exaSound E68 Stereo DSD512 and 8-Channel DSD256 DAC

[Miska]

On 11/6/2020 at 11:45 PM, fds said:

According to my understanding, it is the USB usage in bulk mode on the E68 (as opposed to class compliant on the Okto) that is needed to make 8-channel DSD256 viable via USB in the first place. Maybe this imposes the DSD128 limit on the Okto DAC8.

 

Yeah, USB Audio Class limits the available bandwidth. The solution is to either use bulk mode transfer, Thunderbolt, or network.

 

[Miska]

One more option to get benefits of network interface and a multichannel DAC in a single package.

 

[Miska]

4 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

Aside from Merging, are there others?

 

Pro-audio interfaces yes, with PCM-only. But not so many options for DSD.

 

And these two are quite different. Merging is RAVENNA-only but with a driver, while S88 has multi-protocol support, including NAA and doesn't go through the audio driver layer.

 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, Kal Rubinson said:

Technically, neither does any another player/app.

 

Ehm?

[Miska]

10 hours ago, Kal Rubinson said:

Do you keep the data in 1-bit form?  If you do, how come no one else can?

 

Because they don't consider DSD important enough to spend more time implementing SDM DSP algorithms than they spend implementing PCM versions of those. HQPlayer has two separate DSP engines, one for PCM and one for SDM. I am stubborn and want all the same DSP for both PCM and SDM. One reason I don't support VST plugins or similar.

 

For distance adjustments it is bit-perfect and works even with DirectSDM, it is just N bit long delay lines for each channel. HQPlayer calculates how many bits of delay you need for given distance differences. For level adjustments signal is remodulated with given modulator either without any rate conversions, or (recommended) upsampled directly from one rate to another rate for which you have two algorithm choices.

 

1-bit -> [modulator] -> 1-bit

 

By the way, if you perform volume control for 24-bit PCM, it is not staying 24-bit... ;) I would be more worried about the DSP performed to DSD inside the ESS DAC chip. It doesn't have direct conversion mode unlike some other chips.

 

[Miska]

10 hours ago, Kal Rubinson said:

But does the modulator (or remodulator) maintain the 1-bit construction throughout?

 

It is a bit like asking how many bits your brain uses when calculating 1 + 1.

 

As you can imagine, I'm not going to describe in details how the implementation exactly works inside. But as I said, I'd worry more about what the exaSound DAC in question does to your DSD stream than what HQPlayer does.

 

10 hours ago, Kal Rubinson said:

(P.S.: I wish I could use HQPlayer with Jriver without resorting to contortions.)

 

Why HQPlayer should work with Jriver in first place?

 

[Miska]

4 minutes ago, ted_b said:

Same reason as Roon as a front end. JRIver is a great library manager and has nice remote control capabilities, etc. and HQPlayer is the state of the art for the back end. 

 

What is wrong with the current HQPlayer front ends, such as HQPlayer Client (bundled with HQPlayer Desktop, but works also with HQPlayer Embedded), HQPDcontrol and HQPWV?

 

Many times when people talk about this they have not actually tried to use HQPlayer's library in first place.

 

[Miska]

7 hours ago, ted_b said:

when it comes to library management, bulk tagging and editing

 

This doesn't need to have anything to do with the player and selecting music for playback. Just like you can edit tags with Mp3Tag. As far as I can tell, there's really nothing much in Roon about "library management".

 

Quote

remote control (client GUI)

 

Why not? What is missing?

 

Quote

it's just that we'd like to add a more seamless JRiver to the mix.

 

You can of course ask Jriver to implement similar support for controlling HQPlayer as Roon has done.