Symbol Under Settings Gear when Playing through I2S

Anyone know what the symbol below the settings gear icon represents. It is that little circle, when I play same on coaxial it goes away.

Thanks in advance!

I2S-Symbol.jpgCoax-No-Symbol.jpg

Preemphasis detected - the DS is deemphasizing.

Hi Ted,

Thanks for that, could you maybe explain a bit more about what that means. Some of us have bought an external board to take HDMI and convert it to I2S. We are noticing that the sound seems less dynamic/dull at the higher frequency sounds when using the I2S input vs straight coax.

Not sure if this deemphasis is associated with. Is there a way to turn it off if I wanted to (if it is ok to even do it).

Thanks!

Veneet,

What CD (artist, title, catalog #) are you playing when you see this or is this symbol present no matter what you play?

Hey PB,

I am out running errands but I was playing Ray Lamontagne, Till the Sun Turns Black the last 2 tracks using Roon from the OPPO to the converter to I2S. Also from the OPPO to the DSD direct via coax had no demphassis. The symbol is there for all albums played through the converter to the DSD. I will have to try a DSD album when I get back and report.

thanks,

v

The preemphasis flags are a little flaky - in S/PDIF they are a little different than AES/EBU. In AES/EBU there are 4 possible settings, but only 2 (none and the same as S/PDIF) are usually used and/or implemented (we ignore the rare ones too.)

(Some early) CDs are essentially the only source of preemphasized material - getting the flags thru your CD ripper and audio playing software (and perhaps intervening hardware like USB) is problematic at best.

On the other hand PS Audio transports (the PWT and the DMP) provide handshaking signals over the other wires in the HDMI cables used for I2S - playing a preemphasized CD with the PWT or DMP to the DS or PWD (or NuWave?) should work seamlessly.

Here’s a brief description from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_Digital_Audio#Pre-emphasis

Preeemphasis only means something useful for CDs, DSD and higher resolution formats don’t need preemphasis: they already have enough bits…

The flags should only ever show up from Redbook or well ripped Redbook.

Well, that Ray Lamontagne disc definitely doesn’t have pre-emphasis on it. Sounds like the converter is tricking the DirectStream into thinking otherwise. That would certainly account for the sound you’re hearing. In the discussion thread about this converter you’ve posted some photos of the board. I can’t see any switches or settings that can be changed on the board, nor do I think there is any change you can make on your 205 that is going to help. It’s just a flag in the incoming data stream and the DS is dutifully doing its job when it sees that flag.

Hey Ted and PB,

Thanks, so it is the case that only PCM content is triggering the flag in the DS DAC, DSD content doesn’t which is why others were commenting that if you don’t mind the reversed channels, the sound is actually pretty good out of the converter.

Too bad there isn’t a way to turn off the deemphasis as I also don’t see a way to turn off the pre-emphasis!

Thanks to you both!

PS (see what I did there) if you wanted to make the pre-emphasis icon selectable so that you could turn off de-emphasis, that would be cool!

Thanks for the thread, Veneet. I’m seeing and hearing the deemphasis vs. coax on everything except SACD, which I don’t have. That includes recent CDs and those from the 1980s; music and video of all kinds and ages played from a USB thumb drive, icludind dsf files; DVDs - BR and not; and even cable TV run through the HDMI/I2S card, 203 and DS. And as I wrote on the “Getting Oppo DSD Output to the Direct Stream Dac” thread, its effect is on a lot more than high frequencies, LPCM or Bitstream. Unfortunate because I was hoping to finally get the advantages of I2S in this system.

Hey Highstream,

Thanks, same here, I too was hoping to have a one stop solution to full bit rate movies and tv and take advantage of I2S. I will talk with PS (not tomorrow, more travel) but maybe to get a better sense of what Ted told us in how they use pin 15 and 16 and if there was some way to turn off de-emphasise, which I think will help us out.

talk soon!l

Good, I’ll leave that part to you for now. I’m going to write the folks selling the card to let them know, which they probably don’t. Maybe it can get something started on their end. I’m guessing they wouldn’t be selling a unique board like this without some highend connection(s).