A toast to PGGB, a heady brew of math and magic

[kennyb123]

21 minutes ago, Kalpesh said:

Seems that what you laud is the sense of rythm, that is different (or is it not ?) from how high in the bandwidth the harmonics of a hit, a strike, go, that is how fast and transients they are : you might both be right with different focus which makes your wording "what were you listening to and specifically what did you find truncated with it" perfectly sound

I appreciate your response.  
 

When thinking of transients, the acronym ADSR can be really helpful.  Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release. What I was looking for was looking for was a example that pointed specifically to harm in one or more of those areas.  
 

It’s late here now so I want to keep this short.  Tomorrow I’ll provide an example of specifically where I’ve heard harm done to these areas by a component or cable.  

 

I have no doubt that HQPlayer is working wonders with your DAC.  It’s really nice to have options as each of us have different listening preferences and different sensitivities.

 

I looked back at some of your posts to try get a better sense of where you were coming from.  This reply to you explains a lot.  Do your ears tell you that PGGB “just destroys time domain performance without benefits”?  

[Kalpesh]

3 minutes ago, kennyb123 said:

I appreciate your response.  
 

When thinking of transients, the acronym ADSR can be really helpful.  Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release. What I was looking for was looking for was a example that pointed specifically to harm in one or more of those areas.  
 

It’s late here now so I want to keep this short.  Tomorrow I’ll provide an example of specifically where I’ve heard harm done to these areas by a component or cable.  

 

I have no doubt that HQPlayer is working wonders with your DAC.  It’s really nice to have options as each of us have different listening preferences and different sensitivities.

 

I looked back at some of your posts to try get a better sense of where you were coming from.  This reply to you explains a lot.  Do your ears tell you that PGGB “just destroys time domain performance without benefits”?  

you're quoting @Miska, not me ; but there again it might be a matter of semantic rather of maths : rythm/time domain ; i can see how you possibly relate them semantically

 

I think I have already described how I heard time domain destroyed by PGGB : when I lose the soundstage, space, perspective, all things phase/time domain related afaik : it's clear with the Sengam exemple with my DAC but with a few recordings it's the other way round : PCM shines and within that subset some are even better, including space cues, thanks to better micro information extraction, I guess, overcoming shortcomings, PGGBed

[kennyb123]

1 hour ago, Kalpesh said:

you're quoting @Miska, not me ; but there again it might be a matter of semantic rather of maths : rythm/time domain ; i can see how you possibly relate them semantically

 

I think I have already described how I heard time domain destroyed by PGGB : when I lose the soundstage, space, perspective, all things phase/time domain related afaik : it's clear with the Sengam exemple with my DAC but with a few recordings it's the other way round : PCM shines and within that subset some are even better, including space cues, thanks to better micro information extraction, I guess, overcoming shortcomings, PGGBed

Truncating transients has been the topic.  A transient is a short burst of sound.  Truncating a transient means that the burst is either shortened in duration or extent.  It's a simple concept and our music is filled will all kinds of transients.  That you are choosing instead to talk about tangential qualities, like losing the soundstage or space perspective is bizarre.  Yes timing does impact our perception of these.  But the actual phrase you've repeated a number of is some variation of "truncates transients".  

 

I won't be responding to you again as it doesn't seem to me that you are inclined to argue in good faith. 

 

[semente]

9 hours ago, Kalpesh said:

If you try by yourself as you should :

 

I doubt your RME would benefit from full file conditioning as Chord DACs do (and though I soon unchecked apodizing systematically, I do not concur with Chord's Rob Watts that apodizing in PGGB is a liability)

 

There are good chances you would dig what Jussi means by transients truncation if you listen to music with real drums

 

BUT

 

Maybe if you have eQ you will be seduced by eQ imprinted in PGGB, I think deep bass are deeper and more impactlull (but then there's a trade off with drums transients and I ended up fiddling with HQP filters to obtain a besting compromise)

 

