Hi-Rez Highway

RE: Been there done that for myself. My take with pics......

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zacster

A

In Reply to: RE: Been there done that for myself. My take with pics...... posted by AbeCollins on October 31, 2023 at 07:13:25

I set up my system to do the conversion every now and then and always switch it off again. It just tends to sound a little too smoothed out. I usually go to DSD256, just because I can. My system plays it without problem as long as I have a large buffer size. It does make my laptop hot though to do it as it takes a fair amount of processing power.

Maybe if I ever upgrade my Mac I'll have an M2 processor that'll do it in an instant.

Follow Ups:

RE: It just tends to sound a little too smoothed out. - ltman 01:10:10 11/04/23 (1)
To me the smoothness is just the absense of digital grit and harshness.

Maybe if I had a $10K DAC that would not be a problem. My first serious DAC was a Benchmark DAC1-Pre and it had digitial grid and harsnhess, especially in the high amplitude passages. I sold it pretty quickly.

DSD removes that crap for me. Don't know exactly how, although I have read some theories about headroom. Seems PCM conversion can actually clip even when the original source does not.

Anyway, it works for me.

If there is one thing that ruins the listening experience for me, it is digital harshness.
- RE: It just tends to sound a little too smoothed out. - AbeCollins 12:10:33 11/07/23 (0)
  "Seems PCM conversion can actually clip even when the original source does not."
  "Inter-sample overs" can produce clipping and there are DACs that know how to handle them including newer Benchmark and RME DACs. There are software players that handle various digital clipping including Roon. Roon even includes a clipping indicator. These become more important when you're experimenting with DSP settings.
  See the article linked below. Roon MUSE is just the DSP engine which is part of Roon. You can choose to use various MUSE feature - or not. Headroom Management is one feature that can be enabled and can be especially helpful when using some DSP settings. While MUSE is part of Roon the article is helpful in understanding clipping in general. Toward the end of the page they discuss inter-sample overs.
  - Roon MUSE (Open in New Window)
  Edits: 11/07/23
RE: Been there done that for myself. My take with pics...... - AbeCollins 10:20:53 11/03/23 (0)
The most fun on-the-fly PCM to DSD conversion I had was with a trial of HQPlayer software. The HQPlayer user interface for library management and playback was absolutely horrible but fortunately HQPlayer integrates nicely with Roon and some others (maybe Audirvana ?) so you don't have to suffer the HQPlayer U.I.

Even after the HQPlayer trial ended it would still work but not play through an entire track. You could still play around with it and get a feel for all the different settings. It was fun watching my CPU utilization go through the roof and feel the heat coming off the computer.

And then you realize it's a fun way to tinker but did it truly improve the sound? It certainly offered up some nice effects but in the end I went back to running no PCM to DSD conversion or other DSP. The only occasional lightweight DSP I might run in Roon is to tilt up the bass and treble slightly to act as an old school LOUDNESS control when listening at lower than usual Volume level.

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