To Paul & Ted

Audio Components DACs
1

First let me thank the both of you. I have owned the Directstream and Transport boxes for over 6 months. Their individual sound and combined efforts are nothing short of “magical”.

When I purchased your Transport, I never sold my OPPO 105D box. I have been purchasing many DSD files online. I HATE the fact that I have to plug my USB stick into the OPPO and run Coaxial Out to the Directstream DAC>

When are we going to be able to play DSD files on my PS audio equipment ? Thank you both again for my many hours of enjoyment.

Mike Siegel

Livingston,New Jersey

2

You can now with a JRiver or any number of programs.

3

Understand that to play DSD, the DSD files need to be converted to DoP. See, here

The DS is unlikely to ever play DSD directly as the licensing fees are substantial and it is not cost effective for PS Audio.

4

I will mention MinimServer just in case: http://minimserver.com/

5
Elk said The DS is unlikely to ever play DSD directly as the licensing fees are substantial and it is not cost effective for PS Audio.
Very strange for a, according to PS Audio, pure DSD based solution.
6

DSD files can be converted to DoP files (e.g., using foobar2000) and burned to DVD-R and then played via the PWT. Programs like JRiver and minimserver can convert DSD files to DoP on the fly.

SACD files are another matter (they can be ripped but not easily).

7

The DS does play raw DSD over the I2S inputs and will take raw DSD over the USB inputs in a future release. On the other hand DoP IS pure DSD, but losslessly wrapped in a PCM envelope (like PCM is often wrapped in a flac envelope. It’s still PCM even if it’s in a flac file.) The DS accepts DoP over all inputs (tho TOSLink often doesn’t have the bandwidth for that.) Many of us play SACDs we’ve ripped and DSD files we’ve bought online on the DS daily.

Player programs like foobar2000 and JRiver MC will optionally wrap DSD in DoP on the fly and hence will play DSD files that you’ve downloaded or SACDs that you may have ripped or bought ISOs of.

The only fly in the ointment is the extra steps to wrap DSD in DoP if you want to use the PWT. The PWT was designed years ago and still does what it was designed for well. But playing SACDs or DSD wasn’t a part of it’s original design - as was mentioned above SACD licenses aren’t cheap and at the time PS Audio didn’t have anything that could consume DSD.

8

The Oppo 103 with Vanity board route to playing DSD directly from SACD into the DS is well documented elsewhere on the forum.

9

I thought, if I play DSD from NAS via ARIES ( DSD over PCM not activated ) USB->DS I get DSD. This is what the display on the DS tells me, DSD 64 or DSD 128.

Same with 103-Vanity board as mentioned by edorr.

10

The Audiopraise Vanity HD (in an Oppo BDP-103) wraps DSD with DoP. A newer version of the DS software will distinguish DSD and DoP inputs to lessen some of the confusion.

11

I think one thing that needs mentioning is that the Transport (PWT) was never designed or sold as an SACD/DSD player. Also, the Transport has no USB input to read files from.

That being said I believe there are ways you can wrap DSD files into a WAV form, burn them to a DVD and play them with the Transport via the i2s output into the DS and get unmolested DSD.

T