DSD played through USB of Direct Stream

Audio Components DACs
1

Hi,

I have a question on how DSD is passed from my computer to the Direct Stream dac through USB.

Will that be passes as DoP within 192 Khz or it would be expanded to 386 Khz ? If it is 192 khz will it loose any sound quality ?

Regards,

Sourav

2

DoP is a lossless wrapper for DSD - there’s no loss when DoP is used. All that’s done is to stick a 8 bit flag byte to each 16 bits of DSD to give something that looks like a low level 24 bit PCM sample.

Single rate DSD (DSD64) is wrapped in 24 / 176.4k PCM

Double rate DSD (DSD128) is wrapped in 24 / 352.8k PCM

3

Hi Ted,

Thanks for the input.

Does PS Audio’s USB input already support 352.8k for DSD 128 ?

Alternatively if I use a USB to SPDIF (Coax) converter (like Musical Fidelity V Link 192 or PeachTree Audio X1) between Mac Mini and PS Audio’s Coax input where the converter supports till 192 Khz, will that be able to support DSD 128 ?

Regards,

Sourav

4

Yes, the DS accepts both 352.8k PCM and DSD128 wrapped as 352.8k PCM.

S/PDIF, AES/EBU and TOSLink don’t have the bandwidth for 352.8k PCM (or DSD128) nor is PCM at 192k enough bandwidth for DSD128.