DSD is better than PCM!

[Galliardist]

My primary disc player and DAC happens to be a Marantz SA-10, so I'm well and truly in the DSD game (the player upsamples everything to high resolution one bit and then uses a filter to convert to audio, so no DAC chip). I'm happy to confirm that the sound is excellent - but there is absolutely nothing special or different compared to any other decent D/S design I've had access to.

Things like clicking and differences in switching time have prevented me blind testing some of the options. I'm not going to post anything subjective.

I also own some SACDs and a couple of DSD files. Again, no magic in playing anything back. Some of the mastering is different.

 

[Galliardist]

Exactly, ripped off ... afaic DSD was dead in the water on startup. At least with new vinyl, even if the sq is compromised, you often get a nice tangible package for $15 more, maybe a nice booklet or poster. The kids seem to luv that stuff. Younger visitors never rummage thro my cds, never look at my computer audio playlists ... but they always flip through my lps with keen interest. Never understood DSD remasters of classic albums ... what exactly did those DSDs offer ...

Some of the Japanese SHM SACDs are "claimed" to be straight copies of original masters, and so can be the only way of getting your hands on such things if true. Philosophically having access to the master could be regarded as a good thing, but the couple I have vary from decent to garbage in quality.

SACD would also be a common and standard way of selling "high resolution" copies of recordings made at high resolution PCM (not sure of the value of that either) and surround recordings (some value there if you use surround), so there are reasons for them.

 

[Galliardist]

Speaking from experience here, there is no DAW - not one - that works in PDM audio. It's completely unworkable, you can't edit or process the audio. So if it's touched a DAW, it's been PCM.

I believe there are some systems that convert short parts of one bit files to PCM for spot editing and write back the results, meaning that most of a file can still be left alone.

Does it matter?

 

[TBone]

Some of the Japanese SHM SACDs are straight copies of original masters, and so can be the only way of getting your hands on such things. Philosophically having access to the master could be regarded as a good thing, but the couple I have vary from decent to garbage in quality.

SACD would also be a common and standard way of selling "high resolution" copies of recordings made at high resolution PCM (not sure of the value of that either) and surround recordings (some value there if you use surround), so there are reasons for them.

Which ones in particular ... bc in my travels, SHM remastering=+compression.

 

[Galliardist]

Which ones in particular ... bc in my travels, SHM remastering=+compression.

I've edited my response to "claimed" after going back. The one that sticks in my mind is "The Original Soundtrack" by 10cc, for which I read that claim. The quality of that disc, subjectively, is - shall we say - sub par.

SHM CDs are +compression. My understanding is that the SACDs aren't. I may not be correct on that.

 

[TBone]

I've edited my response to "claimed" after going back. The one that sticks in my mind is "The Original Soundtrack" by 10cc, for which I read that claim. The quality of that disc, subjectively, is - shall we say - sub par.

SHM CDs are +compression. My understanding is that the SACDs aren't. I may not be correct on that.

cant remember hearing a DSD SHM rec. ... made an assumption since i own maybe 1 or 2 SHM CDs if that, and never play em ... for good reason, they more than generally sound loud and ... ughh.

 

[jensgk]

According to Wikipedia[1] some of the most popular studio/audio editing software tools do not work with DSD. And some instead work with DXD, which is 24bit/352.5kHz PCM.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Stream_Digital#:~:text=Because it has,some SADiE systems.

 

[pinpoint_oxford]

I own several SACDs, mostly from MoFi and Blue Note. They are amazing, not due to DSD but due to mastering, I believe. Regardless of what you think of DSD, a well mastered album on a high-resolution physical medium is a nice thing to have.

That said, I do have a few albums from Octave Records and Blue Coast, which specialize in DSD recording and mastering that sound absolutely wonderful. I think there is some truth to DSD sounding better than PCM ceteris paribus, but alas, that often is hard to achive given DSD's difficulty in mastering.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I own several SACDs, mostly from MoFi and Blue Note. They are amazing, not due to DSD but due to mastering, I believe. Regardless of what you think of DSD, a well mastered album on a high-resolution physical medium is a nice thing to have.

That said, I do have a few albums from Octave Records and Blue Coast, which specialize in DSD recording and mastering that sound absolutely wonderful. I think there is some truth to DSD sounding better than PCM ceteris paribus, but alas, that often is hard to achive given DSD's difficulty in mastering.

I think nearly all Blue Coast recordings go thru a reel tape stage during mixing.

 

[pinpoint_oxford]

I think nearly all Blue Coast recordings go thru a reel tape stage during mixing.

That makes sense given DSD's difficulty to master/mix. DAD is an interesting method to deal with that problem, but allows for perfect digital capture for future mixing.

 

[kongwee]

SACD and DVD-A were developed to transfer analog master tape to digital while no one is happy about preserving them using CD. Of course at the same time, making it feasible for the mass to buy. Now it is quite irrelevant as you can preserve them in cheap harddisk with more than 24 bit 196kHz resolution. I don't mind high res format as my audio interface is set 26bit 96kHz as the highest resolution.

 

[elvisizer]

I don't know if I got my knowledge right but If I recall, when you take a PCM source and convert it to DSD, its adds noise.

DSD as a format intrinsically produces a ton of ultrasonic noise outside of the human auditory range, that's probably what you're thinking of.

PS audio, they're just always wrong about everything. I love SACDs, I have a ton of the shm-sacd's . . . but it's very very hard to pick DSD vs PCM of 96-192khz, I can't reliably distinguish between them
as others have said, often the reason to buy an SACD is that it has a different mastering on it. And multichannel! lots of old quad recordings have been re-released on sacd along with new 5.1 mixes of other things.

