DSD - The future?

[Jimbo]

Had a very interesting experience last night courtesy of a friends very high end system listening to music in multiple digital formats on the fly as it were. We are talking ripped CD, 24 bit and DSD. I personally would have liked vinyl in the mix as well as a reference, however it was not set up as an alternative.

In particular we listened to Diana Krall (The girl in the other room) and Dire Straits ( Love over Gold).

The listening was done via a Chord DSX1000 Reference Network Player and a Chord SPM 1200MK11 Stereo Power amp into KEF Blades. I can tell you this is not a system for the faint hearted, I have heard it many times and it is extremely revealing and can produce monumental dynamics with a magnificent sound stage and a scale only a few of us could hope for? A NAS storage was fed to the Chord Network Player via some Cat7 ethernet cables and all controlled via some nice software via ipad mini.

We used the track Temptation from the Diana Krall album to start with and listened at 16 bit/ 24 bit and DSD version. For me the absolute truth was revealed like night and day between the formats as the KEF Blades are ruthless in their honesty and the DAC in the Chord Player is up there with the best.

First up ripped CD - very good, surprisingly so compared to the other digital formats but switching to 24bit showed its limitations. The 24bit recording had more air and ambience and much greater definition across the recording. Each aspect of the recording could be picked out much more clearly with lots more detail especially around instruments. Very good indeed and difficult to go back to 16 bit. Next up DSD. I was expecting great things considering all the hype around the format but quite simply it did not deliver. I found it slightly dull and lifeless compared to the 24 bit and preferred the 16bit CD rip. DSD did sound quite natural but lost the sparkling detail and ambience of the 24 bit recording.


Dire straits - Private Investigations was the next track we chose to analyse the digital formats and again we had 16bit rip/ 24bit and DSD.

To save a long explanation we found exactly the same differences between the formats with the 24 bit recording sounding glorious. The detail and bite on the acoustic guitar strings was exceptionally well revealed via 24bit, blurred in 16bit and DSD - fail! Just did not measure up. The ambience was also significantly better via 24bit. Again all the instruments had so much more detail and ambient information around them.

One of the conclusions I personally came to other than DSD was a little hyped and unfulfilling, was that DAC,s are not only the key to unlocking the potential of digital audio their development in the future will ultimately bring digital audio to the final frontier - It may one day sound as natural and as real as the best vinyl/analogue systems.

[Stratmangler]

The comparison between PCM and DSD is not necessarily a fair one.
In order to have that particular network player play DSD at all requires a software update.
I have a hunch that the software update allows the player to transcode DSD on the fly to PCM, which in turn means that you may not have been comparing one format against the other in native playback.

Playing back PCM at its native resolution is fairly trivial.
Playing back DSD converted on the fly to PCM requires a lot more processing overhead, which may account for some audible differences.

[Firebottle]

Interesting James, I have heard some DSD tracks that are mesmerising, mind you that was from a Lampizator Golden Gate DAC.

Can't dispute your findings though with direct comparison, I haven't done that.

As you know I am with you in still preferring a good vinyl setup

[Jimbo]

The comparison between PCM and DSD is not necessarily a fair one.
In order to have that particular network player play DSD at all requires a software update.
I have a hunch that the software update allows the player to transcode DSD on the fly to PCM, which in turn means that you may not have been comparing one format against the other in native playback.

Playing back PCM at its native resolution is fairly trivial.
Playing back DSD converted on the fly to PCM requires a lot more processing overhead, which may account for some audible differences.

Hi Chris, knowing the person who owns this network player I am sure it has had the latest DSD software update.

Regarding my findings listening to the 3 formats I can only report as I find.

I will probably be able to repeat this exercise with a different Network player soon which will be one of the most advanced available. Maybe DSD will perform a little better?

[Stratmangler]

I'm not defending DSD, just pointing out that the playing field might not be as easily defined as might be thought at first.
The biggy to have to contend with is DSD being just one bit at a time at a frequency of around 2.8MHz, which is a multitude of times faster than the fastest commercially available PCM material at 192KHz .

[lurcher]

DSD being just one bit at a time at a frequency of around 2.8MHz, which is a multitude of times faster than the fastest commercially available PCM material at 192KHz .

192000 * 2 * 24 = 9216000 = 9.216Mhz

44100 * 2 * 16 = 1.4Mhz

So DSD is a higher data rate than red book, but less than 96/24

96000 * 2 * 24 = 4.6Mhz

DSD uses noise shaping to get the data rate down from what would be required for simple delta sigma encoding of 96/24 while retaining much of the performance.

[Stratmangler]

192000 * 2 * 24 = 9216000 = 9.216Mhz

44100 * 2 * 16 = 1.4Mhz

So DSD is a higher data rate than red book, but less than 96/24

96000 * 2 * 24 = 4.6Mhz

DSD uses noise shaping to get the data rate down from what would be required for simple delta sigma encoding of 96/24 while retaining much of the performance.

I meant that just the clocking speed is waaayyyy faster with DSD.
The data rate equates to 24/88.2, going off the options for playback using Foobar.

[lurcher]

I meant that just the clocking speed is waaayyyy faster with DSD.
The data rate equates to 24/88.2, going off the options for playback using Foobar.

Yes, but as I was pointing out, thats only true if you are talking about the word clock. The bit clock for any serial PCM stream (i2s, S/pdiff toslink) is higher as the data is sent a bit at a time as well.

24 * 88200 * 2 = 4.2Mhz, foobar is probably translating DSD into that rate of PCM.

But it depends what you mean by data rate I guess.

[Stratmangler]

Yes, but as I was pointing out, thats only true if you are talking about the word clock. The bit clock for any serial PCM stream (i2s, S/pdiff toslink) is higher as the data is sent a bit at a time as well.

24 * 88200 * 2 = 4.2Mhz, foobar is probably translating DSD into that rate of PCM.

But it depends what you mean by data rate I guess.

I was just taking an overly simplistic view and referring to the word clock - that'll teach me
The figures shown in Foobar are DSD to PCM conversions.

[Macca]

I'd suggest that if DSD sounded so poor then there was something badly wrong somewhere.

DACS are advancing and getting better and better? It's an oft heard cry but a listen to my 1989 Technics SLP1200 tells me that isn't the case. Forget the whizz-bang pyrotechnics of hi-rez number crunching - it is the implementation that matters most.