Should DSD audio have been supported? POLL

[Sal1950]

NO.
I've never had any love for DSD at all..
It's been a PITA at every turn since the beginning.
You first needed special everything to play it.
You couldn't rip it.
It was useless for use with DRC, etc.
Disc capacity was about the same as DVD but SACD file sizes are huge, sooooo
Etc, etc, etc.
Then, it just doesn't sound any better than plain ole PCM.
Sorry lovers, no offense intended.

 

[Owen Smith]

There is no DTS on an SACD. It's DSD

Ah but there could be DTS on the CD layer, just like a DTS CD. It would be very unusual, but there's no technical reason why it couldn't be done.

 

[par4ken]

I have a handful of SACDs that carry three programs. MCH DTS, stereo DTS, and RBCD. I stumbled on the stereo DTS by accident, pressing the channel change button while playing MCH on mu Oppo 105. I haven’t dug into this, simply because the stereo SACD program is redundant to the RBCD program, and I default to ehr MCH.

DTS on a SACD?

 

[barfle]

There is no DTS on an SACD. It's DSD

Yep. Another case of CMA (confused my acronyms).

 

[barfle]

DTS on a SACD?

SA (See above). and fixed.

 

[Owen Smith]

SA (See above). and fixed.

Your posting looks no different to me.

If you meant some of your SACDs have MCH DSD, Stereo DSD (both on the SACD layer) and RBCD layer, that's quite common I have several SACDs with all three.

 

[barfle]

Your posting looks no different to me.

If you meant some of your SACDs have MCH DSD, Stereo DSD (both on the SACD layer) and RBCD layer, that's quite common I have several SACDs with all three.

You might have beat me to it. But it’s definitely different. And yes, that’s what I meant.

 

[Eclectic]

This was my take in 2017. I still feel that way.

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

DSD64, which is used on SACDs, is in all ways inferior to 24/96 PCM. The effective frequency response is smaller. The effective SNR is smaller. To top it all off, DSD is a non-linear audio codec, unlike PCM, which means the resolution is unevenly distributed, with a lower resolution the higher the frequency you go (which is why some people may equate it to having an analog texture, because it behaves in the same way).

The Blu-ray has more ubiquitous hardware support than the SACD layer of a Hybrid SACD, and it's certainly not OUR faults that it wasn't capitalized on properly (although I think it's getting there now).

 

[KG10]

DSD64, which is used on SACDs, is in all ways inferior to 24/96 PCM. The effective frequency response is smaller. The effective SNR is smaller. To top it all off, DSD is a non-linear audio codec, unlike PCM, which means the resolution is unevenly distributed, with a lower resolution the higher the frequency you go (which is why some people may equate it to having an analog texture, because it behaves in the same way).

The Blu-ray has more ubiquitous hardware support than the SACD layer of a Hybrid SACD, and it's certainly not OUR faults that it wasn't capitalized on properly (although I think it's getting there now).

Out of interest can you can hear the difference between DSD64 and 24/96?

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

out of interest can you can hear the difference between DSD64 and 24/96?

That's another important distinction! I haven't personally done any ABX blind testing myself, largely due to not having a native DSD DAC in the house.

However, I'm very hard pressed to find a difference with anything past 20-bit 48-kHz PCM with my very young ears...

The benefit of higher resolutions than 20-bit 48-kHz, at least to me, are to improve performance on lower-quality DACs, and to have higher-quality processing when making music. For a lot of transformative effects, the more data, the better it can morph the sound, but for actual delivery...I personally can't hear any differences on a good DAC.

However, I also believe in delivering the music in the exact format it was mixed or mastered in. If the source was 16/44.1, leave it that way! If the source is 24/192, leave it that way! For example, The Golden Bonana was mixed in 24/48, so it didn't make sense to upsample it to 96kHz. The current album being worked on is being done in 24/96 (because of more fancy effects), and I'll try my best to deliver it that way!

There are quite a number of releases upsampled from lower resolutions that I would have preferred were just left in lower resolutions. The nature of DSD on SACD forces most SACD releases to be upsampled or downsampled.

 

[KG10]

That's another important distinction! I haven't personally done any ABX blind testing myself, largely due to not having a native DSD DAC in the house.

However, I'm very hard pressed to find a difference with anything past 20-bit 48-kHz PCM with my very young ears...

The benefit of higher resolutions than 20-bit 48-kHz, at least to me, are to improve performance on lower-quality DACs, and to have higher-quality processing when making music. For a lot of transformative effects, the more data, the better it can morph the sound, but for actual delivery...I personally can't hear any differences on a good DAC.

