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Mp3 to DSD Conversion


Mitch

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I wish to do off-line conversion of Mp3 files to DSD (or for that matter any PMC file to DSD).  Is there a freeware converter out there please.  I think it is possible using the Foobar dsd plug-in, but I think this only runs in J Rivers and may need an iFi DAC, neither of which I have.  There also may be a couple of professional audio software suites that could do the conversion but they are very expensive.  Ideally I would like to do it in Foobar.

 

Grateful for any advice.

 

thanks

Mitch

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6 hours ago, Mitch said:

Is there a freeware converter out there please. 

 

Look at DSD converter list https://samplerateconverter.com/audio-converter/list

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1 hour ago, NOMBEDES said:

I am confused.   If MP3 is the Ford Pinto of encoding, how can it be "upgraded"  through any means to DSD?  What would the result be? A perfect DSD file of some horrid MP3 file?   

"take a tin can, step on it ..... now attempt to straighten it"  Hence compression.

 

 

The right keyword is crap in (MP3), crap out

Yes. G.I = G.O 

 

Also, we need to remember that with .mp3 even at 320Kilobits CBR the best we can hope for is normally a frequency response to  19KHZ if we are lucky .  Lower Bitrates will further markedly reduce this bandwidth.

A conversion to 16/44.1 PCM may be a better option ?

 

How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file.

PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020

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Thanks guys  - I will try the search.  A very helpful member on Hydrogen Audio suggested that the new SoX on source forge does PMC - DSD so will try that too.  I am also told that the Foobar dsd plug in will do 'on the fly' conversion - but not sure how.  I had rather wanted to do it off-line and convert PMC files to DSD files.

 

It is interesting that no one on this forum, or Hydrogen Audio has actually said - 'yes, I have tried this and it does not work'.  What if (only a 'what it' you understand) that because of the way DSD is processed the conversion, although it dosn't produce a better sound, might produce a different sound (like some kind of filter) - a sound that some people might find more pleasing?  If that were so, would it not be worth trying to find out?  (Way out of my depth here, but for example, what if the way the noise floor is handled in DSD makes a small difference?).  The only people who seem to have actually tried it are the iFi team who have done blind listening tests and say that there is a difference:

 

https://ifi-audio.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/JRMC-MP3-to-DSD512.pdf

 

Mitch

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2 minutes ago, Mitch said:

Thanks guys  - I will try the search.  A very helpful member on Hydrogen Audio suggested that the new SoX on source forge does PMC - DSD so will try that too.  I am also told that the Foobar dsd plug in will do 'on the fly' conversion - but not sure how.  I had rather wanted to do it off-line and convert PMC files to DSD files.

SoX on Sourceforge doesn't support DSD. There are executables with DSD support for various systems at https://audiodigitale.eu/repo/sox/.

 

2 minutes ago, Mitch said:

It is interesting that no one on this forum, or Hydrogen Audio has actually said - 'yes, I have tried this and it does not work'.  What if (only a 'what it' you understand) that because of the way DSD is processed the conversion, although it dosn't produce a better sound, might produce a different sound (like some kind of filter) - a sound that some people might find more pleasing?  If that were so, would it not be worth trying to find out?  (Way out of my depth here, but for example, what if the way the noise floor is handled in DSD makes a small difference?).

Of course any given DAC might handle the signal reconstructed from the mp3 differently if it is converted to DSD. This is no different from any other PCM source.

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6 minutes ago, Mitch said:

Windows defender does not want me to run the app https://audiodigitale.eu/repo/sox/sox-dsd-mansr-git-x86_64-w64-mingw32.exe (which I think is the right one for my 64 bit lap top)

Do you think it will be ok to run it anyway?

What reason does Windows Defender give? If it's just that the file is from an untrusted source, it should be fine. That's not my server, however, so I can't be certain there's nothing nefarious there.

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24 minutes ago, Mitch said:

It says this:

 

'Windows defender smart screen prevented an unrecognised app from starting.  Running this app might put your PC at risk'

 

I know one can never be totally sure.

I think that just means it can't verify the origin of the app, not that it detected anything actually malicious.

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Hi Mitch,

Don't know if this will help you or not but a while back as a test I converted some 16/44.1 wav files to dsd 64 using Korg's AudioGate software and could not discern any difference in playback between the wav & dsd files played through a dsd capable dac without upsampling or the use of filters. Using HQPlayer I can definitely hear a difference when a PCM file is upsampled to DSD 128 or higher but I suspect the filters used are an important part of that difference.

 

Regards,

Mario

 

 

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Several years ago I created very poor performance 44.1kHz 16bit WAV to 2.8MHz 1bit converter (IIRC 2nd order noise shaper) and found the sound difference, constantly annoying noise is heard from 2.8MHz 1bit :)

 

by increasing noise shaping filter order, sound quickly becomes not so different from original 44.1kHz 16bit PCM, I cannot hear the SQ difference with 4th or higher order noise shaping filter

Sunday programmer since 1985

Developer of PlayPcmWin

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On 12/10/2018 at 12:10 AM, Mitch said:

I wish to do off-line conversion of Mp3 files to DSD (or for that matter any PMC file to DSD).  Is there a freeware converter out there please.  I think it is possible using the Foobar dsd plug-in, but I think this only runs in J Rivers and may need an iFi DAC, neither of which I have.  There also may be a couple of professional audio software suites that could do the conversion but they are very expensive.  Ideally I would like to do it in Foobar.

 

Grateful for any advice.

 

thanks

Mitch

I just have to ask. Why would you (or anybody for that matter) want to convert an MP3 file to DSD? I can see going the other way (for convenience on some portable player), but not MP3 to DSD. 

