ANOTHER Example of Why I HATE DSD and Why Customers Who Bought Sony's Boloney Are So Annoying

[Charles Hansen]

Hello All Bit Heads out there In the Ether,

 

During some of the discussions on the upgrade to the Ayre USB DACs including what the changes were, what features were going to be included and so forth, the thread took a L - O - O - O - N - G detour to include the pros and cons of DSD versus PCM.

 

One of my main gripes was not that DSD sounds bad, because given the average idiot digital designer, he has a better chance of making a better sounding DSD DAC than a PCM DAC. All of which has VERY little to do with the formats themselves and happen to be accidents of Sony's outright lies and "dirty" marketing in an attempt to regain the $1 billion per year royalty stream that they found themselves missing a lot when the CD patents expired.

 

So I will tell you the first half of the story, and then we'll see which one on you "clever" DSD lovers can tell us what's wrong with this picture.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~

 

So a customer purchases one of the new DSD-enabled Ayre USB DAC's (Clearly a man of good taste, yes? Well, unfortunately not a similar indicator of intelligence...)

 

He tries to connect it to his computer using a recent version of J.River Media Center. Again, an excellent choice, yes? Perhaps one of the few programs that doesn't have a "code written in Mom's basement" feel to it and a plethora of features and a REAL support team that solves problems incredibly quickly.

 

Well, he's having troubles getting things to work on Windows 8 (why he bought Win 8 I have no clue -- I bought a sample copy for $15 because I knew that we would be getting support calls on it, but haven't found more than about 1-1/2 or 2 improvements over Win 7 but MANY, MANY, MANY problems compared to 7. But as Beetlemania once put it, the WORST of both worlds is audiophilia nervosa COMBINED with computerphilia nervosa. It makes one long for the days of, oh, say an FM tuner, where the biggest questions were actually about antennae.

 

But the poor schmuck has read on some (I've honestly no idea which one) computer audio forum that Win 8 does NOT play nicely with DoP. So rather than use the support facilities of he company that wrote he program, he for some unknown reason decides that the best way resolve the problem is to call the manufacturer of the DAC. Perhaps Ayre has developed too NICE of a reputation for bending over backwards to help our customers.

 

I think I have a good cure for that. I think I will man the customer support line for a week or two so we can change our reputation....

 

But I digress....

 

Our computer-savvy and hard working Senior Technician, Mr. Ryan Berry is a man of many talents. One of them (truly) is a fair degree of skill in playing the bagpipes. He's also proficient on the trombone, so perhaps I will commission my enormously gifted son to compose a duet for bagpipe and trombone that we can play for customers like this. It would sort of be like "The Gong Show" for those of you old enough to remember that marvelous era of television programming...

 

Now after not very long (said Mr. Berry is not only a clever chap with a great deal of computer experience, he also has the wisdom to consult the owner's manuals when working with something new. And within a few minutes he is able to pinpoint the source of the customer's problems. A few layers deep in the setup menu (and already setup this way by DEFAULT, so the customer must have changed it SOMEHOW while apparently blindly and randomly playing with setting of hopes of getting his system to work, is a little checkbox with the label "DoP" nearby.

 

And so in a few minutes everything was up and running.

 

Fine, great, end of story, yes?

 

 

No.....

 

Now it turns out that the customer is DEEPLY DISTRESSED that he can no longer have the "purity" of avoiding a preamp in his system, EVEN THOUGH J.RIVER INCLUDES A VERY SOPHISTICATED DIGITAL VOLUME CONTROL UTILIZING DOUBLE PRECISION FLOATING POINT CALCULATIONS (never mind how we are going to feed those fractions of a bit to the DAC chip....!

 

And the customer is so upset that he is threatening to return his DAC or his computer or his software, or his DoP (is that pronounced with a "long" "o", by any chance?) files or SOMETHING.

 

BECAUSE HE WANTS PURITY, BY GOD, AND NOW HE'S GOT THE MOST PURE DIGITAL MODULATION SCHEME EVER INVENTED BY MAN (at least according to Sony in the early 'oughties) and the MOST PURE DIGITAL PLAYBACK SOFTWARE (according to most people that ever have used it although for some reason I think that Miska will cast a vote of dissension) and the MOST PURE DAC EVER DEVELOPED (according to me, who admittedly should be hospitalized for delusions of grandeur), BUT HE CANNOT NOW CONTROL HIS VOLUME LEVEL WITHOUT (UGH!, hold your nose while you picture this) inserting an ANALOG VOLUME CONTROL INTO HIS SUNCTUM PURITUM, which will obviously soil his entire musical one-ness....

 

O what to do, what to do...

Do any of you expert readers have any suggestions that will save this poor soul from a life of hardship and MUSICAL POLLUTION MOST FOUL?

[vortecjr]

Charles, Miska's HP Player "might" have volume control. I assume that you would need ASIO and native DSD playback. I could be wrong, but believe I read some place that he had volume control with DSD....

 

Jesus R

[Charles Hansen]

Charles, Miska's HP Player "might" have volume control. I assume that you would need ASIO and native DSD playback. I could be wrong, but believe I read some place that he had volume control with DSD....