However, I also believe in delivering the music in the exact format it was mixed or mastered in. If the source was 16/44.1, leave it that way! If the source is 24/192, leave it that way! For example, The Golden Bonana was mixed in 24/48, so it didn't make sense to upsample it to 96kHz. The current album being worked on is being done in 24/96 (because of more fancy effects), and I'll try my best to deliver it that way!

There are quite a number of releases upsampled from lower resolutions that I would have preferred were just left in lower resolutions. The nature of DSD on SACD forces most SACD releases to be upsampled or downsampled.

What dac do you currently use? I'm currently using a fiio k7 that supports up to dsd 256.

Also since you mentioned delivering the music in the exact format (which is a very good point and something I also wish many more companies would do) I have to ask whether 48k to 44.1k does a noticeable quality loss?

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

What dac do you currently use? I'm currently using a fiio k7 that supports up to dsd 256.

Also since you mentioned delivering the music in the exact format (which is a very good point and something I also wish many more companies would do) I have to ask whether 48k to 44.1k does a noticeable quality loss?

For 5.1 listening I have 24/192 Burr-Brown DACs...not the greatest, but I'd say they're decent enough. I haven't taken a look at any measurement comparisons.

48 vs 44.1 is entirely dependent on high you can hear, I think. 48kHz on older or less capable DACs will certainly give a bit more headroom to prevent any artifacting...I think the newer DACs automagically upsample to prevent distortions...

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

It's important to note on lower-quality DACs, the ultrasonic noise in DSD files could cause distortions in the audible range.

 

[KG10]

For 5.1 listening I have 24/192 Burr-Brown DACs...not the greatest, but I'd say they're decent enough. I haven't taken a look at any measurement comparisons.

48 vs 44.1 is entirely dependent on high you can hear, I think. 48kHz on older or less capable DACs will certainly give a bit more headroom to prevent any artifacting...I think the newer DACs automagically upsample to prevent distortions...

I think my Yamaha Htr-2071 has those dacs and even supports DSD from hdmi.

But I have no idea if it outputs that naively lol.

ps on my question I actually meant to ask if the 48k to 44.1 conversion that most cds go though does a noticeable quality loss?

 

[KG10]

DSD64, which is used on SACDs, is in all ways inferior to 24/96 PCM. The effective frequency response is smaller. The effective SNR is smaller. To top it all off, DSD is a non-linear audio codec, unlike PCM, which means the resolution is unevenly distributed, with a lower resolution the higher the frequency you go (which is why some people may equate it to having an analog texture, because it behaves in the same way).

The Blu-ray has more ubiquitous hardware support than the SACD layer of a Hybrid SACD, and it's certainly not OUR faults that it wasn't capitalized on properly (although I think it's getting there now).

Also by that logic if DSD32 was ever a thing (which would be the worst of worst worlds) would it be worse or equivalent to cd audio?

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

Also by that logic if DSD32 was ever a thing (which would be the worst of worst worlds) would it be worse or equivalent to cd audio?

You know what I can actually encode DSD32 files let me do some tests and let you know.

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

I think my Yamaha Htr-2071 has those dacs and even supports DSD from hdmi.

But I have no idea if it outputs that naively lol.

ps on my question I actually meant to ask if the 48k to 44.1 conversion that most cds go though does a noticeable quality loss?

If the DACs don't natively support DSD, the Yamaha converts it to PCM internally. It does PCM conversion anyway if you're not running in Pure Direct mode.

If the software used for the CD preperation does the downsampling properly at a high quality, there should be no noticeable quality loss really. A lot of softwares may introduce artifacts and stuff. I remember there being a site that compared all the different SRCs...

 

[mandrix]

For music not DSD recorded, then you are back to pcm at the beginning.
If starting with pcm, it has to be upsampled, then converted to dff. Then for mch music it has to be losslessy compressed to DST.
The beginning, with pcm, is not 24/96, or even 24/48. it's 16/44 IIRC. Then it's upsampled and converted to DSD.

The goal (I suppose) of Sony/Phillips was to put this format on a standard size CD; i.e. the possibility of 80 minutes of music on one disc.

 

[mandrix]

To put a finer tooth on it, I have authored a few SACD's. I used Weiss-Saracon to do the upsampling and conversion. Then I use Phillips DST encoder to losslessly encode to a smaller file size, much like one would use mlp for lossless encoding for DVDA.
I used Phillips SuperAuthor to author the discs.
I have no idea what the "big dogs" do but that is what I have done. Addendum: Phillips SuperAuthor was a forerunner that eventually got absorbed into another program, IIRC. From what @Mr. Afternoon has said, Pyramix is the more generally accepted modern tool for authoring SACD. But that's more semantics, as SACD authoring is not very complex, at least on an "enthusiast" level.