Consensus about upsampling to 512 DSD

[Jud]

30 minutes ago, Ron Scubadiver said:

This place is really creepy. 

 

I think this is the point in the drama where everyone can afford to calm down a bit.  

 

You said you saw no improvement; folks wanted to know in more detail what you saw no improvement *from*.  This being an audio forum, people can get impassioned about funny stuff like that.  Heck, 99.9% of the population never heard of a "MQA," whatever that is, and look at the threads here....(!)

 

So: Everybody, deep cleansing breaths....

[Ron Scubadiver]

2 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

 

 

So: Everybody, deep cleansing breaths....

I used foobar2000, Sox, Secret Rabbit, J River (Sox), Audirvana (Sox and the other one).  Sometimes I thought Sox sounded worse!!  I mostly upsampled to 384k PCM.  Did DSD 128 & 256 on foobar using the SACD plugin & processor.  My audio computer has an N3700 processor which rules out a lot of options.  

 

Lately I have foobar2000 running and the CPU usage is 0% most of the time.  It sounds best that way.  (WASAPI, no dsp except for the Cocos VST parametric EQ.  

 

I want my MQA, got to move these color TV's...

 

[firedog]

51 minutes ago, Ron Scubadiver said:

This place is really creepy. 

This is where Internet forums and other methods of written “conversation” fail. I don’t think anyone is trying to give you the third degree or be creepy. You said upsampling didn’t work for you, so they want to know how you did it. The idea is that maybe they can improve your outcome with a different method. 

No reason to assume bad intentions. No reason to feel defensive. Maybe you are an expert and did everything as well as the others. They don’t know that, so they are asking how you did it. 

[jabbr]

Hey, different setups will give different results and different folks will have different preferences. An N3700 is not made for DSD upsampling!!!

 

FWIW, I use these type of low powered machines as NAA to receive a DSD stream and pass along to the DAC. PCM upsampling uses vastly less CPU power.

 

 

[Ron Scubadiver]

5 minutes ago, jabbr said:

Hey, different setups will give different results and different folks will have different preferences. An N3700 is not made for DSD upsampling!!!

 

FWIW, I use these type of low powered machines as NAA to receive a DSD stream and pass along to the DAC. PCM upsampling uses vastly less CPU power.

 

 

Sox used very little in the way of CPU cycles.  Secret Rabbit would not run on it's highest quality setting.  The Foobar DSD conversion, even to 256 would run on the N3700 without skipping or overheating, but J River would skip.  I did not try much with Audirvana on my Mac which is more powerful than the N3700, and could experiment with it outputting to an ifi idsd nano black which I just acquired.  The Grace M9xx used with the N3700 has a digital volume control, so direct DSD decoding available in the AK4490 is not used.  That sort of makes it a waste to convert to DSD.

 

 

[barrows]

15 hours ago, Ron Scubadiver said:

What's your problem?  It doesn't work here.  It might work for you, but don't give me the third degree.

It is not the "third degree", I do not think anyone is challenging your experience, we are just looking for more data points on other's experiences.  Without the details which I asked for, no one can learn anything from your post, with details, it might mean something to someone trying a similar approach.

As @4est notes, different programs for software oversampling, and different settings within those programs can give vastly different results.

I find a very nice benefit oversampling to DSD 128 and DSD 256 using Audirvana Plus, on ESS 9018 and ESS 9038 based DACs, via Ethernet streaming to the Sonore Signature Rendu SE.  My current filter settings are:

 

Steep:     31.0

Length:   500000

Cut:         .92

AA:          100

Pre-Ring: .30

 

And I am using the higher order modulator.

[Ralf11]

10 hours ago, Summit said:

 

Audiophiles let their ear decided that’s sound good and bad. They don’t need measurements or technical prof for what they hear, but can be interested to know them.    

 

Audiophools buy gear based sole on market claims and what other says sound good. They need measurements or technical prof because they don’t trust their ears.     

 

ears need to be distinguished from perceptions

 

 

 

 

[mansr]

1 hour ago, barrows said:

I find a very nice benefit oversampling to DSD 128 and DSD 256 using Audirvana Plus, on ESS 9018 and ESS 9038 based DACs, via Ethernet streaming to the Sonore Signature Rendu SE.  My current filter settings are:

 

Steep:     31.0

Length:   500000

Cut:         .92

AA:          100

Pre-Ring: .30

 

And I am using the higher order modulator.

Which modulator do you use? How would you characterise the differences between them?

[barrows]

2 minutes ago, mansr said:

Which modulator do you use? How would you characterise the differences between them?

i have not yet listened tested between them, too many things to test all the time!  I am using "B", 8th order.  The SoX DSM is your work yes?  Which one would you recommend from a technical perspective?

[mansr]

Just now, barrows said:

i have not yet listened tested between them, too many things to test all the time!  I am using "B", 8th order.  The SoX DSM is your work yes?  Which one would you recommend from a technical perspective?

Yes, I wrote the modulator code. I would generally recommend 7th or 8th order. The lower order ones are somewhat faster, so they can be useful for that reason. Ultimately, whatever sounds best to you on your DAC is what you should use.

