I am not having any trouble finding many, many available DSD256 titles. Depends on where you look. Record labels themselves don’t seem interested…
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Where do you get your DSD256 titles?
Reconstructing FLAC is always perfect. Decompressing is easy compared to compressing and it is a bit perfect process. When streaming from a server to an endpoint over Ethernet, there is no reason the sound would be different between a losslessly compressed file and an uncompressed file. The same exact data is sent to the endpoint.
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Whether you stream or hard wire, the compressed FLAC remains bit perfect all the way to the DAC. It’s in the process when the DAC reconstructs the compressed bits that can affect the sound. The bits are still perfect after the reconstruction, but I hear a slight difference in my system after reconstruction. It is very close though and most will not hear much of a difference if any depending on their system.
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The DAC does not reconstruct the compressed data. The DAC is sent PCM…
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I have emailed ProStudioMasters asking them to fix their filters. If you choose DSD, you then can’t sort by genre. They responed with something along the line of “that’s a great idea, we’ll pass that on to our devs”. I can’t possibly be the first person who would want that functionality.
Then what is reconstructing the bits? Isn’t it the software in the DAC? Whatever it is, it must be adding some artifacts as I can hear a slight loss of presence with the signal.
High Definition Tape Transfers and Native DSD also has a lot of really good DSD256s.
Yeah I know about Native DSD. But to be honest, if you’re into classical, there aren’t that many choices.
Anyone compared the HDTT remastered DSD256 sound and the Pristine Classical remastered 24/96 or 24/192 sound of the same album? Pristine has some specialized processes with which to remove pops etc in the original master, so…
Sorry but pro studio masters was a big meh. I went through the 60 most recently added classical albums (I’m on a plane that’s all I could do before taking off) and I found one DSD album. The rest are 24/96 flac or MQA mostly
This is what I mean.
The player software. In my case, Roon decompresses the FLAC to PCM and then sends it to HQPlayer Desktop which sends it over Ethernet to an ultraRendu running HQPlayer NAA software and then on to the DAC.
The same exact PCM bits are sent to the ultraRendu whether the source file is a compressed FLAC or an uncompressed WAV file. There are no artifacts added.
Sorry, these specialized processes tend to ruin masters, not make them better. Noise reduction has been used by mastering engineers in the past and those masterings are generally not liked.
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Then my player software Lumin is not doing as good a job, although the bits are exactly the same, it does not sound exactly the same as AIFF to me. Must be getting too old, my hearing is not so good anymore.
Yeah I get it. But have you heard them before you decide they ruin them?
It pleases me greatly. Sad for you.
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I use ProStudioMazters a lot myself. Although they don’t have that many DSD256s, they do have plenty of music I like that’s are not available on DSD256. And the music sounds fabulous never the less even at the lower rate.
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I would love to use pro studio masters. But as I said, for the kind of music I listen to mostly—classical and jazz—they had one DSD album (in any bit rate) in the most recently added 60 classical albums and ZERO in the last 20 of jazz!
My main point is that as much as we are debating the merits of DSD256 gear, for me it’s somewhat academic if the software isn’t available in the format.
That is true of any music sites you go to. There are not that many newly added DSD256 recordings, but if you press the DSD icon in the home page of ProStudioMasters, there are pages after pages of many jazz and classical DSD256 files. I bought many of my Bill Evans and other jazz and some classical DSD256’s from this site.
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