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Author Topic: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?  (Read 21864 times)

Barry Hufker

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #30 on: June 30, 2008, 11:30:06 AM »

High Definition DVD has already fallen.  I believe Blu-Ray is not far behind in being a non-starter.  And well they ought to be.  I believe people are sick and tired of one new format after another.  That, among other reasons such as not being able to burn one on a computer, is what killed SACD.  MP3s are the "new cassette" - acceptable sound and great convenience.  And as far as most people are concerned, CD is the symbol of "perfect reproduction".

It's going to take something special to get people to accept another new format.

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bruno putzeys

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #31 on: June 30, 2008, 12:50:46 PM »

IMHO the problem is that each time someone tries getting a new format out, a format war insues. These are situations where the Free Market fails time and again.
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Barry Hufker

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #32 on: June 30, 2008, 01:20:21 PM »

I agree with that, certainly.  But Sony and others are busy creating formats no one wants or needs.  And it is knowing that down the pike there is another incompatible format waiting in the wings.  We just have to put up with the current offering because R&D needs to be paid for.  But I believe the public has had it with this cycle, and rightly so.

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JSam

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #33 on: June 30, 2008, 04:21:32 PM »

Bruno Putzeys wrote on Mon, 30 June 2008 09:50

IMHO the problem is that each time someone tries getting a new format out, a format war insues. These are situations where the Free Market fails time and again.

We still have both 33 1/3 RPM, 12" and 45 RPM, 7" standards from that format war, and most people were/are fine with both.

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Jon Halverson

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #34 on: July 01, 2008, 02:51:05 PM »

And Best Buy has started to carry vinyl on a trial basis in some stores.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/10/vinyl.records.ap/
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MDM,

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #35 on: July 04, 2008, 12:32:20 PM »

Barry is not the only professional I've heard who praises DSD's sonic qualities.

not all DSD needs to become PCM.. and why should it?

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sui-city

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #36 on: July 05, 2008, 07:02:44 AM »

JSam wrote on Mon, 30 June 2008 22:21

Bruno Putzeys wrote on Mon, 30 June 2008 09:50

IMHO the problem is that each time someone tries getting a new format out, a format war insues. These are situations where the Free Market fails time and again.

We still have both 33 1/3 RPM, 12" and 45 RPM, 7" standards from that format war, and most people were/are fine with both.




I wouldn't view that as a format war, but even if you do, consumers wouldn't need 3 different players to be able to play them all.
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Tomas Danko

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #37 on: July 05, 2008, 09:33:18 AM »

MDM, wrote on Fri, 04 July 2008 17:32

Barry is not the only professional I've heard who praises DSD's sonic qualities.

not all DSD needs to become PCM.. and why should it?



By the time it ends up on a CD or sold through iTunes it's been "PCM"ed.

I figure the best way to take full advantage of DSD, besides sitting there listening to unedited personal recordings, is to feed it into the analog loop during the mastering stage before it's being captured again (could be with DSD). Then you perform the offline decimation process and assemble your record.
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bruno putzeys

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #38 on: July 05, 2008, 10:23:18 AM »

MDM, wrote on Fri, 04 July 2008 18:32

Barry is not the only professional I've heard who praises DSD's sonic qualities.

The "so many xyz can't be wrong" argument is based on the notion that a lot of anecdotal evidence should somehow be worth a single piece of properly controlled evidence. Not so. I'm still waiting for anyone who's done a comparison between DSD & PCM that wasn't somehow flawed (e.g. using different converters) or badly controlled (e.g. sighted) and that still demonstrated a clear advantage of DSD over PCM. One is reminded that DSD *is* PCM, albeit at a 1 bit word length at a higher sampling rate. So what aspect of DSD is the one that does the magic? The use of one bit? Very few DSD converters actually convert directly to one bit (mine does). Is it the high sampling rate? Never mind that DSD chains typically have 50kHz lowpass filters? Or is it the indispensible noise shaping that somehow imparts magic to the music? I'd say long live sigmadelta modulation (single or multibit alike) because it allows one to make great converters, and long live PCM because it offers the best SNR/Bandwidth combination for any given data rate (and allows you to do more to a signal than just store it).
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Barry Hufker

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #39 on: July 05, 2008, 11:17:11 AM »

Max is very kind to name me as someone who has heard DSD and enjoyed it.  That Max would even mention me is (and I'm being sincere) an honor.

I just want to clarify my experience as having made a reasonable test but by no means a thoroughly scientific one.  My surprise came at how much better DSD sounded the day I experimented with it than the highly regarded PCM converter I compared it with.

When people mention who regards which system over which other, please remember mine was just an informal assessment.  My voice should be no "louder" or "stronger" one way or the other than anyone else's.  And anecdotal "evidence" should always be considered opinion no matter how strongly or briefly held.

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bruno putzeys

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #40 on: July 05, 2008, 11:33:47 AM »

Barry Hufker wrote on Sat, 05 July 2008 17:17

Anecdotal "evidence" should always be considered opinion no matter how strongly or briefly held.

The function of anecdotal evidence is to spur the search for high-quality evidence. Rejecting anecdotal evidence out of hand is quite foolish, unless the science on which the rejection is based is really solid (e.g. it's been tried a hundred times before to no avail). So this is why I think it makes sense to try and repeat the experiment under controlled conditions. In this case that means taking the DSD recording, converting it to PCM and back and then comparing them. This completely eliminates the AD and DA converters as variables. Even a negative outcome would be valuable from a practical perspective, because that would show that you can make better recordings by using the converter in question, but at the same time that you can dispense with the hassle of trying to run the rest of the signal chain in DSD.
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Tomas Danko

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #41 on: July 05, 2008, 02:12:09 PM »

Bruno Putzeys wrote on Sat, 05 July 2008 15:23

MDM, wrote on Fri, 04 July 2008 18:32

Barry is not the only professional I've heard who praises DSD's sonic qualities.