 

Jesus R

 

Hello Jesus,

 

Yes you've hit the nail on the head. "DSD" is a marketing term DEFINED BY SONY as being a ONE-BIT SIGNAL from a delta sigma modulator operating at 64x Fs and using 7th-order noise shaping.

 

If it ain't that, it ait't DSD. PERIOD. END OF STORY.

 

So the guy that bought the DoP DAC CANNOT HAVE A DIRECT DIGITAL VOLUME CONTROL because it is impossible to change the level of a one-bit signal!

 

No doubt Miska will come here and want to argue semantics regarding how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or some such nonsense. But the truth is that one CANNOT EVEN PERFORM A FADE OUT (let alone apply EQ, compression, or a thousand other effects that are considered essential for modern recording -- even classical needs to do this!)

 

So the poor customer has been snookered by all of the garbage he has read from Sony , all of the garbage that is written on the forums, and all of the garbage written by people trying to sell you crap that you don't need. And I don't know which is worse -- the people who SHOULD know better, but don't, or the people who DO know better but persist it trying to deceive the customer into buying the crap that he has no need for.

 

~~~~~~~~~

 

Speaking of volume controls, I was shocked to read a "blog" advertisement that is sent out by a well-known "designer" of equipment who decided that after 30 years of ASSUMING that no preamp HAD to sound better than using a preamp finally decided to try listening with a preamp. Soon we will find out either how good his ears are, how good his system is (nearly 30 year old speakers???) or how good his judgment is. Unfortunately if he reaches he wrong conclusion we will have no way of knowing which is the most deficient area of his ear/brain/music system.

[vortecjr]

Charles, I tell people that digital volume control is best used for attenuation and not volume control. Partial attenuation for PCM and complete attenuation for DSD/DoP:) Personally, I prefer to control volume at my integrated amp. My only requirements is that it have a remote control and one or two extra inputs for other none essential gear....

 

Jesus R

[InfernoSTi]

I guess I'm silly with my stepped attenuator. Not digital at all...

 

Best,

John

[Charles Hansen]

Charles, I tell people that digital volume control is best used for attenuation and not volume control. Partial attenuation for PCM and complete attenuation for DSD/DoP:) Personally, I prefer to control volume at my integrated amp. My only requirements is that it have a remote control and one or two extra inputs for other none essential gear....

 

Jesus R

 

Yes, there must be a volume control somewhere and if you want to combine boxes to save space or money, then putting an analog control in the power amp is BY FAR the best solution in terms of performance.

 

I guess I'm silly with my stepped attenuator. Not digital at all...

 

Best,

John

 

Hello John,

 

No, Jesus is saying the exact same thing that you are saying. I have said the same thing in another post but don't have time to fnd it right now.

 

Best,

[Selarom]

Tell your customer to buy an Ivicta Mirus and all his problems will be solved.

 

Ask any owner here

[dallasjustice]

MISKA's HQplaya' can control volume in the 1 bit land.

[paul30d]

Long, amusing, well-written rant

 

Charles... I think I have to buy one of your DAC's, on the strength of of your post.

[coxhaus]

Love the story. I am still laughing.

[junker]

I like DSD (and PCM), and absolutely HATE digital volume controls... Analog all the way!

[One and a half]

I like DSD (and PCM), and absolutely HATE digital volume controls... Analog all the way!

 

+1

[Miska]

First of all, on Windows, use a native ASIO driver and you don't need to configure or use DoP at all.

 

DoP is just an ugly hack to make DSD work on operating systems where proper ways are not available (Mac OS X) and there's no nice way to auto-detect DSD capability on a DoP DAC. On Windows there's ASIO that can handle native DSD recording and playback without any of the extra payload (33%) of DoP plus has auto-detection of such capabilities. Nowadays there's a native support for DSD also on Linux, so it can do same as ASIO on Windows.

 

And yes, HQPlayer supports all digital processing for both PCM and DSD, including volume control, convolution engine (for DRC) and speaker distance & level adjustments. There's also DSD rate conversion and I recommend upsampling DSD to higher rate if possible when using digital volume control to gain extra dynamic range for output. And of course more to come.

[mav52]

Quote Originally Posted by junker View Post

I like DSD (and PCM), and absolutely HATE digital volume controls... Analog all the way!

+1

 

+2

[Quest]

Now, I didn't read Charles' previous arguments about DSD.. but personally, it almost seems to be I am in a very small minority that actually prefers PCM (e.g. 16/44.1) over DSD files.

 

I keep trying to give it a chance, and I do hear some of the improvements like blacker background, but I don't feel it's superior.. in fact, I feel some things like texture are worse off.

 

The irony is that my DAC (the emmlabs dac2x) converts everything to DSD before playback, so native DSD SHOULD sound better.. at least in theory.

[Audio_ELF]

O what to do, what to do...

Do any of you expert readers have any suggestions that will save this poor soul from a life of hardship and MUSICAL POLLUTION MOST FOUL?

Tell him to return his DAC and buy one with a built in volume control... A MSB Analogue should suit him!

 

Whistles innocently :-)

 

Eloise

[CatManDo]