George

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5 hours ago, yamamoto2002 said:

Several years ago I created very poor performance 44.1kHz 16bit WAV to 2.8MHz 1bit converter (IIRC 2nd order noise shaper) and found the sound difference, constantly annoying noise is heard from 2.8MHz 1bit :)

 

by increasing noise shaping filter order, sound quickly becomes not so different from original 44.1kHz 16bit PCM, I cannot hear the SQ difference with 4th or higher order noise shaping filter

 

I've experimented with DSD a bit and found that a 7th or 8th order NS was necessary for best (computed) results. My 8th order noise shaper working on DSD256 produces a signal that matches up to the same recording in 96KHz/24bits better than -120dB if you consider up to about 36KHz. Starts to diverge a bit after that causing about a 10dB jump between 36 and 48KHz, which is still below -100dB, so not bad at all.

 

image.thumb.png.31d799d231c9d3762b0c3b7fd3b62bc7.png

 

Phase is also nearly perfectly matched up to about 25Khz, but then starts to diverge.

image.thumb.png.143572a8a0eb52fc82487fdc9233a3fa.png

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5 hours ago, gmgraves said:

I just have to ask. Why would you (or anybody for that matter) want to convert an MP3 file to DSD? I can see going the other way (for convenience on some portable player), but not MP3 to DSD. 

 

I think a potential reason we could accept is the artist recorded or distributed the files as mp3. The 90's and early 00's saw a lot of capability wasted to this end.  An attempted improvement is not without some willingness to be laughed at. Or looked at sideways. 

 

I took the ugliest lowest bit rate and clearest best sounding mp3's at hand and used a few programs to do offline upconversions to DSD128. As a lark because I could in a very brief amount of time. Style of music and what was contained on the file had a fairly large impact within the small range you'd expect. In a very slim amount of recordings it proved almost worth the effort. The single effort expended on it alone. 

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7 hours ago, gmgraves said:

I just have to ask. Why would you (or anybody for that matter) want to convert an MP3 file to DSD?

As I explained earlier, it was the iFi Technote that aroused my interest - generally I believe in the maxim that you cannot get something for nothing, and I certainly did not expect to be able to recover what was forever lost in the compression - but if, like a filter, the conversion made a difference of any sort, would the resultant sound be more pleasing to me - maybe enough to go back and listen to some of the mp3 files or 16/44.1 files I have and never open?  It would be very interesting if we could persuade the iFi guys to put their view - does anyone know them?

 

I have read the recent posts from marioed, yamamoto2002, pkane2001 and rando with great interest - thanks.  I am grateful to manser for his patience - I was not expecting Sox to have no user interface!  I am now embarking on a 'teach yourself' command line, as I have not used it before (that should keep me out of the way over Christmas).  The 41 pages of instructions that come with SoX are currently well beyond me!  Am I right in thinking though that manser's dsd .exe is like a plug-in for Sox or is it independent?

 

Mitch

 

 

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12 hours ago, marioed said:

but I suspect the filters used are an important part of that difference.

 

When DSD modulator is designed, we are need balance between

  1. filter steepness (noise level at the modulator output);
  2. the modulator stability (overload tolerance).

Read details here ("Noise, Maximal Level and Stability Issues" oart): https://samplerateconverter.com/educational/what-is-dsd-audio

 

In our software, to keep goal #2 for better goal #1, we use third element - stability keeper.

 

The problem in more actual at lowest DSD sample rates D64 and 128.

 

I'd don't concentrate at abstract filter order.
Filter order define goal #1 and other filter parameters.
But actual result is design matter. For same order we can get diffetent filters.

AuI ConverteR 48x44 - HD audio converter/optimizer for DAC of high resolution files

ISO, DSF, DFF (1-bit/D64/128/256/512/1024), wav, flac, aiff, alac,  safe CD ripper to PCM/DSF,

Seamless Album Conversion, AIFF, WAV, FLAC, DSF metadata editor, Mac & Windows
Offline conversion save energy and nature

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8 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Why would you (or anybody for that matter) want to convert an MP3 file to DSD?

 

To fit audio file to audio resolution of DAC with minimal distortions.

 

Read details here: https://samplerateconverter.com/content/how-improve-sound-quality

AuI ConverteR 48x44 - HD audio converter/optimizer for DAC of high resolution files

ISO, DSF, DFF (1-bit/D64/128/256/512/1024), wav, flac, aiff, alac,  safe CD ripper to PCM/DSF,

Seamless Album Conversion, AIFF, WAV, FLAC, DSF metadata editor, Mac & Windows
Offline conversion save energy and nature

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3 hours ago, MetalNuts said:

I am afraid that you are looking in the wrong place.  Most if not all members here prefer uncompressed files with at least 16/44.1 quality and most understand that it is not the format of the files matters most but the quality of the original recording.  A lossy format like MP3 cannot be made better by converting it to other loseless format. 

 

I'm with you.  I think I know as much about the quality of a recording as anyone - that is why for years I have been collecting, and spending a small fortune, on specific Decca, Columbia and EMI recordings, and latterly good quality SACDs.  That is why I rarely ever play 16/44.1 and never mp3.

 

However, whether I am in the 'wrong place': I think maybe not.  Where else would an analog dinosaur like me get the chance to pick the brains of some of the best informed computer audiophiles on the planet on a genuine computer audio question? Many of the posts on this thread have been very helpful and interesting.  I think CA is great.

 

But here's a question on performance and recording quality - would you sooner listen to a great performace/recording, even though it was subsequently compressed, as opposed to a mediocre HD recording?  This goes back to the old vinyl chestnut - are we listening to the sound or the music?

 

Mitch

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