Its silly question time. I have a DS Snr with Bridge II, music is on a nas and is controlled via Roon the input on the DS Snr is via the Bridge II. I understand and I quote “the DS Snr converts any digital input format, such as PCM or DSD to a pure DSD stream and outputs near-perfect analog directly to the power amplifier or preamplifier.” if that is the case why do my cd’s sound different, surely if everything is converted then the quality of the output should be the same irrespective of the quality of the input. i.e. MP3 files should sound the same as Flac files. or am I missing something.
The DS cannot make the output better than the input. It can only take the input file and make it sound its best. The MP3 is missing information the FLAC file possesses. The DS cannot fill in this missing information. Thus, an MP3 will never sound as good as a FLAC file.
Perhaps read the description this way: The DS converts any digital input format to a pure DSD stream and outputs near-perfect analog of the digital input.
Mike - yup, you can’t really make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, BUT - what you quoted is saying, is that the DS DACs upsample everything beyond what most other upsampling devices had done before.
Prior to this device, I Had gotten back to the opinion that upsampling was sort of a fad that worked pretty well in a number of cases, but generally one got the best results by playing stuff at the “native” data/sample rate of the DAC’s chip. These devices changed my opinion on upsampling.
I’ve been an adherent of SACD/DSD/.dsf recording and playback since its inception, and even so, I wouldn’t have suspected that upsampling to Multiples of SACD Rate would do what it does. Though I’m sure that’s not all there is to it. There’s a Bunch of Ted Rock and Roll in there.