And if you have early digital recordings that sound congested with a lack of resolution that feels like harshness, ie  on vocals, you can use PGGB as I did : as a remastering tool upsampling 44.1 into 352.8, no apodizing, no dither, 64 bits f output maximum transparency. You can even further upsample those 352.8 PCM into DSD 256. I found circa 1979 recorded operas to benefit, providing a more relaxed listening experience and enhanced sense of venue acoustics : Wagner/Boulez Ring, Wozzeck with Anja Silja, Mozart/Harnoncourt/Idomeneo. I also much prefer my PGGG remaster of Gould's Brahms over the official 24/44.1 remaster. Several early digital piano recordings benefitted too from the tiny bit of extra resolution thanks to reconstruction with millions of sinc coefficients

 

 

 

 

What do you mean by "remaster"? Are you EQ'ing as well as upscaling? Also I have the impression that upscaling requires the use of dither...

And in what way is it different from on-the-fly upscaling?

[musicjunkie917]

8 hours ago, kennyb123 said:

I won't be responding to you again as it doesn't seem to me that you are inclined to argue in good faith.

 

Wow. You don't like what someone says and now you determine they are not arguing in good faith? Who do you think you are?

[austinpop]

Ok folks, enough with the bickering. You don’t like PGGB, that’s fine, move on. Nobody said it’s for everyone and all DACs. 

[kennyb123]

15 minutes ago, musicjunkie917 said:

 

Wow. You don't like what someone says and now you determine they are not arguing in good faith? Who do you think you are?

Clearly I was taking issue with how he was defending his assertions.  My paragraph prior to what you quoted made that clear.  If one is going to disparage the reproduction of transients, then their defense of their assertion should be able to be made by actually talking about transients.  

 

[davide256]

has anyone used the SRC-DX with the Holo Spring 3 KTE and if so what were your conclusions vs its USB input?

 

I've listened/researched and concluded that I prefer NOS DAC sound to Chord DAC. The Spring 3 KTE is NOS and has a very nice USB section which would allow full PGGB rates,

I have not been able to find a NOS DAC that supports higher than 192 on SPDIF/coax and am finding that the SRC-DX with a Metrum Octave works very well, much more

enjoyable than using a Denafrips Iris DDC. So am considering the Spring 3 as a logical next upgrade but not certain whether the better USB of a KTE would go unused if I have the

SRC-DX.

[Kalpesh]

23 hours ago, semente said:

 

What do you mean by "remaster"? Are you EQ'ing as well as upscaling? Also I have the impression that upscaling requires the use of dither...

And in what way is it different from on-the-fly upscaling?

I take the term "remaster" from @austinpop featured article where he writes : "Finally, I used PGGB, a remastering tool, to upsample my music files offline, so the DAVE only ever sees 24-bit, 16FS (705.6/768kHz) music streams. "

 

I used PGGB to upsample to 352.8/64 bits float with benefit a few 44.1 music files but my HOLO MAY sees 20 bits 32FS music streams, the final upsampling being made by HQP where dithering occurs.

 

I'm in a delicate situation to answer your last question : I'm neither a PGGB champion nor a PGGB basher, and you should ask champions and consult PGGB's FAQ. Right or wrong I just tried to find a use for the thing : IMO there's no point in PGGBing all files with my DAC and I'll stick to on-the-fly upscaling of native files with HQP ; however, I found PGGB, thanks to hundred of millions taps or sinc coefficients that require extensive off line calculations, to better reconstruct a few early digital recordings that I find harsher, probably due to a lack of resolution with mere on the fly upsampling : a welcome tiny bit of extra focus/resolution that is beneficial in borderline situations such as forte vocals in 1979 digitally recorded operas in exemple, and that overcomes whatever shortcomings (or, more often, absence of clear benefit justifying the trouble) might exist

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Miska]

12 minutes ago, Kalpesh said:

with mere on the fly upsampling

 

This is your mistake. It is not "mere on the fly". There are no trade-offs made in any HQPlayer algorithms for the reason that they run on the fly. My approach has always been that "you need to buy fast enough computer". If you cannot run some algorithm, you need to go shopping for a faster computer. Everything is 100% quality driven.

 

Of course, if you want offline processing, there's HQPlayer 4 Pro for that purpose.

