Streaming, transcoded to DSD

Some DACs perform better with DSD files.  Simple as.

But DSD is rarely used as a native recording format. So why would you want to convert from 'native' to non native is beyond me...

If you have a suitable DAC (such as NDAC with the latest firmware), a right USB/SPDIF isolator, a MM and A+, give it a try .

Apparently, Damien thinks it is a good thing.

I don't know why you would want to transcode anything. But it's not dangerous or illegal so nothing to fret about. I have one album which is DSD and it has a "life like" presentation which is attractive and believable. I don't know if this is an attribute of DSD files. If there was more material I could do a more meaningful comparison.  With a fair bit of stuff on SACD (even if now discontinued in many cases) and therefore stored somewhere as DSD, it's probably only a matter of time before the industry sees another way of getting people like me to buy the same stuff again. Again..

Adam Zielinski posted:

But DSD is rarely used as a native recording format. So why would you want to convert from 'native' to non native is beyond me...

Because internally a DAC very rarely goes direct from the native PCM to analogue.  And in some cases a DAC will sound different / better if fed DSD vs PCM.

So although its maybe against audio philosophy ... converting from 24/96 to DSD256 and then the DAC converting to analogue may sound better as you skip some of the DACs internal processing.

Harry posted:

I don't know why you would want to transcode anything. 

Because it may sound better.  Its the same reason that Naim in the nDAC upsample everything to (iirc) 24/768 before passing it to the TI PCM1704 chip rather than just passing 16/44.1 from your CD rip directly to the PCM1704 and letting that do all the conversion.

Below is the explanation given by Audirvana's developer. As someone has already observed it is likely to depend on the specific DAC - but if your renderer can do it, no harm giving it a try and assessing.

"Strong increase in Sound Quality with PCM to DSD upsampling
This is the ultimate step in upsampling to send to the DAC the closest signal to the one used internally in its DAC chip immediately before the conversion to analog. This enables, with native DSD compatible DACs, to bypass all digital filters and processing done in the DAC chip by those done by Audirvana Plus.

The Mac computer CPU is much more powerful than the DAC chip and thus enables to use much more sophisticated upsampling algorithms to give strongly increased sound quality."

Eloise posted:

Harry posted:

I don't know why you would want to transcode anything. 

Because it may sound better. 

The only DSD album I have is available in PCM also. I don't know what the original format was although I'm close to certain it wasn't DSD. The presentation of DSD seems lucid and lifelike (only based on a sample of one) so one has to wonder if the original was a superb recording of if DSD's presentation is more pleasing to my  ears. If the latter, we   are talking about post processing/colouration of some sort. So we're back to different versus better. And after a long period of "straight through" being considered the best path for faithful reproduction, we're back in a new era of switches, filters and knobs. Again. And round we go. Again.

Harry posted:

Eloise posted:

Harry posted:

I don't know why you would want to transcode anything. 

Because it may sound better. 

The only DSD album I have is available in PCM also. I don't know what the original format was although I'm close to certain it wasn't DSD. The presentation of DSD seems lucid and lifelike (only based on a sample of one) so one has to wonder if the original was a superb recording of if DSD's presentation is more pleasing to my  ears. If the latter, we   are talking about post processing/colouration of some sort. So we're back to different versus better. And after a long period of "straight through" being considered the best path for faithful reproduction, we're back in a new era of switches, filters and knobs. Again. And round we go. Again.

Well first off I'm using the term "sound better" as meaning "its more enjoyable to listen to".  Frankly I don't really care what the original may have sounded like live - unless we are talking an acoustic recording its all gone through many stages of processing and mixing that "live" means nothing (IMO).

So yes ... "different" is perhaps more accurate ... but "different and more enjoyable" equals "better" to my mind.  Thats not to say its better for everyone ... but what is important is that things are better to the individual listener.

You said 'after a long period of "straight through" being considered the best path for faithful reproduction' but to my mind the issue is that nothing in digital is "straight through".  Almost every CD player has has some form of oversampling from the start (iirc) to get around the issues of digital playback.  There is never a "one true way" of getting from a digital file to an analogue waveform which drives the speaker, so suggesting that transcoding and up sampling is wrong is a bit of a red herring (all IMO).