I think most people who want a DSD-capable DAC need it for playback of SACD rips they downloaded or made themselves, since there are hardly any other sources of DSD files. It's not that they are fans of DSD, but they want to play those SACD rips without "impure" PCM conversion.

 

If DVD-A had won the hi-rez format war, we wouldn't even discuss about DSD input on DACs.

[jtm]

You're absolutely correct on this, Claude.

 

Who can tell me how long the drive inside my SACD player will last, and while it does, the built-in DAC gets older and older and older ...

 

If you have one of those old PS3's then Ted's package is your friend and here you go ... listening to music in good quality without the need for this hardware stuff ...

[jtwrace]

This is why I own one of these: TAP-X measurements

[ecwl]

While I'm ambivalent about DSD, I'm not sure if the customer's main issue has to do with DSD at all. I find that because computers are so ubiquitous in our lives, many people trying to get into DIY computer audio make lots of assumptions that because they "know" how to use a computer at home or for work, they "know" about computer audio. So the customer knows to pick JRiver and wants digital volume control which will alter the original PCM signal but is unwilling to convert DSD to PCM and apply digital volume control?!?

I realize that as consumers, we often are proud of our ability to research a product before buying and feel like we know everything about the product, e.g. cars, cameras, etc. But just read some of the questions for help posed in the forums here and I just find there is a higher frequency of first-time posters who are struggling with their computer audio setup but are unwilling to acknowledge their knowledge deficits in computer audio, similar to Charles Hansen's customer. I just think that people assume if they understand computers for work and play, they understand computer audio, which is not always true.

[edorr]

Very refreshing to read an "industry guy" that shares my perspective (and has a fine sense of humor to boot!).

 

The infatuation with DSD is a marketing driven circus created to sell hardware no one really needs, and give audiophiles with too much time on their hands something to talk about on the forums. When is the last time a hardware market was created to support the "needs" of guys that want to buy old PS3s on eBay and rip their SACD collection?

 

I own and can play all formats, DSD, Redbook, 96/24, 192/24 and the with the right hardware the differences are marginal. Give the world well recorded 96/24 downloads is all 99.9% of the music listening audience will ever need. If you want to "archive" your SACD collection, you can just convert to 96/24 or 88/24.

 

There is much more to be gained from relentlessy innovating hardware to the point that the SQ of a DAC now costing $20K can be had for $2K, than ability to support multiple formats. Such a $2K DAC will then sound better on PCM than anything currently capable of playing native DSD costing less than $10K. In my experience - the reported dramatic losses in quality converting DSD to PCM are all attributable to less then stellar hardware. OK. Shoot me.

[Kal Rubinson]

O what to do, what to do...

Do any of you expert readers have any suggestions that will save this poor soul from a life of hardship and MUSICAL POLLUTION MOST FOUL?

Tell him to put his fingers in his ears. All digital, no PCM. :-)

[Hiro]

DoP is just an ugly hack to make DSD work on operating systems where proper ways are not available (Mac OS X) ...

 

Nowadays there's a native support for DSD also on Linux, so it can do same as ASIO on Windows.

 

AFAIK, Korg DS-DAC-10 supports native DSD playback on Mac.

[mav52]

Very refreshing to read an "industry guy" that shares my perspective (and has a fine sense of humor to boot!).

 

The infatuation with DSD is a marketing driven circus created to sell hardware no one really needs, and give audiophiles with too much time on their hands something to talk about on the forums. When is the last time a hardware market was created to support the "needs" of guys that want to buy old PS3s on eBay and rip their SACD collection?

 

I own and can play all formats, DSD, Redbook, 96/24, 192/24 and the with the right hardware the differences are marginal. Give the world well recorded 96/24 downloads is all 99.9% of the music listening audience will ever need. If you want to "archive" your SACD collection, you can just convert to 96/24 or 88/24.

 

There is much more to be gained from relentlessy innovating hardware to the point that the SQ of a DAC now costing $20K can be had for $2K, than ability to support multiple formats. Such a $2K DAC will then sound better on PCM than anything currently capable of playing native DSD costing less than $10K. In my experience - the reported dramatic losses in quality converting DSD to PCM are all attributable to less then stellar hardware. OK. Shoot me.

 

Pretty spot on edorr. For me the issue with DSD is I'm not a classical person, I can look around on the following sites listed on this link and sure there might be one or two downloads of DSD that I might enjoy but that's about it..Not worth the effort for a couple of downloads.. The issue for me is content by well known non classical artist... It's just not there and maybe it will never be there to support DSD...

Where can you find DSD Music Downloads? | DSD-Guide.com

[Miska]

AFAIK, Korg DS-DAC-10 supports native DSD playback on Mac.

 

Great! I guess they have created their own driver and their application talk directly to it (something like ProTools is doing)? Or how do they expose DSD in non-DoP way to third party applications?

 

Technically there's no reason why ASIO couldn't be used on OS X too, it would just need drivers and thin layer under the ASIO API. So far, nobody (?) has bothered...