DSD

[f1eng]

Any news on the DSD upgrade? Apparently this is not a difficult thing to do. I had my dCS Debussy upgraded via firmware and it was seamless. It took a long long time after their announcement since dCS was one of the firsts to implement DoP, and their quality control was superb, way up there with Devialet.

I doubt that if done properly, the integration of the dsd bitstream is an easy thing to do. Not because of the DAC integration but if they would like to do it right they need to adapt all their DSP (SAM etc) algorithms from PCM to bitstream. otherwise it would be just an dsd to PCM codec in front the dac not using its native mode.

If I understand it correctly no manipulation of DSD is possible in the digital domain, so if SAM is used the data will have to be converted to PCM anyway for the computation to be done.

Is it not the case that some workstations (e.g. Pyramix) can manipulate DSD natively?

But I think you're right that what normally happens is that DSD is converted to PCM for editing.

Matt

I may well not have , but if I understand correctly there is no way to manipulate a DSD stream.
This would be good for purist recordings, where the balance is achieved by moving a pair of microphones about, but AFAIK any multi track recording will not have been DSD from recording to disc.

My concern when I did the comparison was that DSD seemed to be a bit louder than PCM when recorded from the same analogue source, which obviously makes it sound better (and it did) but makes it almost impossible to do a real comparison since unless the level is matched to a very fine tolerance (0.1dB) the louder will sound better, even if level matched they are indistinguishable.
It is much easier to compare the various PCM files since they are easier to level match...