Does DSD sound better than PCM?

[Tin]

Thanks. I consider myself very objective and skeptical of pretty much anything without researching. It was more a curiosity, as well as that's how these "audiophile" recordings are actually released. Like I said, I like vinyl for reasons other than the sound quality. Although, there can be crap recordings on any medium. Good recordings sound good on everything pretty much. Thanks for the feedback - sorry for the double post.

No one should consider themselves as being objective. Really.

Your mood will change over the day, and so will your perception.
All music will sound better when combined with a nice glass of your favourite beverage.

The idea of science is that you are capable of removing the human component from the equation, whereas listening to music is exactly doing everything but that. You're introducing mood, expectation, history, taste, etc. etc. to the mix.

Apologies for being obnoxious about this, but unless you embrace your subjectivity, you cannot become objective.

 

[Frank Dernie]

All you say is quite correct and is the reason why the idea of evaluating equipment in the long term fails.
Some days my system sounds better to me than others. If I had made a change to the system in the mean time I would perhaps attribute the change in sound to the change in equipment, but I am too old and experienced to fall for that nowadays.
It is my view that since the only connection between my Hi-Fi components is electrical if there is no change to the electrical signal big enough to be audible listening to music any change I think I hear is expectation bias or imagined. It took me some years and a lot of tests to come to this conclusion but I am quite comfortable with it now, and have been for several years.
I understand that ABX testing is the only way to make objective evaluation from listening tests but don’t do it any more, since my system is good enough to give me great pleasure listening to the music I enjoy, so that is what I use it for...

 

[Deacon Blues]

No one should consider themselves as being objective. Really.

Your mood will change over the day, and so will your perception.
All music will sound better when combined with a nice glass of your favourite beverage.

The idea of science is that you are capable of removing the human component from the equation, whereas listening to music is exactly doing everything but that. You're introducing mood, expectation, history, taste, etc. etc. to the mix.

Apologies for being obnoxious about this, but unless you embrace your subjectivity, you cannot become objective.

What if I'm part robot. Then what you gotta say, eh? I'm from the future.

 

[w00ds153]

I had, at one point in time, an OPPO 980H universal player (played DVDs, CDs, SACDs, DVD-A, etc. etc.) and a lot of people used it as a digital transport because it could transport unconverted DSD via HDMI to a receiver (rather than converting automatically to PCM and then sending it out). I would toggle it back and forth and couldn't tell a difference, but it's kinda cool to have if you want the straight DSD out. In this case, you'd have to have a receiver that would accept DSD for it to work, but I read many reviews about the player before I got it and some people said they liked the sound of the converted PCM in their system better than the pure/uncut columbian DSD. I'm actually looking for a 980H if anyone has one for sale!

 

[Tin]

What if I'm part robot. Then what you gotta say, eh? I'm from the future.

Okay, let's approach this somewhat scientifically.

First, there is no real need for you to follow this thread as it is about 'sound', not digital streams. I would guess that processing DSD would be easier for you, as it is one-dimensional. Please do not try to process multi-channel SACDs without having the appropriate circuits.
If you are unable to process digital streams without using external DACs, I would urge you to return to the future, inform Skynet that you are flawed and request an update/upgrade.

The fact that you have been following this thread, without figuring out this by yourself, means you are flawed anyway. So again, return to the future, inform Skynet, and ask for an update/upgrade.

While you are at it, please also inform Skynet that you were unable to complete the simple task of killing Sarah Connor, and that you got stuck on an internet forum. Humans get often stuick as well, so Skynet should beware that despite being from the future, you are by no means more advanced than humans from this era.
Consider this a warning. We will evolve, and we will defeat Skynet.

 

[Veri]

Archi just wrote up a ton of DSD/PCM measurements based on HQPlayer upsampling so many people swear by.
http://archimago.blogspot.com/2019/02/measurements-look-at-hqplayer-325.html

There is no objective gain whatsoever. If people like their DSD512 upsampling, it is the 'euphonic distortion' they prefer. Although, an exception could be with DACs featuring chipset optimised for DSD. Holo spring, T+A DAC DSD come to mind. Outliers rather than the norm, though.

