Consensus about upsampling to 512 DSD

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

44 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

There is no easy path to enlightenment...

 

You've not heard? You must have Frank on ignore ?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

10 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

The advantage of a line stage is not with volume control, rather matching impedance and level.

 

I agree there are more likely reasons why a pre-amp is important than loss of bit resolution.

 

We have all no doubt heard the simple math of say a 16 bit file having 96dB of dynamic range, 24 bit file 144 dB DR, volume controls in JRiver for example having 64 bit precision and most DACs at least supporting 24 bit output, human hearing about 120 to 130 dB DR (some say less) and most recordings only having less than 12 dB, throw in some dither, headroom, clipping, floating point operations, then take away the number you first thought of.....Equals loss of 6dB per bit of attenuation?. At most listening levels this should not matter in most circumstances. Also if you use ASIO in JRiver the output bitdepth selection is ignored automatically delivering audio to the soundcard to the highest bitdepth possible.

 

Still, I just don't like the idea of mangling with the signal even if its in the digital domain. So, why an analogue pre-amp to mangle the signal then?

 

What has been traditionally offered is impedence matching, source selection, Voltage gain - line level pre-amp (excluding phono) to supposedly feed to a power amp to amplify current in its most linear section of its output. It is claimed that if you feed line level output into a power amp, unless the input sensitivity is sufficiently high, you will lose dynamics.

 

All that theory aside, an analogue pre-amp just sounds better than using a digital volume control. I have auditioned this extensively with various high end products that offer digital volume control eg a Bricasti DAC which I owned at one time but other products and in different systems. A pre-amp just sounds better for me. The best description came from a non audiophile friend for whom I put together a system initially without a preamp to keep costs lower. His words were, comparing the difference without a preamp, "it lacks body, sounds sterile". This has always been my experience, totally but unapologetically subjective that it is.

 

 

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

3 hours ago, mansr said:

Compare the specs for the Benchmark DAC3 and the dCS Vivaldi. The latter is 10x the price and delivers worse (pretty average, in fact) performance. I haven't personally heard either, but John Siau seems like a no-nonsense kind of guy.

 

I have heard them. I was not impressed with the dCS Vilvaldi.I wouldn't say it was bad, just not worth it IMO.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

4 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

How a “volume control” works on a DSD stream may not be intuitive to you. The DSD stream literally has a component in the digital domain — the carrier at 22-25 MHz — and a component in the analog domain — the audio. The DAC can simply remove the digital carrier and leave the analog signal alone. 

 

The signal hasn’t been “mangled” rather the upsampling is done to a different level. 

 

 

If your amp likes a preamp then by all means use it, rest assured, however, that what the preamp is has doing has nothing to do with volume control, rather amplitude and impedance matching. It will work just as well as when you “volume control” your DSD512 stream — to keep this focused on the topic of this thread...

 

Again, use your preamp along with volume control in your DSD upsampling software! It will work just as well if not better. 

 

BTW: the Bricasti DAC only accepts up to DSD128, so the conclusions you’ve drawn from this example may not apply to the topic at hand. also really hard to know what any one DAC is doing under the hood. 

 

Good points Jonathan.

My current DAC does octuple DSD512. It does not however  have a volume control. I could use JRiver for this but that would mean not using ASIO and perhaps degradation of sound for other reasons.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

5 hours ago, fas42 said:

Again, better engineering of the DAC, and power amp resolves this.

 

Phooey !

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

4 hours ago, fas42 said:

I've got the impression over the years that a rather important first step is to make a correct diagnosis of a patient's complaint, rather just than trying every possible treatment that may vaguely relate to the symptoms ...

 

I can't talk for others but I just grok the diagnosis ?

Then I tune their organs (ahem, with their consent)

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

2 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Not familar with that engineering term ...

 

 

When you mentioned "grunge filter" I had no idea it was an engineering term.You have to give us more clues that your advice is based on engineering principles?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

2 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

At its simplest, accuracy is the difference between the recorded and the reproduced waveform. The larger the difference, the less accurate the reproduction. If there's zero difference, the accuracy is 100%.