[Sam Lord]

Ron Scubadiver,

 

Im sorry I was snarky Ron, its just that software makes a very  important difference in the question.  Hardware in thee DAC chassis has a huge disadvantage today, given all the processing needed for DSD512 output.  My apologies.

[GUTB]

Public service announcement: digital volume control sucks, use a real discrete analogue  pre-amp.

[opus101]

What sucks about digital volume controls?

[Ralf11]

apparently, they lost bits with attenuation some years ago

[jabbr]

54 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Public service announcement: digital volume control sucks, use a real discrete analogue  pre-amp.

 

Public service announcement: learn some math and explain to yourself why a “digital volume control” applied to a DSD512 stream has less noise / distortion than the best potentiometer you know ?

 

Or do we need DSD1024 just for your ears?

[GUTB]

Digital attenuation sucks because the result isn't hi-fi. Altough an active preamp stage adds distortion a well-matched preamp sounds much better. Fact.

[kumakuma]

13 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Digital attenuation sucks because the result isn't hi-fi. Altough an active preamp stage adds distortion a well-matched preamp sounds much better. Fact.

 

Public service announcement: Simply adding "Fact." to the end of a paragraph doesn't make everything that comes before it true. If you have actual facts, please share them.

[jabbr]

25 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Digital attenuation sucks because the result isn't hi-fi. Altough an active preamp stage adds distortion a well-matched preamp sounds much better. Fact.

 

Let’s take 120 dB SNR preamp which is a 1000000 ratio.  So an analog preamp with a 5V full range would have a noise floor of 5 microVolts. Got that?

 

DSD512 is what? 200 dB? So you’ve got about 80 dB of “volume control” before you impact on the -120dB preamp?

 

(that’s a very rough call I’m doing on my phone — @mansr or @Miska can be more precise) 

 

In any case do you get it? 

[opus101]

22 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Digital attenuation sucks because the result isn't hi-fi.

 

I see, you have an ideological disagreement with them.

[Ralf11]

"well-matched preamp"

 

- what does it have to be well-matched to?  and what does that have to do with adjustable gain?

[fas42]

2 hours ago, GUTB said:

Digital attenuation sucks because the result isn't hi-fi. Altough an active preamp stage adds distortion a well-matched preamp sounds much better. Fact.

 

Hmmm ... I heard my first dose of the "good stuff" using a CD player with digital volume doing the whole preamp thing - and ever since I have found every rig that uses normal analogue attenuation is a bit of battle, to get it into an acceptable zone for me. If you like edgy or veiled sound go for it, but I can always hear the degradation of such devices - there's no reason to leave weaknesses like this in a system, unless it's absolutely impossible to get a working setup any other way.

[GUTB]

2 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

Public service announcement: Simply adding "Fact." to the end of a paragraph doesn't make everything that comes before it true. If you have actual facts, please share them.

 

Fact in the neurotypical sense.

 

2 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

Let’s take 120 dB SNR preamp which is a 1000000 ratio.  So an analog preamp with a 5V full range would have a noise floor of 5 microVolts. Got that?

 

DSD512 is what? 200 dB? So you’ve got about 80 dB of “volume control” before you impact on the -120dB preamp?

 

(that’s a very rough call I’m doing on my phone — @mansr or @Miska can be more precise) 

 

In any case do you get it? 

 

In theory with enough bandwidth digital attenuation shouldn’t impact the sound. However in reality a discrete analogue line stage is needed to get the best results.

 

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

"well-matched preamp"

 

- what does it have to be well-matched to?  and what does that have to do with adjustable gain?

 

Matched to the amp and lesser extent the source. Make sure impedance ratios are appropriate and don’t use a pre with a lot of gain with a high-gain amp, and as with everything else go by ear.

 

if anyone wants to test this fact out for themselves just cut out the preamp and use either your DAC or something like HQPlayer to control volume in a high quality fashion. The SQ will suffer 10 out of 10 times.

[asdf1000]

3 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

Let’s take 120 dB SNR preamp which is a 1000000 ratio.  So an analog preamp with a 5V full range would have a noise floor of 5 microVolts. Got that?

 

DSD512 is what? 200 dB? So you’ve got about 80 dB of “volume control” before you impact on the -120dB preamp?

 

(that’s a very rough call I’m doing on my phone — @mansr or @Miska can be more precise) 

 

In any case do you get it? 

 

This reads far too good to be true... too much of a free lunch.

 

80dB of digital volume control can maintain precision in the digital domain yes, but not affect the analogue signal to noise ratio?

 

Let's see what mansr or miska say.

[audiventory]

18 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

80dB of digital volume control can maintain precision in the digital domain yes, but not affect the analogue signal to noise ratio?

 

Correct digital volume control don't impact to signal/noise ratio for PCM and DSD.

[asdf1000]

3 minutes ago, audiventory said:

 

Correct digital volume control don't impact to signal/noise ratio for PCM and DSD.

 

PCM too? No impact on the analogue signal/noise ratio with 80dB of digital volume control?

 

Something is wrong here (it's probably me misunderstanding something).