The "so many xyz can't be wrong" argument is based on the notion that a lot of anecdotal evidence should somehow be worth a single piece of properly controlled evidence. Not so. I'm still waiting for anyone who's done a comparison between DSD & PCM that wasn't somehow flawed (e.g. using different converters) or badly controlled (e.g. sighted) and that still demonstrated a clear advantage of DSD over PCM. One is reminded that DSD *is* PCM, albeit at a 1 bit word length at a higher sampling rate. So what aspect of DSD is the one that does the magic? The use of one bit? Very few DSD converters actually convert directly to one bit (mine does). Is it the high sampling rate? Never mind that DSD chains typically have 50kHz lowpass filters? Or is it the indispensible noise shaping that somehow imparts magic to the music? I'd say long live sigmadelta modulation (single or multibit alike) because it allows one to make great converters, and long live PCM because it offers the best SNR/Bandwidth combination for any given data rate (and allows you to do more to a signal than just store it).


Thank you once more for pointing this out, Bruno. It can't be said too often.
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Jon Hodgson

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #42 on: July 05, 2008, 03:04:47 PM »

Bruno Putzeys wrote on Sat, 05 July 2008 15:23

MDM, wrote on Fri, 04 July 2008 18:32

Barry is not the only professional I've heard who praises DSD's sonic qualities.

The "so many xyz can't be wrong" argument is based on the notion that a lot of anecdotal evidence should somehow be worth a single piece of properly controlled evidence. Not so. I'm still waiting for anyone who's done a comparison between DSD & PCM that wasn't somehow flawed (e.g. using different converters) or badly controlled (e.g. sighted) and that still demonstrated a clear advantage of DSD over PCM. One is reminded that DSD *is* PCM, albeit at a 1 bit word length at a higher sampling rate. So what aspect of DSD is the one that does the magic? The use of one bit? Very few DSD converters actually convert directly to one bit (mine does). Is it the high sampling rate? Never mind that DSD chains typically have 50kHz lowpass filters? Or is it the indispensible noise shaping that somehow imparts magic to the music? I'd say long live sigmadelta modulation (single or multibit alike) because it allows one to make great converters, and long live PCM because it offers the best SNR/Bandwidth combination for any given data rate (and allows you to do more to a signal than just store it).


I wonder how many people would cease to hear any superiority in DSD if they came to really understand what it ia and how it works. There is a certain misconception amongst many people that it somehow does things "differently" from PCM, that it is based on different principles and theories and by working and sounding better (to the listener's perception) proves the listener's strongly held beliefs that there is something wrong with this whole sampling/nyquist/20kHz thing...

What they don't understand is that far from being something different, DSD is actually an EXTREME case of the sampling concepts that PCM is based on, that it works at all is proof not only of shannon/myquist, but also of noise shaping. It's a 1 bit noise shaped PCM.

Max said in another thread that he liked DSD and liked the philosophy of it...

Well the philosophy of DSD max is that what the Signal Processing types have been telling you for years and you've been insisting is wrong is actually right, that's the maths it works under, it still follows all the same maths and theories.... so do you still like the philosophy of it Max?
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Barry Hufker

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #43 on: July 05, 2008, 03:57:54 PM »

I had no idea what to expect when I recorded the same live music onto DSD and PCM.  I didn't think one might sound better than the other.  I simply had no clue.  I understand DSD is the root of modern PCM recording, but I was surprised at how much better (in that situation) DSD sounded than the PCM version of it.

I have no idea why it sounded better and no idea as to why it might sound better.  As I thought about it afterwards, I would have thought the PCM version to sound better because its A/D-D/A is so highly regarded.  The 1/4" recording on a nicely tweaked tape recorder beat out PCM as I recall but not DSD in terms of clarity and a general "definition" of the sound.

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Jon Hodgson

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Re: Is There A Future For DSD And What Is It?
« Reply #44 on: July 05, 2008, 04:23:10 PM »

Barry Hufker wrote on Sat, 05 July 2008 20:57

I had no idea what to expect when I recorded the same live music onto DSD and PCM.  I didn't think one might sound better than the other.  I simply had no clue.  I understand DSD is the root of modern PCM recording, but I was surprised at how much better (in that situation) DSD sounded than the PCM version of it.

I have no idea why it sounded better and no idea as to why it might sound better.  As I thought about it afterwards, I would have thought the PCM version to sound better because its A/D-D/A is so highly regarded.  The 1/4" recording on a nicely tweaked tape recorder beat out PCM as I recall but not DSD in terms of clarity and a general "definition" of the sound.




Well if you're comparing two different convertors you have to remember that you are comparing two different convertors, whatever system they are using.

But let's say that perhaps you are hearing more than just the difference between two convertors, and that there is something about the unadulterated DSD stream version that you prefer, we could then have to look at what it might be.

The thing is that a DSD stream is a sample stream, it follows the same rules as any other sample stream, therefore when converted to higher word width lower sample rate PCM (and back again, so we can use the same convertors for a proper comparison)if there was an audible difference it would tell us one of two things... either the implementation of the decimation filters is substandard, or there is something missing from our understanding of hearing, in what we can perceive.

My suspicion is that with properly implemented decimation and interpolation filters, you would not hear the difference in a blind test of an unadulterated stream to one which passed through 44kHz/24 bit (maybe even 16 bit, going by the results of at least one test) and certainly 96kHz... but I'll acknowledge the possibility that we're missing something in our understanding of what we can hear.
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