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First multi-channel DSD playback solution with Mytek!


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It was super cool watching the leds of each Mytek DAC light up on the stack of 3 Myteks while playing multichannel.

The surround sound even in the smallish room they had to audition in was spectacular. Remarkably the best surround I have ever heard. I supplied them 2 Double DSD music files and the 3 units all displayed HDSD as they played the files.

One thing I wish I had spent more time checking was the neat way Chebon manipulated the files in JRiver.

And we found out, you did try it Ted_b didn't you ? That JRiver and Mytek will play the ISO DSD files without extracting the individual files.

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Direct ISO playback of multichannel content, DST-compressed or not, is quite doable in JRiver/Mytek. Jriver calls them file type "SACD" so browsing or creating views with ISOs is easy. However, it has huge cpu load issues (especially those with DST compression content, which are not easy to identify without first extracting some test files on the ISO) that I'm trying to get my arms around.

 

I built a minimalist server (CAPSV2+) for good reason; keep it simple, keep it clean, keep it doing just 2 channel music serving. The idea of having this server now do decompression of DST, "unwrapping " of ISOs, etc is not something I am quite sure I want to do. That's my theoretical first impression. My real world first impression is that my CAPS doesn't have enough cpu horsepower to do it, and it freezes and coughs and wheezes. However, my CAPS V2+ was never intended to do multichannel in its design, so its place here is just for this prototype (and yet serving multichannel DSF has been flawlessly accomplished to-date).

 

So, my first impression is this: direct multichannel ISO playback is cpu intensive and will require a bigger machine like a CAPS Zuma or non-CAPS design. I have yet to determine if it even sounds as good as extracted DSF files, and its clear that the metadata is not as good out of the box (and likely player specific). But it would certainly save time and storage.

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I've ripped some SACD from RCA(three channel SACD) and Pentatone RQR(four channel SACD). But when I drag the ISO file into JRiver, it showed those tracts are "5" channels. Does anyone encounter this situation? I only got two myteks now, which should be able to play 4 channel DSD.

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John,

As I said in my several PMs to you, JRiver sees them as 5.1 files even though only 3 (or 4) channels are actually used and active. I am working through the issue of having only 2 DACs, as I said. Give me some time. This is all experimental. Right now i know 3 DACS works; not exactly sure why 2 don't..my first theory is that JRiver wants to downmix to 4 channels, and downmixing is a DSP (i.e PCM) activity. Just a first hunch.

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John,

As I said in my several PMs to you, JRiver sees them as 5.1 files even though only 3 (or 4) channels are actually used and active. I am working through the issue of having only 2 DACs, as I said. Give me some time. This is all experimental. Right now i know 3 DACS works; not exactly sure why 2 don't..my first theory is that JRiver wants to downmix to 4 channels, and downmixing is a DSP (i.e PCM) activity. Just a first hunch.

 

Ted,

 

Thanks for your reply. I think I must have missed what you've mentioned. I hope that the fix about the multi channel recognition could be seen on JRiver.

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Ted, have you looked into .dsf as a multi-channel format? It's specified as stereo only, and I have not tried to convert a 5 channel .dff file with Audiogate to see what it does with it. It's on a machine currently taken apart.

 

Tom, as per above..all I use is DSF in multichannel. The files are huge (cuz they are decompressed DST often) but play wonderfully even on my minimalist CAP V2+. And they have all the tags, etc. JRiver sees them perfectly.

 

Conversely, i tried playing ISOs directly but my small server chokes on them cuz 90% of the time they are requiring the cpu to do DST decompression, which it's not built for that kind of load. Maybe evn a RAM increase would help, but what the hell...storage is cheap.. :)

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Ted, have you looked into .dsf as a multi-channel format? It's specified as stereo only, and I have not tried to convert a 5 channel .dff file with Audiogate to see what it does with it. It's on a machine currently taken apart.

 

No it's not stereo-only, DSF supports mono, stereo, 3.0, quad, 3.1, 5.0 and 5.1... DFF can support the same, but also in addition 2.1.

 

So both DSD file formats are perfectly ready for any pretty much any channel configuration up to 5.1. (so all the same as SACD)

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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Thanks guys! I was reading the DSD Disk spec, which as I understand it, was the genesis for .dsf, and that's 2 channel only. Then AudioGate should be able to do the 5 channel conversion from .dff to .dsf.

 

Thanks again!

 

I'm not sure Audiogate can convert more than 2 channel files. i could be wrong; never needed to.

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I am helping David (dlbeck) on his setup, so i threw this picture together to make a little more sense. Firmware and driver are beta but will be released soon. They fixed a PCM channel swap issue we were having (easily remedied in JRiver but better not to have).

 

mytekstack setup.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4963[/ATTACH]

 

Interesting. Keeps it asynchronous I suppose at the cost of some setup, an option to run all in sync mode might be nice.

 

I think this has inspired me to create my own single board multi-channel DSD demo...

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  • 1 month later...

Hi,

So, any news?

Is it ready to public release?

Thanks!

Synology DS1815>Cisco Switch>CAPS Pipeline Win7/10 x64 > Foobar/AlbumPlayer/JRiver MC > ASIO > Dac: exaSound e28 > Speakers: Focal SM9 and Twins Be6 in 5.1 > HeadAmp: Woo WA22 > Cans: HD800 (Bal)/Focal Uthopia > Portable: Iphone X> Shure SE530PTH

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