PC+SW+DSD direct VS Any DAC

[MaxwellsEq]

the ringing, always present and essentially due to the ADCs used for audio acquisition, can be resolved

Fact: it can not.

 

[Sokel]

Ok,the whole rant is about DSD direct or non DSD direct DACs if you didn't understand it till now.
Upstrean is irrelevant as something will do the conversion anyway,be it a PC,a nuclear factory,aliens,we don't care about,that happens outside the DAC,any DAC.
That's what he's saying.

Now,I suspect that he also thinks that the DAC itself (if it's not a direct DSD one) does something more to the already converted DSD.
Well,nope,I have also tested this,Deltawave is the best software in existence in the known universe and anyone can test and compare the I/O of a stream.

I was about to spend time to show other measurements but since that is the fact it's easy for all to do.

 

[widemediaphotography]

Oh the ringing we can't hear (and which is not ringing rather a result of bandwidth limiting). The efficiency of using a larger file to accomplish an inaudible difference. The efficiency of a complex device to accomplish what can be done in hardware made once and then we don't worry about. At a very minimum you need a different word in place of efficiency.

By the same principle we could say that amplifiers with a frequency response of 5-100KHz or headphones of 7-65KHz are useless, then we could talk about tweeters and the usefulness of filtering in DACs, which pushes a frequency above 100Khz, even for a PCM 16 /44.1 to do its job. And who assures you that good work should be done at 100 KHz and not at 1 GHz?
The possibility of being able to vary and test a large number of filters is to be considered a complication, so one wonders why modern DACs are full of menus with filters to apply. Of course, there is no one way to listen. Who certifies which is the right one?

 

[widemediaphotography]

I certainly won't be the one to establish the meaning of efficiency, but among the various ways of achieving a result, I would define as more efficient the one that does it more precisely, the one closest to reality, the one most quickly, etc. etc. There are many parameters that contribute to greater efficiency

 

[widemediaphotography]

Ok,the whole rant is about DSD direct or non DSD direct DACs if you didn't understand it till now.
Upstrean is irrelevant as something will do the conversion anyway,be it a PC,a nuclear factory,aliens,we don't care about,that happens outside the DAC,any DAC.
That's what he's saying.

Now,I suspect that he also thinks that the DAC itself (if it's not a direct DSD one) does something more to the already converted DSD.
Well,nope,I have also tested this,Deltawave is the best software in existence in the known universe and anyone can test and compare the I/O of a stream.

I was about to spend time to show other measurements but since that is the fact it's easy for all to do.

That's right, using a DSD-direct DAC is not the same as another DAC if the digital filtering of a PCM can be done separately more efficiently, i.e. with better and more precise filters, which require some computing power that currently DACs don't have it!

 

[pkane]

That's right, using a DSD-direct DAC is not the same as another DAC if the digital filtering of a PCM can be done separately more efficiently, i.e. with better and more precise filters, which require some computing power that currently DACs don't have it!

All that is great, but where’s the evidence that all this heroic filtering is necessary to make audio sound better? And, no, efficient isn’t the right term to use here, as it is certainly much less efficient to use an additional device, more power, and additional software, not to mention the complexity of setup, wiring and configuration.

 

[widemediaphotography]

All that is great, but where’s the evidence that all this heroic filtering is necessary to make audio sound better? And, no, efficient isn’t the right term to use here, as it is certainly much less efficient to use an additional device, more power, and additional software, not to mention the complexity of setup, wiring and configuration.

A filter that allows D-A conversion, more precise, more consistent with reality, faster, can only be defined as more efficient. There aren't many other words to define it better. Where did you understand that an added device and other wiring is needed? Everything you need are PC/minipc/Nuc - Player SW - DAC (what would be the added device?)

 

[pkane]

A filter that allows D-A conversion, more precise, more consistent with reality, faster, can only be defined as more efficient. There aren't many other words to define it better. Where did you understand that an added device and other wiring is needed? Everything you need are PC/minipc/Nuc - Player SW - DAC (what would be the added device?)

My DAC doesn't require a PC, or additional software to play music. I can stream audio to it, I can play music on my TT, or connect it to a NAS drive. No need for a PC to do conversion, upsampling, and real-time filtering -- all of that is already done by the DAC.

If you look at HQPlayer, you'll see what kind of hardware is required for this... "improved" filtering (latest, multi-core CPU, powerful GPU, good cooling, etc.) Not to mention that the recommended set up also includes yet another device, a NAA to be used with the PC that runs HQPlayer.

 

[NTK]

A filter that allows D-A conversion, more precise, more consistent with reality, faster, can only be defined as more efficient. There aren't many other words to define it better. Where did you understand that an added device and other wiring is needed? Everything you need are PC/minipc/Nuc - Player SW - DAC (what would be the added device?)

In engineering, efficiency is usually defined as the ratio of the return to the effort put in. For example, fuel efficiency is the distance a vehicle can travel (under a defined set of operating conditions) given a set amount of fuel.

In an audio (or any) system, when a certain device/component is no longer a critical limiting factor, any performance improvement will have no negative effect on the "efficiency".

[Correction] Since more effort is put into improving a non-critical subcomponent of the system with no realizable improvement in the overall system performance, efficiency is actually reduced.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I do wonder why dacs have so many filters. It's just marketing. A needless complication as is DSD itself.

