathering dust as I'm not really interested in it for playing games any more, so it found a new home as a streaming box with my projector, then I remembered it has DSD capability - Sadly it's not one of the early machines that supports SACD, but I wondered what DSD would sound like through its analogue outputs - Have to say I wasn't expecting much considering how poor CD performance from the analogue outs of the PS3 is.
But I was pleasantly surprised - even quite excited. I downloaded some of the test recordings available from various sites and shall we say, used a less legal means of obtaining some more well known analogue recordings for testing and experimentation purposes of course ;-).
From a few nights of listening, there is certainly a signature sound which isn't hard to pick up - even with a PS3! There is a certain effortlessness and relaxed presentation which CD just doesn't do. It also seems to handle and reproduce the extreme ends of the frequency scale (of my hearing anyway) much more realistically. One of the classical tracks I downloaded had a number of kettle drum smacks which you really felt. There's a weight and tangibility to instruments, which, to me is a lot closer to vinyl than it is to CD.
I'd love to start collecting DSD material but the PS3 is just too noisy to use as a serious hi-fi source, even if it sounds like one with DSD playback, but I would recommend anyone with a PS3 to give it a try just to dip your toe in the water. There is a piece of Korg software called Audiogate available that will allow you to burn DSD discs from a Mac or PC which the PS3 will read (or any other machine that will play DSD discs I guess). You can download it for free but if you don't own the Korg hardware you need a Twitter account for it to allow you to use it (it's the only thing I'm using Twitter for ;-).
I'm really quite taken with it as a format, but as has been said, it's all in the mastering. A lot of DSD material is re/upsampled PCM which seems utterly pointless to me. The problem with DSD is that it cannot be edited easily, so what happens at the mastering and mixing stage is that even if the recording starts out as DSD, it then gets piped through one (maybe more) PCM stages then reconverted, by which time you've lost the point entirely. It's a perfect archiving medium though and some of the remasters of analogue recordings that are appearing are simply stunning.
I've been playing DSD for years, John. On SACD of course. What do you want to know?
There is also a good amount of free material knocking about, for example people's recordings testing gear in their studios on forums like gearslutz.com. For example there was a guy testing out different A/D converters and also different DSD levels by recording from some mastertapes I think. There is also a whole DSD website dedicated to free DSD test tracks.. You'll have to google a bit as I'm feeling tired.
technobear
14-04-2014, 21:17
For the full skinny on DSD, you might care to read this Q&A with Thorsten Loesch of AMR/ifi:
http://www.audiostream.com/content/qa-thorsten-loesch-amrifi
Lots of technical info on DSD and PCM and why the twain should never meet.
realysm42
14-04-2014, 21:21
DSD - easy to set up and run with Jriver, a capable pc and the VDT1 dac I use - most of what I listen to is from:
http://bluecoastrecords.com/formats/dsd
Fantastic recordings, and they don't f*ck about with the sound too much, so it's very dynamic sounding and a real pleasure.
Anyone started to use DSD yet if so would you mind sharing some expressions
I have 130+ DSD albums, been using it for over a year, as has been said jriver handles it well with an appropriate DAC
it sounds stunning I think anyway
need any help with it pm me glad to offer assistance
starbucksboss
15-04-2014, 02:25
DSD - easy to set up and run with Jriver, a capable pc and the VDT1 dac I use - most of what I listen to is from:
http://bluecoastrecords.com/formats/dsd
Fantastic recordings, and they don't f*ck about with the sound too much, so it's very dynamic sounding and a real pleasure.
Honestly...its so tiny a difference I couldn't tell the difference...
For the full skinny on DSD, you might care to read this Q&A with Thorsten Loesch of AMR/ifi
Good article, thanks.
For the full skinny on DSD, you might care to read this Q&A with Thorsten Loesch of AMR/ifi:
http://www.audiostream.com/content/qa-thorsten-loesch-amrifi
Lots of technical info on DSD and PCM and why the twain should never meet.
