Thanks, Ted
In principle you are correct, but good editing doesn’t usually involve getting too far away from a natural dynamic range. Like using tape when you are recording with DSD you maximize the levels carefully before you begin so that you don’t clip (too much) during the recording. This is, in essence, matching the dynamic range of the DSD and the dynamic range of the analog (on the top end.)
On the other hand:
Does analog DSD editing preserve the dynamic range of DSD? The better question is what part of analog does DSD loose? If analog editing can’t preserve something, since everything we listen to ultimately comes thru analog then it doesn’t matter much if some steps on the way “overachieve”.
Most of the earlier SACDs were done on Sonoma systems. The SACDs almost always mention the system they were edited with. Early on is was basically Sonoma and a little later Pyramix from Merging Technology. I have thousands of such SACDs. These days there are other fine editing systems that do a great job with DSD - I’m not keeping up with them.
The numbers of SACDs that were done well is much higher than a lot of SACD detractors purport.
I’m sorry that I still had problems to fully understand some of the jumps from analog to DSD in the first two abstracts.
My pre assumption is, DSD can capture the whole dynamic range of the analog signal. If we now assume a 100 or 120 dB dynamic peak comes from the orchestra and is recorded by DSD and then edited analog to be reconverted to DSD. Then no analog media limiting this dynamic range is included, just an analog console with some other losses, but no dynamic range ones, correct?
I understood your “better” question (what part of analog does DSD loose?) means, that when other characteristics of the analog signal are missed by DSD, but could possibly be preserved by analog processing, this doesn’t help with analog editing, as the information already was lost at the beginning. The overachieving of analog at this point doesn’t help that lost information. Hope I understood what you meant.
Given, that the processings around DSD are for a noticable part a little less native and preserving than probably presumed by some (but DSD still the best digital format), it seems it’s more relevant in practical listening, that the DAC converts everything to DSD, than to catch those really well processed DSD recordings.
Not sure if I’m right saying, the need of care and quality recordings necessary to produce DSD to its real potential with extremely little to no editing/mastering demand, might be a reason, why it’s not more widely used on the market. Small labels may take that effort, but larger ones have too much demand for more intensive mastering, which would mean loosing too much of DSD’s potential, falling back to PCM level?
I think it’s simpler. There’s a set of people that like various PCM things they can do so they probably aren’t interested in DSD. There’s a set of people who edit minimalisticly so using DSD like tape lets them continue editing the way they always have and doesn’t add any new restrictions. There’s a set of people that care a lot about quality and have discovered (or were sold on the idea) that DSD editing (even with its restrictions) can be a step towards better quality.
IMO the decision to not use DSD probably doesn’t have anything to do with the theoretical possibility of extra work but is instead simply a personal choice based on the tools one is familiar with.
I don’t think people perceive DSD as needing extra work for quality compared to using PCM to achieve quality. Quality simply takes extra care. DSD can be a tool to achieve better quality.
The first set of people is virtually the entire music industry.
I see the issue with DSD not technical, but even simpler economics. Almost all CD sales were albums. Downloading gave people the opportunity to buy only the tracks they wanted, so downloads were mostly singles. Download revenues never reached a quarter of CD’s and are declining rapidly. The industry decided the only way to recover revenues was to rent rather than sell music. Streaming revenues have doubled in 3 years and industry revenues are close to the CD peak 20 years ago.
The problem is that you can rent mp3 and PCM, but you can’t rent DSD.
Qobuz announced they were going to do it 5 years ago, but decided against it, so at least it must be technically possible. They must have decided it just wasn’t commercially viable.
A major issue for Qobuz may have been that the streamers at the time that could play DSD files invariably converted them to PCM. My streamer started playing native DSD files a year or two ago, my system converts them to DXD.
I see it as much the same as the film industry, where great films are made but are never seen because they cannot get distribution. The big boys win because the major studios own most of the cinema chains, even if most of the films they make are rubbish.
I am curious to know if indeed DSD can be streamed and what attempts have been made to do so.
I think distribution and mass consumption is not the topic of DSD. It’s a format to prove what’s possible and it’s welcome if some boutique labels and some majors make use of it. The internal conversion of PCM to DSD in a DAC in contrary is meaningful for the quality playback of all PCM music.
When I even look at just audiophiles and their setups (which just make a few percent of all music listeners), then I’d say even of those audiophiles, maybe 40-60%, rather less setups are suited to experience DSD SQ advantages against PCM at all (if they had a way to compare meaningfully)
I would have thought many audio systems have DSD capability in that you could put a DSD file on a usb stick and plug it in to a DSD DAC.
I was responding to Ted’s post. He said “IMO the decision to not use DSD probably doesn’t have anything to do with the theoretical possibility of extra work but is instead simply a personal choice based on the tools one is familiar with”. This implies he thinks it’s the engineer’s choice, whereas I suspect 99%+ of the time it’s the choice of the record company or artist. So why would a recording studio even invest in DSD, and training staff to use it, if no one is going to pay you to use it?
He also says “I’d argue that analog is the gold standard in that that’s how we get the signals in the first place and how we play them.” The irony is that Linn, who have probably made more commercial DSD recordings than any record company on the planet, don’t play analogue. Their playback system, Exakt, is pure digital so cannot play back DSD files because of Sony’s DRM. They argue digital playback has major advantages over analogue, and it is becoming an increasingly popular approach.