 

[Kalpesh]

5 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

This is your mistake. It is not "mere on the fly". There are no trade-offs made in any HQPlayer algorithms for the reason that they run on the fly. My approach has always been that "you need to buy fast enough computer". If you cannot run some algorithm, you need to go shopping for a faster computer. Everything is 100% quality driven.

 

Of course, if you want offline processing, there's HQPlayer 4 Pro for that purpose.

 

and which algorithm would you recommend testing with  borderline situations such as forte vocals in 1979 digitally recorded operas ? PCM route ? SDM route ? 

[Miska]

15 minutes ago, Kalpesh said:

and which algorithm would you recommend testing with  borderline situations such as forte vocals in 1979 digitally recorded operas ? PCM route ? SDM route ? 

 

Digital recording from -79? Or digitized analog recording?

 

poly-sinc-gauss-long is pretty good all-rounder for classical music. DSD256 with ASDM7ECv2 since you are on a Holo DAC.

 

With Holo DACs, remember to set PCM gain compensation to -6 dB when comparing PCM vs DSD. Since the DAC has 6 dB level difference between the two.

 

[Kalpesh]

7 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Digital recording from -79? Or digitized analog recording?

 

poly-sinc-gauss-long is pretty good all-rounder for classical music. DSD256 with ASDM7ECv2 since you are on a Holo DAC.

 

With Holo DACs, remember to set PCM gain compensation to -6 dB when comparing PCM vs DSD. Since the DAC has 6 dB level difference between the two.

 

thank you. I'll answer on the HQP thread

[semente]

2 hours ago, Kalpesh said:

I take the term "remaster" from @austinpop featured article where he writes : "Finally, I used PGGB, a remastering tool, to upsample my music files offline, so the DAVE only ever sees 24-bit, 16FS (705.6/768kHz) music streams. "

 

I see that it wasn't really remastering but "remastering".

I understand that PGGB is useful for Chord DAC users because it performs better than their MScaler, if it sounds better to you than an on-the-fly solution then you should use it.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

18 minutes ago, semente said:

I understand that PGGB is useful for Chord DAC users because it performs better than their MScaler

I have mentioned this before, any DAC that can benifit from upsampling (without doing further processing or doing minimal processing) can potentially benifit from software upsampling, be it PGGB or HQP or other algorithms. The philosophies differ, and the sound signature differs. PGGB offers limited options, and the options were chosen based on extensive beta testing and to me made most mathematical sense in terms of signal reconstruction. After all, the end goal of upsampling is to reconstruct the music signal at a higher sample rate as accurately as possible. While doing this, there are tradeoffs, and different approaches make different set of tradeoffs. 

 

Offline processing at higher rates does come with a storage cost and it may not be for everyone. There is also the option for close to real-time processing using PGGB, for now it is available as a foobar-plugin and hopefully we could expand to other players when time allows.

 

I agree a majority of PGGB users are those who have Chord DAC as there seems to be some amount of synergy with how PGGB upsamples and Chord's processing and even though Chord DACs further process PGGB upsampled tracks, they still seem to benifit. However, there are also many R2R DAC users who use PGGB upsampling at the highest rate their DAC allows and put the R2R DACs in NOS mode and also take advantage of noise shaping in PGGB to linearize the last few bits of R2R DACs. Some of these same R2R DAC also have a SDM mode and benifit from DSD or PCM unsampled using HQP too without any further processing, but again it comes down to preferences and also convenience. I think it is a great time for audiophiles to have all these choices and I don't see any reason to argue if one method is better than the other. 

 

Then there are Sigma delta DACs from both ESS and AKM that allow NOS mode or very minimal processing and many use PGGB upsampling with these DACs too. I myself use both my Chord DAC and a AKM DAC (Vinnie-Rossie L2) in NOS mode and am equally happy with them both.

 

[Miska]

19 minutes ago, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

Then there are Sigma delta DACs from both ESS and AKM that allow NOS mode or very minimal processing and many use PGGB upsampling with these DACs too. I myself use both my Chord DAC and a AKM DAC (Vinnie-Rossie L2) in NOS mode and am equally happy with them both.

 

Those are not really NOS with PCM. Just bypassing the digital filter stage. Equivalent of bypassing the WTA1 stage on Chord. They still perform oversampling through SAH (aka S/H aka zero-order-hold), or linear interpolation (Chord), which is very crude way to increase sampling rate.