Great article Thanks for sharing. This has helped me decide this is not the way for me to go unless their is a drastic change of material availble as upscaling has to many issues
The Barbarian
15-04-2014, 07:08
I have a Vinyl re-issue of the Rolling Stones 'Their Satanic Majesties Request' in DSD
:flasher:
For the full skinny on DSD, you might care to read this Q&A with Thorsten Loesch of AMR/ifi:
http://www.audiostream.com/content/qa-thorsten-loesch-amrifi
Lots of technical info on DSD and PCM and why the twain should never meet.
Why is PCM alway represented as a stair step wave form! Grrrrrr! Its nothing of the sort. Anyhow, good article. Theres been a good thread running over on PFM with some very good insights into DSD, are you sure your DSD material is really DSD material. ;)
Why is PCM alway represented as a stair step wave form!
To help the uninitiated understand how it is reconstructed. Sure, essential bandwidth limiting provides the contouring of the waveform back into the analogue signal that we recognise, but it would be less educational to depict it that way.
realysm42
15-04-2014, 07:46
Why is PCM alway represented as a stair step wave form! Grrrrrr! Its nothing of the sort. Anyhow, good article. Theres been a good thread running over on PFM with some very good insights into DSD, are you sure your DSD material is really DSD material. ;)
Fair question but I think you could ask that about any digital format.
To help the uninitiated understand how it is reconstructed. Sure, essential bandwidth limiting provides the contouring of the waveform back into the analogue signal that we recognise, but it would be less educational to depict it that way.
I don't agree Martin, representing it as a staircase makes the understanding worse for the uninitiated and has persisted since the year dot! Its confusing, much better to represent it as sample points in time as it is in reality. ;)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/Pcm.svg/500px-Pcm.svg.png
Fair question but I think you could ask that about any digital format.
Sorry I don't follow you :scratch: DSD material thats been through a PCM or several PCM conversion processes isn't really DSD.
I don't agree Martin, representing it as a staircase makes the understanding worse for the uninitiated and has persisted since the year dot! Its confusing, much better to represent it as sample points in time as it is in reality. ;)
Fair point, well made!
Ammonite Audio
15-04-2014, 09:49
Good article indeed, explaining possible reasons why I find any form of re-sampling or re-quantisation (is that a correct word?) to adversely affect musical enjoyment.
Good article indeed, explaining possible reasons why I find any form of re-sampling or re-quantisation (is that a correct word?) to adversely affect musical enjoyment.
Ditto
We record in DXD (Digital extreme definition) what people do not realize is that dsd needs to be converted to pcm @24/352.8Khz to be mixied then mastered before re-sampled to 2.82Mhz or 5.6Mhz though only 1 bit resolution.
We have around 800 dsd albums, and as I've said before many times the quality comes from the original transfer.
At the 15 Audio show a few weeks back a chap came in convinced of dsd and its superiority, I played a properly mastered red book 16/44.1khz file, you should have seen his face :stalks:
Interestingly all of the guys that seem really pro DSD all have perceptually 'dry' sounding systems so the greater texture and depth that dsd can offer is made far more obvious. Just an observation.
We record in DXD (Digital extreme definition) what people do not realize is that dsd needs to be converted to pcm @24/352.8Khz to be mixied then mastered before re-sampled to 2.82Mhz or 5.6Mhz though only 1 bit resolution.
We have around 800 dsd albums, and as I've said before many times the quality comes from the original transfer.
At the 15 Audio a few weeks back a chap came in convinced of dsd and its superiority, I played a properly mastered red book 16/44.1khz file, you should have seen his face :stalks:
Interestingly all of the guys that seem really pro DSD all have perceptually 'dry; sounding systems so the greater texture and depth that dsd can offer is made far more obvious. Just an observation.
I have heard CD sound better than DSD. With all the digital processing and manipulation of recordings transferred to DSD it can be quite poor and offer no more benefits than ripped CD. If it's done well that's a different matter but can you trust that this has happened when you buy aDSD recording/download?