 

This holds true for an audio signal to the extent that you can accurately measure it with a tool that is 100% accurate measuring 100% of the signal.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

23 minutes ago, fas42 said:

And then they croak ...

 

well depending on the organ, maybe a little groaning?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

10 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Well, I found this definition ...

 

GRUNGE: Dead, incorrect or obsolete computer code, medical, health or other database information; slang term.

 

I appropriated it to refer to incorrect electrical signal, or noise shall we say ...

 

Perhaps better would have been a term following soon after,

 

GUNK: Any thing that degrades computer systems performance or security; aware, spy ware, cookies, etc; slang term.

 

 

My advice is based on pragmatism - I use what works, and if I feel engineering finesse is required to fine tune a method, then I'll bring it on board. Engineering tools like Spice certainly highlight where many of the weaknesses in conventional audio design occur; and then it's game on to rectify these.

 

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

My advice is based on pragmatism

 

I think you mean hypnotism ?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

10 hours ago, jabbr said:

@Audiophile Neuroscience do me a favor and lets try and get your current DSD512 capable DAC to its best performance, I use HQPlayer, but other folks like A+3 -- I'm trialing A+3 now that it does streaming... in the process of trying to get my RPi3B+ recognized so I can stream to "mpd". To use volume control, you need one of these packages that does native realtime upsampling.

 

Thanks. I was planning on trialing both HQPlayer and XXXHighEnd. When I googled the latter I got a lot of porn sites so got distracted (just kidding @PeterSt).I'm not sure if XXXHighEnd does "native realtime upsampling" but suffice to say upsampling is not the only reason for me to explore other players.

 

I note my DSD512 DSD capable DAC also offers PCM upsampling to 210 kHz. Is it just me or does that sound like an unusual number.It does subjectively change the sound for the better but varies a bit with the recording.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

25 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

 

That's where we differ, Frank.

 

may I just say its hard to measure just how many ways some of us differ with Frank ?

 

Quote

I've used objective measures and evaluation to build my system. I've not been on any conveyor belt for about 20 years -- I've built my dream system back then and I've enjoyed it immensely, with no need to tweak. Didn't change a thing until the last couple of years, when I decided to move to a PC-based system. In the process, I've also added headphones, but I'm nearing the point where I'm totally happy with it. Maybe for another 20 years.

 

That's great (sincerely) but don't forget, using objective audio measures or not, you are just as prone to expectation/confirmation bias in what you hear as the next guy (unless that guy is Frank, then all bets off !?)

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

36 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

You are correct - I just tried it myself. Small problem on your side : one X too many. It's XXHighEnd. Now suddenly it's all about music without porn. 

 

Peter, may I humbly suggest adding the extra X. It makes the google search far more entertaining ?

 

 

 

36 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

I didn't follow the thread but maybe someone explain to me what "native realtime" upsampling is.

XXHighEnd applies realtime upsampling up to 16x PCM and if you notice the cpu usage of that then you really know how to look for it. 

No DSD in there (and I suppose the implied question was related to that).

 

 

Ok Thanks. Yes it is about upsampling to 512 DSD. Is there a reason why XXHighEnd doesn't offer DSD upsampling?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

3 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

what overall larger group?

people that haven't tried or don't have the proper resources are irrelevant to the subject or concensus.

 

So if 3 people Fed, harry and Jane were polled and 2 agreed with the proposition that would mean you had a 'consensus' among those 3 individuals. It is not generalizable beyond Fed, harry and Jane that took the poll.

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

11 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

Hopefully we can quit talking about the word consensus and get to the subject.

 

Isn't Consensus the subject ?

 

11 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

PS - there is a majority consensus among those that have software upsampled to DSD512 to a NOS DAC with proper resources that it is preferred vs not upsampling to a NOS DAC....

 

How do you know that?

[Audiophile Neuroscience]

2 hours ago, Summit said:

 

One more post there you contradict what you wrote just a few days ago. Tell me, how does your “comparative listening tests” correlates to your statement that “ears need to be distinguished from perceptions” or “unicorn adorned universe”? Hypocrite!

 

Ralph is a hard man to comprehend but he means well ???