 

[voodooless]

A) That a CPU is more efficient than any filtering implemented using circuitry is a truism that does not need to be proven

This can be proven to be wrong easily. A PC is a general purpose device. It’s not build to do audio processing. It’s build to basically be able to solve any computing task with relative efficiency. It’s build to do all things okay, not do one thing exceptionally well. It also runs a lot of additional code, needs a much bigger power supply, storage, video output, etc. It’s easily less efficient than a dedicated bit of hardware that is tailor made for the task.

 

[danadam]

I certainly won't be the one to establish the meaning of efficiency, but among the various ways of achieving a result, I would define as more efficient the one that does it more precisely, the one closest to reality, the one most quickly, etc. etc. There are many parameters that contribute to greater efficiency

I think generally accepted meaning of "more efficient" is:

• getting better results using the same resources
• or getting same results using less resources
• or generally when the increase in the quality of results is larger than the increase in the required resources

By your definition, getting twice as accurate results twice as fast but using 100x or 1000x more resources still counts as more efficient. To everyone else it actually means much less efficient.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

A) That a CPU is more efficient than any filtering implemented using circuitry is a truism that does not need to be proven.

This is clearly wrong. In thermodynamics, efficiency is the ratio of the totalized work output compared to the energy input. Your chain of PC processor converting PCM to DSD adds a heavy energy consumer into the chain that's not there when PCM is fed direct to the DAC (same work out). So:
1) you are less efficient from a thermodynamic point of view.
2) you are less efficient from a biological effort and time consumption perspective.

Your approach gets the same output for much more work. Less efficient.

 

[pkane]

I do wonder why dacs have so many filters. It's just marketing. A needless complication as is DSD itself.

There’s a case to be made for a decent minimum phase, low latency, filter in addition to a linear phase one. So possibly two filters.

 

[Blumlein 88]

There’s a case to be made for a decent minimum phase, low latency, filter in addition to a linear phase one. So possibly two filters.

Which is why most audio interfaces have minimum phase primarily for lower latency. So two filters, but you don't need that simply for playback.

 

[widemediaphotography]

My DAC doesn't require a PC, or additional software to play music. I can stream audio to it, I can play music on my TT, or connect it to a NAS drive. No need for a PC to do conversion, upsampling, and real-time filtering -- all of that is already done by the DAC.

If you look at HQPlayer, you'll see what kind of hardware is required for this... "improved" filtering (latest, multi-core CPU, powerful GPU, good cooling, etc.) Not to mention that the recommended set up also includes yet another device, a NAA to be used with the PC that runs HQPlayer.

A rather obsolete way of understanding a digital audio source, but it cannot be the rule. In 2024 a digital source is generally connected to a local library, or a NAS/File Server, to the Internet for online streaming services such as Quboz, Tidal, Amazon, etc. etc. and capable of burning files to physical media such as a CD/DVD/BD.
My one digital source does all this, freely and flexibly:

My Christmas Gift

Hello everyone, after about six months of second thoughts and changes I present to you my Christmas present. It's a network streamer, but I'd call it PC audio. For now only the first part is completed, the second part which is just a cabinet containing the DAC (smsl DO300) is still WIP, but from...

www.audiosciencereview.com

An NAA rendering is absolutely not necessary if the PC is close enough to the DAC, as the USB connection of the PC or endpoint will behave exactly the same, when instead the presence of an endpoint is mistaken for an improvement in audio quality.
An i7 155H nuc has much power for that.

 

[widemediaphotography]

I do wonder why dacs have so many filters. It's just marketing. A needless complication as is DSD itself.

Therefore one audio file acquired directly in native DSD would be a complication like a SACD or 4k video signal, instead of one obsolete SD video signal. Interesting...

 

[pkane]

A rather obsolete way of understanding a digital audio source, but it cannot be the rule. In 2024 a digital source is generally connected to a local library, or a NAS/File Server, to the Internet for online streaming services such as Quboz, Tidal, Amazon, etc. etc. and capable of burning files to physical media such as a CD/DVD/BD.
My one digital source does all this, freely and flexibly:

My Christmas Gift

Hello everyone, after about six months of second thoughts and changes I present to you my Christmas present. It's a network streamer, but I'd call it PC audio. For now only the first part is completed, the second part which is just a cabinet containing the DAC (smsl DO300) is still WIP, but from...

www.audiosciencereview.com

An NAA rendering is absolutely not necessary if the PC is close enough to the DAC, as the USB connection of the PC or endpoint will behave exactly the same, when instead the presence of an endpoint is mistaken for an improvement in audio quality.
An i7 155H nuc has much power for that.

Rather than argue about your definition of efficiency, the real question is what do you gain with all this extra processing? Where’s the evidence that this is really needed for listening to audio?

 

[widemediaphotography]

This is clearly wrong. In thermodynamics, efficiency is the ratio of the totalized work output compared to the energy input. Your chain of PC processor converting PCM to DSD adds a heavy energy consumer into the chain that's not there when PCM is fed direct to the DAC (same work out). So:
1) you are less efficient from a thermodynamic point of view.
2) you are less efficient from a biological effort and time consumption perspective.

Your approach gets the same output for much more work. Less efficient.

Use the word you think is most appropriate instead of "efficient", but the PC and the software do the job for us and you still haven't understood that if it is true that we input the audio flow into the same DAC, but this works in a completely different way, because it is specifically designed to accept DSD files without operating digital filtering on them. You don't have the same result at all. This is what we are discussing, nothing else!

 

[tmtomh]