DSD ... my first impressions

[adamrobertshaw]

Now that I've got my DSD capable DAC settled down, I've dived straight into DSD recordings to see what / if I've been missing anything. My early impressions are ...

1. The music was very detailed and oddly calm. Vocals and acoustic instruments were a joy to listen to, literally like having the music played live in my room. Perhaps what Chord means when they say that the human ear / brain can detect faults in digital music but can interpret the sound in a way that we smooth over the cracks. The less compensating / smoothing over we do, the more we can enjoy what we hear.

2. The soundstage was so open and transparent but the volume was so much lower. I had to move my volume knob from 9 o'clock up to 11 o'clock.

3. I downloaded 15 tracks which took over 2 hours and consumed 3.5 Gb on my NAS. So not a process for people in a hurry or running out of storage.

4. For my tastes, there's little to nothing that caters for me in the DSD format. The websites seem quite niche. They also appear to be extremely expensive ... £35 for an album!! Laughable.

5. DSD increased definition / DSD DAC hardware is moving considerably faster than the availability of music to play into it.

So very impressive SQ, but not the finished consumer article as far as I'm concerned. I'll lower my hi-res sights and see what lower resolution (24/44.1, 24/96 etc) music I can find to suit my tastes ... and wallet.

 

[Overdose]

You would do better to seek out better quality recordings in standard CD resolution. Higher resolution formats offer nothing over the sound reproduction of 16/44.1KHz in themselves and DSD in particluar, is just a reinvention of the wheel, marketed to inject some life into the dwindling hifi market.

 

[The_Lhc]

2. The soundstage was so open and transparent but the volume was so much lower. I had to move my volume knob from 9 o'clock up to 11 o'clock.

This suggests a far greater dynamic range than what you're used to, this is the main complaint people have about hi-res audio as they believe it's a fault, it isn't, that's how music is when you hear it recorded properly (and that's the difference, the master hasn't been compressed dynamically as much as CDs usually are), this is what lead the anti-loudness campaigners to start their "Turn It UP!" campaign in an attempt to get people to understand that properly recorded music will require a higher volume for the quieter parts of the music.

So very impressive SQ, but not the finished consumer article as far as I'm concerned. I'll lower my hi-res sights and see what lower resolution (24/44.1, 24/96 etc) music I can find to suit my tastes ... and wallet.

DSD isn't necessarily higher-res than 24-bit audio, standard SACD recordings (which are DSD of course) equate to roughly 20-bit/88kHz I think (it's not an exact conversion as they're very different encoding methods), depends which flavour you're downloading.

 

[Frank Harvey]

You would do better to seek out better quality recordings in standard CD resolution. Higher resolution formats offer nothing over the sound reproduction of 16/44.1KHz in themselves and DSD in particluar, is just a reinvention of the wheel, marketed to inject some life into the dwindling hifi market.

Unless they're mastered better of course... (resolution aside)

 

[adamrobertshaw]

One of the best recordings I have is a re-mastered CD of Avalon by Roxy Music. The first couple of times I listened to it I could only wonder why all CDs didn't sound this good?

 

[adamrobertshaw]

I'd downloaded from Blue Coast records to see what DSD is all about. What I enjoyed about what I was listening to was it was all recorded live and very much came across as live as I listened.

I think the files are 64/2.8 MHz .DFF. The files were processed DSD over PCM, so came out at 24/176.4 KHz (unless it's 20 bit). I don't really know if there is a point of sending my DAC back for a 384 KHz upgrade and what it would later mean in terms of SQ, as this would enable me to listen to 353 KHz conversions.

That's the things about this DSD format in computers; it becomes a science and thereafter a test of technical understanding. I just want to choose my music, load, play and listen.

 

[audiodarkness]

Interesting stuff. I've started playing with 24bit 192khz files and they sound fantastic. I understand the theory that they 'should not' sound better, but they just do! I can now see why people have been recording at 24/96 and 24/192 for years!

 

[ID.]

Interesting stuff. I've started playing with 24bit 192khz files and they sound fantastic. I understand the theory that they 'should not' sound better, but they just do! I can now see why people have been recording at 24/96 and 24/192 for years!

Playing devils advocate, there's also another theory, expectation bias, that says it will sound better to you because you know you are listening to a higher resolution file. My understanding is that there are other reasons for recording at 24/96 and 24/192 not related to sound quality. Makes some of the processing easier or something.

For what it's worth, they sound better to me too, but I've never bothered doing blind ab testing of a downsampled version of the same file to see if I can pick the difference, so I'm not 100% willing to trust my easily influenced perceptions.

 

[Craig M.]

Interesting stuff. I've started playing with 24bit 192khz files and they sound fantastic. I understand the theory that they 'should not' sound better, but they just do!

The files being mastered differently is by far the most likely explanation. If you want to put it to the test, downsample one of the 24/192 files to 16/44.1 and see if you can spot a difference 'blind'.

 

[Al ears]

Not to sure where the OP is looking but the last DSD album I downloaded was 35$.

Very well worth it to...

 

[Frank Harvey]

If downsampling 24bit material to 16bit is supposed to make them sound the same, this goes against the claims that 24bit material is only better because it is better mastered. The 24bit file should still sound superior.

I'm sure if artist like Trent Reznor felt there was no benefit, they wouldn't bother mastering for it.

 

[Craig M.]

If downsampling 24bit material to 16bit is supposed to make them sound the same, this goes against the claims that 24bit material is only better because it is better mastered.

Errrrr, no, it would confirm the difference was down to a different master.

 

[Job CF]

I have listened to DSD and DXD when I had SACDs and a Denon DVD-2900. It is a SACD player with 24 Bit/192 kHz DSD audio DACs.
Denon had a switch to change between SACD and the CD layer.
Slight improvement with dynamics but not the 'night and day' difference I was expecting.
Having said that my amp and speakers were not designed for SACD.

When I had it with me here, I did some A-B testing using Monitor Audio Silver floorstanders and Mission 771e bookself speakers, switching between the two sets of speaker outputs of Arcam FMJ A32
Improvement in SQ when listening to Monitor Audio Silver was very noticeable.

So yeah! The speakers are the weakest link. May be because unlike electronics, they have moving parts with mass!