 

[pinpoint_oxford]

And multichannel!

Good point! I do have a live SACD recording that was direct to disc in multichannel that is a ton of fun to listen to.

 

[TBone]

I think nearly all Blue Coast recordings go thru a reel tape stage during mixing.

hi ... just an aside ... i have fallen in luv with computer controlled audio (old macbook, toslink out, sony pro dac/adc.) mostly bc i can play anything i want near instantly ... so two weekends ago i mixed up my "rip" playlist, and without knowing so, cued was your (iirc) live recorded church transfer u supplied me long ago. my listening mate and i were in wonder trying to figure out what the geez we were hearing, it would not have mattered if it didnt sound wonderful, it did, leaving us confused but wanting more ... thx.

I was also provided some fremer rips using some mega SAT tonearm and diamond cantilever cart, mega expensive stuff, and not being too impressed with his prior rips plus the laws of diminishing returns et all, didnt expect much ... but they were indeed very nice dynamic sounding rips ... and like any great rip ... nobody has identified it as a v.rip on playback to date ...

 

[Audioexcellent]

I


I think he was being facetious...

Exactly, ripped off ... afaic DSD was dead in the water on startup. At least with new vinyl, even if the sq is compromised, you often get a nice tangible package for $15 more, maybe a nice booklet or poster. The kids seem to luv that stuff. Younger visitors never rummage thro my cds, never look at my computer audio playlists ... but they always flip through my lps with keen interest. Never understood DSD remasters of classic albums ... what exactly did those DSDs offer ...

A higher sampling rate. If done properly. Not trying to start a argument but, take a look at a system Marantz had developed in 2016 to up-convert pcm to dsd. It doesn’t add anything that’s not already there other than to sample existing audio signals more times while eliminating related distortion that had been a problem. I think their technique is called “MMM-Stream”up-sampling to DSD and filtering.

 

[TBone]

A higher sampling rate. If done properly. Not trying to start a argument but, take a look at a system Marantz had developed in 2016 to up-convert pcm to dsd. It doesn’t add anything that’s not already there other than to sample existing audio signals more times while eliminating related distortion that had been a problem. I think their technique is called “MMM-Stream”up-sampling to DSD and filtering.

Well ... imo ... pcm upsampling should suffice ... we did not need DSD.

The best hi rez remaster ive heard of any classic album is ken scotts ziggy in pcm. It destroys any orig or remaster cd/lp by a healthy margin and measures much higher DR which explains it's appeal. It absolutely kills in my system.

supposedly it was taken from an old unused MC tape ... but other than ziggy ... no other classic recording in any hirez format has met my fancy.

 

[Audioexcellent]

Well ... imo ... pcm upsampling should suffice ... we did not need DSD.

The best hi rez remaster ive heard of any classic album is ken scotts ziggy in pcm. It destroys any orig or remaster cd/lp by a healthy margin and measures much higher DR which explains it's appeal. It absolutely kills in my system.

supposedly it was taken from an old unused MC tape ... but other than ziggy ... no other classic recording in any hirez format has met my fancy.

I’m constantly replacing discs for my system be it cd, sacd or hi-rz dvds.

 

[Audioexcellent]

I’m constantly replacing discs for my system be it cd, sacd or hi-rz dvds. Lots of fun.

 

[ThatM1key]

Another company that converts CDs to SACDs is Sony Hong Kong. Famous examples would be "80's Hits" & "80's Love". Ironically they cost as much as MSFL SACDs on the market. I think they cost that much is because of the "Sony Tax" (Average people see the Sony name and demand a high price because they think its quality, despite Sony making garbage stuff at times). I remember my local shop selling some tape decks, the cheaply made piano-key analog-counter Dolby B Sony tape deck costed more than the full logic digital-counter Dolby C Pioneer tape deck, both in the same condition btw.

In terms of upscaling, I use DSEE HX for lossy files, I know people that throw lossless files at it . Is it just adding fake bits? Sure but some MP3's sound really really terrible despite having a good bitrate. I also don't have to worry if I'm "Not listening to the way it was meant to be heard" because the MP3s already destroyed that chance.

 

[Blumlein 88]

hi ... just an aside ... i have fallen in luv with computer controlled audio (old macbook, toslink out, sony pro dac/adc.) mostly bc i can play anything i want near instantly ... so two weekends ago i mixed up my "rip" playlist, and without knowing so, cued was your (iirc) live recorded church transfer u supplied me long ago. my listening mate and i were in wonder trying to figure out what the geez we were hearing, it would not have mattered if it didnt sound wonderful, it did, leaving us confused but wanting more ... thx.

I was also provided some fremer rips using some mega SAT tonearm and diamond cantilever cart, mega expensive stuff, and not being too impressed with his prior rips plus the laws of diminishing returns et all, didnt expect much ... but they were indeed very nice dynamic sounding rips ... and like any great rip ... nobody has identified it as a v.rip on playback to date ...

Yes, I forgot about that. I don't have the rights generally distribute those, but I got the okay for a sample to you and a couple other people. Thanks for the kind comments.

I forget which miking I used, but whatever it was it was a straight recording with nothing more than level adjustment. That may have been when I set up a few different mikings to compare them and recorded a practice session. Those were a pair of either $150/each microphones (Avantone CK-1s) or $169 each microphones (CAD M179's) and a $350 interface (Focusrite Forte). I have some much nicer microphones now. Anyway, glad you enjoyed it.