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In Reply to: RE: DSD DACs that handle DSD natively and via SPDIF? posted by ahendler on June 23, 2014 at 22:51:46:
"The new PS Audio direct stream dack is one of the few dacs I know of that does not convert DSD to PCM. It uses a gate array system to handle the DSD data directly. I am sure in the future there will be cheaper dacs that use this gate array system. As far as I know all delta-sigma dacs that handle dsd convert it to pcm."
I hope you are not swallowing the marketing snake oil. PCM vs. DSD is a marketing scam originally created by Sony and Philips and still being used to confuse potential customers lacking a EE background in "Signals and Systems".
Downsampling a 2822400/1 DSD stream to 176400/24 definitely loses resolution, this is the bad aspect of PCM. The sonic degradation is worse when the conversion is to the 44100/16 format. Hence the marketing FUD that PCM is bad. However, this is not what is done with modern sigma delta DACs such as the SABRE chip ones. These do not downsample the original DSD. They do the opposite, converting the DSD to formats such as 45158400/8, an obviously higher resolution format that the input 2822400/1. [DSD has its downside, since 2822400/1 has lower resolution than 2822400/8, etc..] One can speculate that processing going on inside the SABRE chip to convert formats degrades the sound. One can equally speculate about the PS Direct Stream DAC. This is idle speculation because the processing in both products is proprietary. What matters is how the products sound. One tastes the steak. One does not concern oneself about the sizzle.
As to gate arrays vs. custom ASIC chips: this has to do with business tradeoffs between one time design costs and volume production costs. It has little or nothing to do with potential sound quality given realistic engineering budgets.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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Follow Ups
- RE: DSD DACs that handle DSD natively and via SPDIF? - Tony Lauck 06/24/1409:58:55 06/24/14 (1)
- RE: DSD DACs that handle DSD natively and via SPDIF? - ahendler 08:55:06 06/26/14 (0)
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