DC offset correction in recordings?

[Martini]

Hi all,
I use Audirvana Origin on a Mac for my music library organization and playback. It has a feature called Audio Scan in which you can scan individual tracks and it provides resolution verification and can also note the number of DC offset errors found. Now, I don't know how good a feature this is, but if it is accurate then I've stumbled across some tracks/albums that have issues. Since it is track by track, it would take way too much time to scan my entire library, so what I've found is solely by random sampling.

Questions are:

• Is this a concern?
• Is there way to correct this in post production recordings? I do not see anything in available in Audirvana, nor anything noted in dBPowerAmp.
• And if so, is there a program that can batch check the integrity of a music library? Maybe including inter-sampled overs?

Thanks!

 

[somebodyelse]

Whether it's a concern depends on your playback chain - whether it passes DC all the way to the output, and how it reacts if it encounters DC in the signal. It was recently noted with one of the Topping DAC/headphone amps (DX5 II?) that certain tracks known to have DC offset in the recording would trigger its DC protection. Other components may be AC coupled (so can't pass DC) or have a DC servo to remove offset.

That comes on to the next part - correcting it. Some systems do it inherently. If you need to correct it in the files then you can use a high pass filter, or a DC removal function if your audio editor includes one. I think you can do everything necessary with sox - it's a command line audio processing utility so ideal for use in a batch file.

 

[Martini]

Whether it's a concern depends on your playback chain - whether it passes DC all the way to the output, and how it reacts if it encounters DC in the signal. It was recently noted with one of the Topping DAC/headphone amps (DX5 II?) that certain tracks known to have DC offset in the recording would trigger its DC protection. Other components may be AC coupled (so can't pass DC) or have a DC servo to remove offset.

That comes on to the next part - correcting it. Some systems do it inherently. If you need to correct it in the files then you can use a high pass filter, or a DC removal function if your audio editor includes one. I think you can do everything necessary with sox - it's a command line audio processing utility so ideal for use in a batch file.

Thanks. I'll have Genelec SAM system, stereo monitors & sub. It is fairly new to me, moving from Benchmark electronics to these, so I'm not sure how/if they protect from source based DC.

Music file wise, I may have used the term "post production" improperly. By "post" I meant purchased music, either ripped-CDs or Downloads. So correction would likely need software based, either through resampling with add-in encoder via dBPowerAmp (or other) or through Audirvana. Audirvana does provide some file controls, using SoX or r8brain, but I believe primarily for up/down sampling, which I don't employ.

 

[somebodyelse]

Thanks. I'll have Genelec SAM system, stereo monitors & sub. It is fairly new to me, moving from Benchmark electronics to these, so I'm not sure how/if they protect from source based DC.

In that case the stereo monitors will certainly be high passed to cross with the sub, and the sub is very likely to have a high pass to remove content at lower frequencies than it can handle. The high pass will remove the DC offset.

 

[Martini]

Thanks, good to know. Source-wise I do find it ironic that the majority of albums/track that were indicated to have DC issues were produced by Reference Recordings.