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In Reply to: RE: DSD vs. 24x192 pcm posted by AbeCollins on March 02, 2022 at 06:51:08
> Personally I prefer PCM most of the time as DSD often sounds artificially smooth as though any and all 'edge'
> [even intentional by the artist] has been polished smooth analogous to a shard of glass being smoothed by the ocean.
I used to think my Alesis Masterlink made perfect recordings of vinyl in 24/96 PCM, but the first vinyl recording I made with my TASCAM DA-3000 in DSD128 sounded even more perfect to me.
I don't understand your rationale in comparing incorrectly made low-level DSD recordings to correctly made PCM recordings. However, all of my DSD128 recordings of vinyl sound absolutely stunning to my ears. Perhaps you should buy a TASCAM DA-3000 DSD recorder and make your own DSD recordings. The TASCAM has an input volume control so you can set its recording level correctly. Furthermore, its price is quite reasonable at only $900.
Happy listening!
John Elison
Follow Ups:
I suppose I could buy a TASCAM DA-3000 DSD recorder but I can more easily convert PCM to DSD on the fly while listening using my computer. I've done it with Roon as well as HQPlayer and found that I'm not a real fan of DSD. I also have a couple purchased hi-res PCM albums along with the identical album purchased in DSD. Again I prefer the PCM version.Just a personal preference I suppose. I still feel that DSD is a bit artificially 'smooth'. Some prefer DSD and that's fine.
Edits: 03/04/22
The DA-3000 analogue input (feeding a PCM4202) is not particularly neutral and sounds rather shut in - It's competent but not as good as alternatives including the aging Benchmark ADC1USB (ADC used is AK5394) which is more neutral IMO. I preferred to use the Benchmark as the ADC and fed the data to my DA-3000 via AES/EBU link before the DA-3000 started to have issues in writing to the memory card and the headphone amplifier packed up.
I have subsequently moved on to using the RME ADI-2 Pro FS R (ADC is AK5574) which is vastly superior to the DA-3000.
A cheaper and better alternative (IMO) to the DA-3000 is the Korg DS-DAC-10R which I also have and would be happy to use if I didn't have the RME. It uses the same PCM4202 ADC device as the DA-3000 but also does digital EQ for phono and they provide several alternative curves for vintage EQ (Columbia, Decca, NAB). Since the phono preamp is removed from the chain, one has an even more direct means to encode vinyl sources to DSD or PCM.
Putting that to one side, the PCM4202 is based on a 1 bit D-S modulator. Whether you select PCM or DSD the sampling method is identical - selecting PCM puts the data through the additional decimation module to provide the required word length and sample rate selected. If you choose a sampling rate related to a 44.1kHz base clock, then shuttling between PCM and DSD is a straightforward mathematical translation and nothing should be lost in the process. IMO the only reason to encode in DSD is if one likes the sound decoded directly in the format rather than there being any technical advantage in the coding phase:
Lipschitz has done an analysis to show that 1 bit ADCs are fundamentally flawed due to the inability to add optimal dither. The PCM4220 may well be a better ADC as that is based on a 6 bit D-S modulator (a 3 level or 4 level modulator is sufficient for optimal dither). Although the PCM4220 doesn't offer DSD encoding, that can be done with various software options.
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
I liked the sound of the Korg dac I had, but I coould not put up with the fact it required windoze drivers. I had blue screens until I gave up on the Korg and it's drivers (admittedly I run an overclocked liquid-cooled machine). I sent that Dac to the landfill...
That experience convinced me I did not want to do the digitizing using anything that required windoze and drivers.
Especially since Win-11 is around the corner and many (all?) Win-10 drivers will likely be DOA in Win-11
Don't wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.
Mark Twain
One possible reason might be due to the USB controller - Korg is using USB2 and they didn't guarantee that the device would work on USB3. Going back about 10 years ago, there was certainly backwards compatibility issues with USB2 devices in early USB3 controllers when USB3 was "new" despite the requirement to be fully backwards compatible. That seems to have been ironed out in recent years. The Korg works fine on all my new laptop devices with USB 3 type A ports and OTG ports, but I did have problems with some USB3 hubs and early USB3 PCI cards and some early USB3 portable HDDs also not being recognised in those same cards.
As I said last time, I've had ZERO problems with the DS-DAC-10R/Audiogate on multiple generic Chinese 2 in1 Win10 machines and it is running fine on a Teclast 2in1 device (via Type A USB3 connection) I bought off Aliexpress which is now running Win11 and your experience should not frighten off others; as long they are using a typical OTS laptop or standard desktop without unusual legacy expansion cards, then everything runs fine on USB3. Any legacy device with USB 2 ports should be fine.
From what I have read, MS no longer test the new builds on real hardware - they use virtual machines with "standard" hardware configurations before releasing builds to the Insider Program. They rely on those on the Windows Insider Program to inform them of specific bugs - like the file corruption issues in storage spaces reported in early distributions of new releases like version 2004 (May 2020).
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
One thing it is safe to say:
If your ADC device and processing does not require use of Windoze OS , a USB port, a Windoze driver, and a Windoze application, in order to perform your analogue to digital rips, there can be no USB, Windoze Driver, or Windoze App incompatibilities.
Because you ain't using any of them...
Don't wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.
Mark Twain
You don't need a special USB Audio 2.0 driver unless you are wanting to record above 24/96 or insist on recording direct in DSD. You could have just stuck to 24/88.2 and used Audiogate to convert to DSD later which would obviate the need for a dedicated driver.
All devices should work under the standard OS drivers without needing anything additional. You might consider Asio4ALL if you wanted to ensure bit-perfect transfer.
Your machine is obviously non-standard or some of your software is non-compliant or causing memory leaks so your user-experience is not likely to be experienced by others using a standard configuration which I daresay most probably are so it isn't really sensible to be complaining about Windows like we are talking about Windows 98 - back then, anything and everything would cause BSOD! I've used every version of Windows since 3.11 and know just how flaky things used to be. Windows 10 is easily the most stable version since then. Win 11 is still too new for me to comment on but the Korg software works fine.
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
Hi, Anthony,
I use a DA-3000 but use its S/PDIF input to record the 24/192 output from a SweetVinyl SugarCube SC-1 Plus, thereby eliminating the need for the DA-3000's ADC. The ADC/DAC in the SugarCube is quite good so I use it to listen to the LPs while I'm recording.
Tom
Sounds like you've been around the block with DSD. Thanks for the details on you gear. Somehow I'm not surprised that you like your RME ADI-2 Pro FS R ADC the most. I am very impressed with the DAC only version in my ADI-2 DAC FS.
How do you feel about the sound of vinyl? To my ears, vinyl sounds smoother than nearly all digital unless the digital recording was made directly from a vinyl record. In that case, the digital recording sounds just like vinyl to me.
Oh, well. To each his own!
Enjoy!
John Elison
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