 

[pkane]

Archi just wrote up a ton of DSD/PCM measurements based on HQPlayer upsampling so many people swear by.
http://archimago.blogspot.com/2019/02/measurements-look-at-hqplayer-325.html

There is no objective gain whatsoever. If people like their DSD512 upsampling, it is the 'euphonic distortion' they prefer. Although, an exception could be with DACs featuring chipset optimised for DSD. Holo spring, T+A DAC DSD come to mind. Outliers rather than the norm, though.

I'd say that there is an objective difference between different HQP settings. Whether it's audible or not is highly debatable

One thing Archimago didn't measure is jitter, and I found that PCM vs DSD from HQPlayer also causes a differing amount of jitter at the output of a DAC, with higher-rate DSD causing less jitter than PCM. This probably has to do with the type of on-board processing the DAC does when passing DSD vs PCM streams. Again, very likely inaudible, but an objective difference nevertheless.

 

[Veri]

One thing Archimago didn't measure is jitter, and I found that PCM vs DSD from HQPlayer also causes a differing amount of jitter at the output of a DAC, with higher-rate DSD causing less jitter than PCM. This probably has to do with the type of on-board processing the DAC does when passing DSD vs PCM streams. Again, very likely inaudible, but an objective difference nevertheless.

That's a very good point. On computeraudiophile they tend to show really impressive DSD256/DSD512 jitter graphs to prove the upsampling benefit. I'm not sure if -135dB vs -155dB jitter is audible but there does seem to be a measurable difference (depending on the DAC I suppose).

 

[pkane]

That's a very good point. On computeraudiophile they tend to show really impressive DSD256/DSD512 jitter graphs to prove the upsampling benefit. I'm not sure if -135dB vs -155dB jitter is audible but there does seem to be a measurable difference (depending on the DAC I suppose).

The impressive DSD jitter results are mostly by Jussi (Miska) the author of HQPlayer.

He’s also the one showing charts up into the MHz range. His claim is that noise there might become audible with some equipment due to intermodulation into the audible band. I’m skeptical that this is the case, but don’t have the equipment to measure it.

 

[Veri]

The impressive DSD jitter results are mostly by Jussi (Miska) the author of HQPlayer.

He’s also the one showing charts up into the MHz range. His claim is that noise there might become audible with some equipment due to intermodulation into the audible band. I’m skeptical that this is the case, but don’t have the equipment to measure it.

Yes. https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...dac-r2r-dsd512/?do=findComment&comment=919371

 

[Tin]

I would personally worry more about the addition of a EM noisy PC to my setup than about the difference between 2 very high definition audio formats.
My 2 cents obviously.

 

[mansr]

The impressive DSD jitter results are mostly by Jussi (Miska) the author of HQPlayer.

He’s also the one showing charts up into the MHz range. His claim is that noise there might become audible with some equipment due to intermodulation into the audible band. I’m skeptical that this is the case, but don’t have the equipment to measure it.

If you're worried about noise in the MHz range, DSD is the last thing you should be using.

 

[Miska]

If you're worried about noise in the MHz range, DSD is the last thing you should be using.

You mean like this? This is "peak hold" output of Holo Audio Spring DAC running at DSD512, source is 0 - 22.05 kHz sweep from 44.1/32 file.

All SDM DACs have noise from the modulator output... Then it is the actual conversion section that is supposed to remove it.

 

[Veri]

Welcome @Miska cool to see you join in the discussion.

 

[Miska]

Archi just wrote up a ton of DSD/PCM measurements based on HQPlayer upsampling so many people swear by.
http://archimago.blogspot.com/2019/02/measurements-look-at-hqplayer-325.html

There is no objective gain whatsoever. If people like their DSD512 upsampling, it is the 'euphonic distortion' they prefer. Although, an exception could be with DACs featuring chipset optimised for DSD. Holo spring, T+A DAC DSD come to mind. Outliers rather than the norm, though.