How do you implement DSP with DSD files? Is it possible?
I remember when the forum asked, if it’s possible to have some DSP gimmicks in the DS, Ted said it would be compromising. I think that doesn’t mean, it’s worse than PCM then, but just not pure DSD anymore.
I guess you always have an argument when questioning DSD for mass and maximum convenience suitability. That’s why I see it as the digital form of the niche product „analog“.
The same way you do with PCM - do the math and dither back to the output format. With DSD you do the math at the DSD sample rate, allowing the sample width to grow. At the same place that you dither in PCM to narrow the sample width back to 16 or 24 bits, you modulate DSD back to one bit.
When I want to listen to analogue I spin a record.
I am happy to accept that with certain music and with good enough playback equipment DSD may well sound better to some people. I gave it a try and was not convinced, but am not a denier. Most DACs, even very cheap ones, can play DSD files. I doubt there is a technical reason why it cannot be streamed. Is it is of no interest to understand why something that is possibly better sounding and is fairly standard in 2 channel systems never really caught on?
Last night i enjoyed an analogue/DSD file (Some Other Time) and an audiophile pressing (Tracker). When something sounds good, I see no merit in comparing to it to other formats. Good is good. PCM rarely fails to provide enjoyment.
I think that DSD streaming may require too much bandwidth as the files size is large.We have fiber here so no worries but many are still on slower connections.
An SACD can easily exceed 2Gb. Many people might have a problem with that size of a file on a download. Like Baldy, I have a fibre connection that’s close to1Gb when it’s at it’s best. But many have far slower connections.
Amen.
Not sure if this is the right place but I was looking at the The Oscar Petersen Trio SACD and it says the DSD is mastered off the PCM recording. Do you need the SACD if it’s mastered from PCM and not DSD?
Sigh.
I’ve probably ripped close to 60-70 SACD’s bit perfect as DSF files to my hard drive.
Overall just closing in on 8TB of DSD & FLAC in high-def with a number of albums in both formats. For some reason the DSD 64/128 files always sounds more “analog” over same material in 24/96 of 24/192 FLAC.
Dire Straits collection ripped from SACD in DSD
The Analogue Productions SACD is analog to DSD, so no PCM. Unfortunately no comparison to the original LP (not even the same AP vinyl reissue is), but maybe the best digital version.
I agree that everyone gets to this point or should do (sooner or later 
).
But you must admit, if you managed to get there sooner, you wouldn’t own Wilson speakers but maybe something cheaper (except certainly your wife insisted)
I was perfectly happy with the sound of my Harbeth. Choosing Wilson was more of a fashion parade, my wife rejecting Focal, Sonus Faber and Franco Serblin. In fact the dealer ruled out Sonus Faber because he said I wouldn’t like them. When she asked the price, she didn’t bat an eyelid. It’s a moment I will never forget … or understand. I would never have spent that money on speakers, to her it like buying a pint of milk. Totally out of character as well.
I suspect you are a happy bunny in DSD-land as, according to Native DSD, there are about 260 analog to DSD transfers and most of them are pretty good jazz titles. There are still only a little over 1,000 pure DSD masters (and did any spend time as DXD for editing?) and many are a bit esoteric.
I’m thinking of downloading a couple of albums by Arabella Steinbacher, but I see they were recorded in DXD. So if they started as DXD, could DSD64 claim any benefit over 24/96 or 24/192?
They were recorded by an High Def PCM and DSD specialist outfit that emerged from Philips.
https://polyhymnia.com (news to me) and issued on Pentatone.
To be honest, I don’t see I have the basis for a meaningful opinion.
I have an opinion about the DS DAC, which not only with all the mods, having paid altogether 4.8k, since 7 years still ranks quite high and does so by internally converting everything to DSD. This seems to work very well compared to non budget gear I had before and still holds well against what I heard since then.
But I don’t have the proper comparison precondition for evaluating how much better the DSD format is compared to PCM. I think nearly no consumer has them and I’m not sure how many professionals have managed to really hear the pure format difference. But I don’t doubt it’s the best digital format.
Although I heard good DSD releases of analog sources, this field of application is not really relevant for me, as there the difference to the vinyl versions in both cases (DSD and PCM) is about equally far away. The amount that DSD may be better there than PCM, is not really relevant compared to the distance towards vinyl.
I’m also not sure which percentage of all DSD releases are PCM sourced (my subjective guess is at least 50%), how much a certain percentage of the native DSD are limited in their DSD characteristic by stronger DXD editing or if at all (my subjective guess is at least 50%) and in which cases we can speak of “real or pure DSD” at all.
That’s why I don’t care about the digital format, but the recording quality and mixing/mastering, as this still seems to dominate the overall sound quality by magnitudes.
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By the way and as it fits a bit to the discussion:
I just got the feedback of the Kammerphilharmonie Bremen to the making of the digitally sourced vinyl release of Schumann Symphonies (and previously Beethoven) compared to the hires/SACD release. Interesting once more and probably Octave Records (and Blue Coast and maybe several others) at least edit DSD in analog for similar reasons (not sure if they also mix analog or if this is possible or makes sense for a digital release).
