Saidera
Senior Member
Without a DSP called DSEE HX AI, audio seems blended with collapsed soundstage. Basically smoother vocals and transient attack is what DSEE HX already had, whereas ‘height’ is by AI…
You could try out these audio players with some headphones and mp3s. It should bring out details - restore musical details and nuances - that random players can't achieve, and with DSEE HX, it should sound less digitally compressed and more open. In some cases mp3s will sound no different to its Hi-Res equivalent! I am an expert in DSEE HX and it has been Sony's consumer audio jewel since 2013. Ayataka Nishio who created DSD, along with Chinen Toru and others, together made DSEE HX in 2013. At first they used separate algorithms for each segment of songs but for ease of use, lower risk and greater stability they 'averaged' it out to a single one-size-fits-all. This was then tuned for different regions/countries and for different products. But it is mostly useless and makes no audible difference despite the extra audio data. Still, larger files naturally sound better due to the possibly faulty mechanism of most DAC chips' 8 times oversampling. Now DSEE HX AI is able to analyse the song in advance and apply a multitude of different algorithms to match each segment of a song. So it is closer to the original idea Nishio-san had but not yet perfect.
Instructions:
Software for DIY 'Harmonic and Bit Extension': wpup.html.xdomain.jp/
Also for 'DSEE HX' on Windows PCs : musiccenter.sony.net/
Click Add or Import files to add mp3s etc
Use WASAPI (or ASIO if you can) as the output setting to bypass the kernel mixer and achieve bit-perfect performance. Any PC Realtek HD audio should be ok but if you have a USB DAC it would be better. For WPUP use 32 bit to avoid white noise ( Realtek has that problem with 24 bit). For Sony's MCfPC it works without problems using their old 2013-2018 DSEE HX algorithm. It is not DSEE HX AI but we're still asking them to upgrade it.
More about DSEE HX AI
Since 2018, DSEE HX AI, now with variants: DSEE Extreme (AI for 192kHz for wireless headphones) and DSEE Ultimate (AI for both 32 bit and 192kHz first used in Xperia 1 Mk2) has improved upon the old DSEE HX a lot. DSEE HX AI is like those software algorithms that can convert black and white photos/films into Color photos/films but works on audio data instead. It's really almost like a very experienced sound engineer is remastering your music collection in real time.
What Sony has done is they ran simulation models of what is lost during the conversion from their studio master DSD/DXD files and the end result consumer PCM / AAC format that we usually listen to. Then they came out with this DSEE HX algorithm that can restore the audio back to near studio master quality. It can deliver a sound closest to what you experience when you attend a concert in real life.
The old DSEE HX achieves smoothing only.
DSEE HX AI Effect has two parts:
One is the soundstage part which adds a natural sounding soundstage height feel to your songs that has recorded soundstage information to begin with. It doesn't seem to add any additional soundstage to songs that are electronically synthesized(eurodance music).
The other part is the transient attack and smoothing part. Vocals sound smoother and Transient sound e.g. Cymbals, sounds more immediate and drums sound more impactful.
And this is how I find the DSEE HX effect varies with file resolution:
Soundstage height improvement shows up in all lossy, normal 16bit resolution and high resolution music. DSEE HX will alter how the soundstage sounds for as long as the original music content has some form of soundstage info.
As for the smoother vocals and transient attack. With higher resolution files, DSEE HX doesn't seem to add much of a noticable difference as the music is already smooth and dynamic to begin with. As for normal 16bit resolution and lossy files, that's where DSEE HX effect has the most noticeable improvement to the sound.
Sony engineers are beyond others, however their products are a lot different from the real prototypes - they are more like what you would call a “watered down” versions. Only Chinen Toru has the full DSEE HX AI that uses 100% CPU power to achieve the best quality. And he won't make it public as Sony guards their code strongly.
It's not any old SBC (see https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...led-248k-transparent-to-high-resolution.1441/ further down the first page) from decades back, but it's not audio magic come true either. Sony isn't achieving DSEE's potential, and ridiculous names like 'DSEE Ultimate / DSEE Extreme' thrown around now to get customers who are attracted to upscaling audio are simply disappointing. At the minimum, the real DSEE HX AI that uses 100% CPU power must be made available to all. This sort of thing was easy back in the day of Sony VAIO Preinstalled software. Anyone who knows SonicStage Mastering Studio and its WAVES/Sonnox plugins knows that the real DSEE HX AI that uses 100% CPU power made available to all is the only way forward. Not a low-energy weakling with an overblown name: 'DSEE Ultimate' on Xperias! It's wrongly named!