Makes sense to me Tony I was considering DSD and upscaling with Jriver but gone off the whole idea.
I need to think of others ways to get my digital system with the same slam as my TT set up (I know its possible because I heard on Tony's system)
We record in DXD (Digital extreme definition) what people do not realize is that dsd needs to be converted to pcm @24/352.8Khz to be mixied then mastered before re-sampled to 2.82Mhz or 5.6Mhz though only 1 bit resolution.
We have around 800 dsd albums, and as I've said before many times the quality comes from the original transfer.
At the 15 Audio show a few weeks back a chap came in convinced of dsd and its superiority, I played a properly mastered red book 16/44.1khz file, you should have seen his face :stalks:
Interestingly all of the guys that seem really pro DSD all have perceptually 'dry' sounding systems so the greater texture and depth that dsd can offer is made far more obvious. Just an observation.
I thought I'd posted something similar but think I couldn't find a finish to the post and walked away...
There are only a few systems out there to edit DSD and they all go to PCM at some point - it's impossible to edit without doing so as you say.
However, you CAN record a two channel recording in DSD and do live fade-in and outs if needed. But that's not how commercial recording works. BUT that gives the hobbiest the advantage if you see what I mean, no commercial realities to worry about.
What do you use Mr C? Pyramix and a Horus or something? I visited a DSD mastering company (Classic Recordings or something? Do LSO recordings) picking up some ATC cabinets from an ebay purchase. I was trying to get them to sell me their outdated and rarely used Pyramix Sphynx 2 for my future home studio, hoping they'll get back to me some time!
How was that CD mastered by the way?
Anyone started to use DSD yet if so would you mind sharing some expressions
John, I will quite happily send you an i-dsd dac for a listen after easter along with some dsd music on a memory stick, just connect it to a laptop running jriver
if you are using an apple macbook or similar no driver needs installing, if windows it is fairly easy to install the i-dsd driver
i-dsd being a small dsd/dxd dac thats cost peanuts, it will allow you to hear what dsd does before you spend any money and find you don't like it!
Good article indeed, explaining possible reasons why I find any form of re-sampling or re-quantisation (is that a correct word?) to adversely affect musical enjoyment.
It doesn't quite fit as re-sampling PCM to a higher rate is absolutely NO different to oversampling. Oversampling is just guaranteed to be at regular mulitples whilst up-sampling can be applied to any rate. It's the same process essentially.
The only way out of either is a non-oversampling DAC and that is kind of against digital theory. In order to make that move away from digital theory work in away which shouldn't effect things, you need to go to high sample rates - so use high sample rate material or err, up-sample!
Not that I'd be a slave to digital theory - I'd twist and bend it for perceived better sound, like NOS does.
I've just bought a Edel Q5 chip (basically some upsampling with Anagram dithering and upsampling algos, though also some DSD to PCM capability just for compatability reasons) before they went out of production because I can interface it to a NOS DAC by my reckoning. Hoping I can find a way of switching it in and out ..
Hello Nat
I am a'vested interest' in two commercial studio's, DAD is one system that is use for the DSD recording side.
DAD information (http://www.digitalaudio.dk/)
An interesting white paper written by John S of Belcanto is worth a read.
Interesting read (http://www.belcantodesign.com/pdfs/Optimal_DSD_Playback.pdf)
We use a wide variety of dac's and adc's, I've even built a valve pre amp with adjustable harmonic distortion for those 'Phil Spector/White stripes style groups. and bands.
Pro tools gets a rough ride, it is purely down to the operators skill and judgement as much as the equipment, however all the studio is fed by dedicated mains cleaning equipment of a separate systems for each portion,recording booth, mixing station, and finial mastering. Rubidium clocks used to feed only six pieces in each chain.
The CD master as you put it Nat was a pure red book file stored on a flash drive, though I've yet to hear a commercially available quality streaming device convenience me of it's merits. But that's another story.
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