Can you explain what is the "euphonic distortion"? Apart from some noise problem in your measurements (maybe digital decimation filter of the ADC or poor PCM conversion in the Oppo), I don't see any particular distortion.

My closest DAC to that one is Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital with dual ES9038K2M. And it performs quite nicely at DSD512 and doesn't have increased noise floor.

Here's S2D with 1k tone at 44.1k/32 PCM input:

And here same source file, but DSD512 input:

Result is quite a bit less harmonic series, but equal noise floor. Btw, in the lower one you can also see a little bit of USB packet ticking at multiples of 8 kHz.

Another example is RME ADI-2 Pro (uses AKM DAC chips), it behaves in similar way when running in DSD Direct mode. But if we look from another aspect is oversampling ratios...

ADI-2, same sweep as earlier, digital filter set to sharp, 44.1k input:

Since the digital filter runs at 8x rate and then rest over oversampling is done using sample-and-hold (aka zero-order-hold), there are images at multiples of 352.8 kHz digital filter output rate. Remember that these images have adjacent both negative and positive frequencies that are fully correlated with the source signal! So any intermodulation products they may create in later stages (like power amp) are also fully correlated. So if you hear it sounds like artificial hardness. Overall; images = incomplete reconstruction.

Then we run it at DSD256 instead:

Here you have a little bit of DSD noise hump left at much lower level than the images with PCM input. And this noise is uncorrelated. Intermodulation with uncorrelated noise -> noise. If you hear it, you hear hiss like analog tape or radio background.

Then if we look at iFi iDSD Micro Black Label (BB/TI DAC chip).

This time for example IMD plot, 44.1k PCM input:

Difference tone is at -100 dB and you can see starting noise hump and spurious tones of the on-chip modulator. And digital filter suppressing image of 20 kHz tone by about 80 dB.

For comparison the same source, but this time running at DSD512:

Now the 1 kHz difference tone is down to -120 dB. No digital images and no noise hump visible here. 8 kHz USB packet ticking has come up a bit, closer -120 dB though.


Just few examples with DAC chips from three different vendors.

 

[Miska]

Welcome @Miska cool to see you join in the discussion.

I'm glad to join, just have to be careful not to spend too much time on the various forums! It is easy to get carried away with all the interesting discussions.

 

[Miska]

I can also say that if you own for example Chord Mojo, then don't send DSD there. The internal DSD-to-PCM conversion aliases quite a bit of noise down, that is one of the devices where it is better to send 768k PCM there.

By the way, compared to lower input rates, ADI-2 also performs notably better when input is 705.6/768k instead, because it moves first image to that rate and it's next multiple one octave up too and the levels of course get much lower too. So either DSD256 or 16x PCM there.

 

[Veri]

I can also say that if you own for example Chord Mojo, then don't send DSD there. The internal DSD-to-PCM conversion aliases quite a bit of noise down, that is one of the devices where it is better to send 768k PCM there.

By the way, compared to lower input rates, ADI-2 also performs notably better when input is 705.6/768k instead, because it moves first image to that rate and it's next multiple one octave up too and the levels of course get much lower too. So either DSD256 or 16x PCM there.

Considering the other Chord products do the same DSD conversion I believe you can generalise that statement to 'if you own a Chord', just send PCM.
Also, I understood some of those words. I'll let the more technical peepz chime in.... imaging next octave up, nope you lost me

 

[Miska]

Considering the other Chord products do the same DSD conversion I believe you can generalise that statement to 'if you own a Chord', just send PCM.
Also, I understood some of those words. I'll let the more technical peepz chime in.... imaging next octave up, nope you lost me

I think picture tells it better! (hopefully not considered spamming posting too many)

Here's again the same test sweep, ADI-2 but now upsampled to 705.6k instead:

 

[svart-hvitt]

You mean like this? This is "peak hold" output of Holo Audio Spring DAC running at DSD512, source is 0 - 22.05 kHz sweep from 44.1/32 file.

View attachment 22239

All SDM DACs have noise from the modulator output... Then it is the actual conversion section that is supposed to remove it.

Welcome, Miska