 

ESS and AKM become NOS only with DSD inputs since then the rates can be used as actual D/A conversion rates.

 

DAC manufacturers have just decided to call the DAC chip's "external digital filter mode" with "NOS". This shouldn't be confused with actual NOS operation.

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

15 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Those are not really NOS with PCM. Just bypassing the digital filter stage. Equivalent of bypassing the WTA1 stage on Chord. They still perform oversampling through SAH (aka S/H aka zero-order-hold), or linear interpolation (Chord), which is very crude way to increase sampling rate.

 

ESS and AKM become NOS only with DSD inputs since then the rates can be used as actual D/A conversion rates.

 

DAC manufacturers have just decided to call the DAC chip's "external digital filter mode" with "NOS". This shouldn't be confused with actual NOS operation.

 

Agreed there is no true NOS mode on many of these DACs (except for some R2R ACs), and they just bypass the digital filter stage, and some of these DACs even call their slow filter NOS, my point being, when fed with high PCM rates, these DACs can still benifit from upsampling. It then comes down to what one prefers DSD upsampling or PCM upsampling.

 

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

31 minutes ago, Miska said:

or linear interpolation (Chord), which is very crude way to increase sampling rate.

This is not entirely true, while linear interpolation is the final stage of the upsampling, WTA1 is followed by WTA2 which uses digital filters. And while you may not agree with the philosophy Chord uses, Chord DACs are loved by many including me. Which is why I keep reiterating that - holding on to and harping on the same points again and again does not necessarily make one approach superior than the other.

[Miska]

4 minutes ago, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

Agreed there is no true NOS mode on many of these DACs (except for some R2R ACs), and they just bypass the digital filter stage, and some of these DACs even call their slow filter NOS, my point being, when fed with high PCM rates, these DACs can still benifit from upsampling.

 

Yes...

 

4 minutes ago, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

It then comes down to what one prefers DSD upsampling or PCM upsampling.

 

It comes down to which way squeezes best performance out of the hardware.

 

But I personally find it unacceptable that something S/H or linear interpolation is being performed for my music. Just because the DAC's DSP is so resource constrained. Same applies for modulator algorithms. I prefer DAC to be just that, a Digital to Analog Converter, bit-perfect. I can do all the needed DSP better on computer, while anyway running all the digital room correction, headphone correction, cross-feed and what ever.

[Miska]

2 minutes ago, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

This is not entirely true, while linear interpolation is the final stage of the upsampling, WTA1 is followed by WTA2 which uses digital filters.

 

I don't do crap like linear interpolation at all. It is just not fit for audio. There's simply no need to.

 

[ray-dude]

Since things are heating up again, a reminder to keep things civil, and an ask (as OP) to keep discussions focused on listening impressions, and technical context that may be helpful in understanding listening impressions.

 

There is a lot of value in debating different digital processing strategies for audio, but an impressions thread for PGGB is not the best place for that. 

[kennyb123]

Bad-mouthing the competition is never a good thing.  I’ve appreciated that @Zaphod Beeblebrox has remained positive and has complimented (and even recommended) other approaches.  

 

I think we’d all learn more if the conversation was aimed at highlighting the strengths.  Instead of saying that one product harms transient, make a positive case for how transients can be bettered another way, and provide repeatable examples so others can try themselves to hear this themselves.  The conversation should lead to greater musical enjoyment.  

The first two points here are good.

[musicjunkie917]

I didn’t read anyone badmouthing the competition. What I read was someone stating facts about aspects of a product. This idea that you can’t point out shortcomings is ridiculous.

[ray-dude]

(putting on my OP hat)

 

Folks, let's stay on topic with listening impressions for PGGB please (thank you)

[edwardsean]

I don’t know if this was addressed before, but do those of you using Dave, engage its HF filter with PGGB 16fs files?

 

I had it turned off as I assumed it wasn’t necessary since PGGB has its own HF filter. However, I’ve been experimenting and enabling it has a positive effect. To my ears, it seems to be cleaning up some out of band noise coming from somewhere.