You could try out these audio players with some headphones and mp3s. It should bring out details - restore musical details and nuances - that random players can't achieve, and with DSEE HX, it should sound less digitally compressed and more open. In some cases mp3s will sound no different to its Hi-Res equivalent! I am an expert in DSEE HX and it has been Sony's consumer audio jewel since 2013. Ayataka Nishio who created DSD, along with Chinen Toru and others, together made DSEE HX in 2013. At first they used separate algorithms for each segment of songs but for ease of use, lower risk and greater stability they 'averaged' it out to a single one-size-fits-all. This was then tuned for different regions/countries and for different products. But it is mostly useless and makes no audible difference despite the extra audio data. Still, larger files naturally sound better due to the possibly faulty mechanism of most DAC chips' 8 times oversampling. Now DSEE HX AI is able to analyse the song in advance and apply a multitude of different algorithms to match each segment of a song. So it is closer to the original idea Nishio-san had but not yet perfect.
Instructions:
Software for DIY 'Harmonic and Bit Extension': wpup.html.xdomain.jp/
Also for 'DSEE HX' on Windows PCs : musiccenter.sony.net/
Click Add or Import files to add mp3s etc
Use WASAPI (or ASIO if you can) as the output setting to bypass the kernel mixer and achieve bit-perfect performance. Any PC Realtek HD audio should be ok but if you have a USB DAC it would be better. For WPUP use 32 bit to avoid white noise ( Realtek has that problem with 24 bit). For Sony's MCfPC it works without problems using their old 2013-2018 DSEE HX algorithm. It is not DSEE HX AI but we're still asking them to upgrade it.
More about DSEE HX AI
Since 2018, DSEE HX AI, now with variants: DSEE Extreme (AI for 192kHz for wireless headphones) and DSEE Ultimate (AI for both 32 bit and 192kHz first used in Xperia 1 Mk2) has improved upon the old DSEE HX a lot. DSEE HX AI is like those software algorithms that can convert black and white photos/films into Color photos/films but works on audio data instead. It's really almost like a very experienced sound engineer is remastering your music collection in real time.
What Sony has done is they ran simulation models of what is lost during the conversion from their studio master DSD/DXD files and the end result consumer PCM / AAC format that we usually listen to. Then they came out with this DSEE HX algorithm that can restore the audio back to near studio master quality. It can deliver a sound closest to what you experience when you attend a concert in real life.
The old DSEE HX achieves smoothing only.
DSEE HX AI Effect has two parts:
One is the soundstage part which adds a natural sounding soundstage height feel to your songs that has recorded soundstage information to begin with. It doesn't seem to add any additional soundstage to songs that are electronically synthesized(eurodance music).
The other part is the transient attack and smoothing part. Vocals sound smoother and Transient sound e.g. Cymbals, sounds more immediate and drums sound more impactful.
And this is how I find the DSEE HX effect varies with file resolution:
Soundstage height improvement shows up in all lossy, normal 16bit resolution and high resolution music. DSEE HX will alter how the soundstage sounds for as long as the original music content has some form of soundstage info.
As for the smoother vocals and transient attack. With higher resolution files, DSEE HX doesn't seem to add much of a noticable difference as the music is already smooth and dynamic to begin with. As for normal 16bit resolution and lossy files, that's where DSEE HX effect has the most noticeable improvement to the sound.
Sony engineers are beyond others, however their products are a lot different from the real prototypes - they are more like what you would call a “watered down” versions. Only Chinen Toru has the full DSEE HX AI that uses 100% CPU power to achieve the best quality. And he won't make it public as Sony guards their code strongly.
It's not any old SBC (see https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...led-248k-transparent-to-high-resolution.1441/ further down the first page) from decades back, but it's not audio magic come true either. Sony isn't achieving DSEE's potential, and ridiculous names like 'DSEE Ultimate / DSEE Extreme' thrown around now to get customers who are attracted to upscaling audio are simply disappointing. At the minimum, the real DSEE HX AI that uses 100% CPU power must be made available to all. This sort of thing was easy back in the day of Sony VAIO Preinstalled software. Anyone who knows SonicStage Mastering Studio and its WAVES/Sonnox plugins knows that the real DSEE HX AI that uses 100% CPU power made available to all is the only way forward. Not a low-energy weakling with an overblown name: 'DSEE Ultimate' on Xperias! It's wrongly named!