Linn's view on DSD (beating a dead horse)

frode said: This is correct. I thought it would be of interest to 'us'

It is. :-bd

(The only DSD dead horse is pointing out the PWT/PWD does not currently handle DSD.)

When SACD and DVD-A were competing head to head there was a good deal of discussion of which was better and why, but the majority of the attention was on recording selection and whether high-resolution was better/worth the investment/etc.

My guess is DSD is back in the limelight as an option as high-resolution PCM is no longer tied to a silver disk and can now be reasonably downloaded and stored. Both bandwidth and storage is affordable now.

Linn has a good point regarding multi-bit processors. DSD has long been recorded and played back with multi-bit ADCs and DACs - single bit is gone.

frode said: DSD from my Lumin sounds superior to hirez PCM.

I wish I had the ability to transcode PCM to DSD (I can record in DSD the analog output of a PCM DAC but this seems a flawed test.). I do not have any way to directly compare PCM to DSD to arrive at a final opinion.

One thing I would like to decide is whether I like DSD DACs better. With rare exception, DSD is encoded to PCM in the production process anyway, thereby removing any advantage may have had at some point. I suspect the difference people hear is due to the handling of DSD by the DAC, not because something different has been captured originally. But I could easily be entirely wrong. :)

I wonder where we will be five years from now . . .
Paul McGowan said: Their gapless criticism is certainly valid, not sure about the filters . . .

I find the poster is overreaching with the filter criticism. To my knowledge, PSA has never claimed anything other than choosing filters is readily available - which is true. Other DAC and CDP manufacturers state the same, although typically do not have as many filter choices. :)

I have not seen anything from PSA which claims the filters were created by PSA. Perhaps I missed it.

Paul McGowan said: Their gapless criticism is certainly valid, not sure about the filters . . .

I find the poster is overreaching with the filter criticism. To my knowledge, PSA has never claimed anything other than choosing filters is readily available - which is true. Other DAC and CDP manufacturers state the same, although typically do not have as many filter choices. :)

I have not seen anything from PSA which claims the filters were created by PSA. Perhaps I missed it.



I think the critisism is that PS Audio did not point out in bold that:
NB! NB! NB!
THESE FILTERS COME FOR FREE WITHOUT ANY EFFORTS DONE ON OUR SIDE!!!

I have not seen any other manufacturer (e.g. DCS) stating anything along these lines.
The way things are written (deliberately?) easily makes an impression that this is a PSA invention, but this has not been claimed by PSA according to my knowledge at least. So it boils down to how you read it.


Are there filters not provided on the dac chip and it is up to the MFG to use them if they choose to do so?

frode said: NB! NB! NB!
THESE FILTERS COME FOR FREE WITHOUT ANY EFFORTS DONE ON OUR SIDE!!!

Oh, this is good! :-))


Gordon said: Are there filters not provided on the dac chip and it is up to the MFG to use them if they choose to do so?

Yes. And I, for one, think it is neat PSA provides the end user with access.

Is it possible that the reported audible superiority of DSD is something like that of analog: a kind of euphonic distortion? If not, why isn’t it lost when DSD is converted to PCM or analog for editing and then converted again?



This honestly puzzles me.

mike48 said: . . . why isn't it lost when DSD is converted to PCM or analog for editing . . .

This is indeed the question.

It is particularly intriguing given DSD has the equivalent of 20-bit dynamic resolution and less than 96kHz sampling rate.

My theory is that DSD DACs somehow provide a different sound, perhaps the filtering.