Best native DSD DACs for use with HQPlayer?

[jussi_laako (Jussi Laako (Signalyst))]

@James_Sun

For the same reason, I am looking at NOS PCM DAC too. I understand my CS43131 (SMSL MS300SE can “somehow” play 768k (as the chip’s spec only mention 384k), with HQPlayer, it sounds great too.

This is not NOS, this is oversampled delta-sigma always.

@James_Sun

To get the best from HQPlayer’s PCM, does the PCM DAC has to be NOS R2R? Or any NOS would be equally good?

Generally native PCM if you want to output PCM. NOS R2R is the typical architecture, there are other too. But don’t be fooled by “NOS” modes on delta-sigma DACs.

@James_Sun

I found quite a few non R2R NOS DACs using vintage DAC chip

TDA1541A is a 16-bit chip designed to be running at 176.4k rate from SAA7220 front-end, so if you can find a DAC with such chip that can take in 176.4k NOS, then you can experiment with such for nostalgy reasons.

@James_Sun

Some vintage NOS DAC

These go to the same nostalgy category. From chip-based vintage R2R, latest and best are BB PCM1704, these can deal with up to 705.6/768k inputs from HQPlayer if you have correct front-end. But beware of pirate copy chips that are not what it says on the label! These are chips that are widely faked!

@James_Sun

What’s the benefits of the modern discrete R2R DAC compared with DACs built with these vintage R2R chip? They both are NOS R2R.

Much better accuracy. Although the difference between PCM1704 and Holo Audio discrete implementations is not so big. PCM1704 had laser trimmed resistor network inside. Holo Audio uses additional network to correct the inherent non-linearities and can reach 20-bit accuracy. Which is very good for R2R.

@James_Sun

I think the higher the better. However, someone mentioned that higher bitrate would introduce higher noise.

It’s always a trade-off between rate and how quickly the actual electronics can react with proper accuracy. We can help this process with specific processing in digital domain though. This is one of the main points of HQPlayer.

@James_Sun

In cooking analogy, filtering is that the chef is adding more salt, pepper, MSG to the dish in order to make it taste better(?).

No, source samples are the recipe. And filter and modulator are the chefs trying to produce the end result (dish) accurately as possible according to the recipe. You have better and worse chefs. You have also all the pans/tooling and ingredients involved (the DAC).

@James_Sun

How about a NOS DAC that’s non-SDM and non-R2R?

What would that be?

@James_Sun

digital filter is something we should avoid as we don’t want DAC chip to add their flavor

No, that is essential part required to produce anything useful out of low rate PCM, such as 44.1k RedBook.

@James_Sun

is SDM (without digital filtering) defintiely worse than R2R?

No…

@James_Sun

is R2R the best?

Certainly not… We got delta-sigma (SDM/DSD) DACs because we got enough processing power to overcome the inherent limitations of PCM (R2R).

@James_Sun

situation A: using HQPlayer to upsample 44.1k to, say 768k PCM and use CS43131 (“NOS” mode) to play the upsampled file

You would have the CS43131 doing some realy poor interpolation, and moderate quality delta-sigma modulator after feeding it with 768k PCM.

@James_Sun

My understanding from your previous reply is that CS43131 would further upsample the 768k PCM (it received from HQPlayer) internally as it needs to feed the data to the internal SDM for the final d-to-a process. Am I correct?

Yes, that’s the case. In worst case, it just copies the same sample N times, or uses simple linear interpolation. Both create vast amounts of correlated images (distortion).

@James_Sun

My view is that CS43131 would perform mimimal conditioning to the 768k input data in order to make it suitable for its internal SDM processing. It looks to me that it would be a pure SDM vs R2R comparison in terms of how they convert PCM digital signal to analog signal.

You get better result by letting HQPlayer do all that processing with better algorithms, rather than letting the resource constrained DAC chip do it’s own DSP processing. So instead of running PCM through such mediocre DSP, run all DSP in HQPlayer and through a DAC that doesn’t try to do any of it’s own DSP, but just convert the incoming digital data to analog - period. I consider that the fundamental point of a DAC. A bit-perfect DAC, not messing with your data, just doing what it is told to do, but do it well.

[jussi_laako (Jussi Laako (Signalyst))]

@ipeverywhere

But did you use science?

Yes I did, but the particular one wasn’t in accordance to what they wanted to see as result.

[Deric_Chan]

How does the cyan 2 pcm 20/1536 compared to say dsd256?

[yunwei_xu]

谢谢您的回复，感谢你开发了hqplayer这么好的软件，非常满意，下面是我的英特尔竞技场峡谷1360P稍微DIY的结果，用了很少的金钱把温度降下来了，PCM44.1升频到DSD512后的温度，有动手能力的朋友可以如此改造供大家参考。

[yunwei_xu]

Uploading: 设备组合.jpg…

这是我正在使用的设备。

[jussi_laako (Jussi Laako (Signalyst))]

Not even close. Spring 3 is notably better in that respect though. If you want to use the R2R side, I’d recommend to get at least Spring 2 or Spring 3.

[Cameron_Rector (Banned)]

@jussi_laako

So instead of running PCM through such mediocre DSP, run all DSP in HQPlayer and through a DAC that doesn’t try to do any of it’s own DSP, but just convert the incoming digital data to analog - period. I consider that the fundamental point of a DAC. A bit-perfect DAC, not messing with your data, just doing what it is told to do, but do it well.

This to me is the perfect statement. Fundamental and ONLY point of a dac. Unless I was buying a Playback Designs Dac. Then I would want to hear what Andreas Koch has figured out after 40 years working with DSD. Lol

[James_Sun (Creator of the no-pseudo-science.blogspot.com)]

@jussi_laako

@James_Sun

I think the higher the better. However, someone mentioned that higher bitrate would introduce higher noise.

It’s always a trade-off between rate and how quickly the actual electronics can react with proper accuracy. We can help this process with specific processing in digital domain though. This is one of the main points of HQPlayer.

Probably I didn’t specify clearly. I was focusing on the h/w limitation.
If we use (both using HQPlayer to upsample)

case A: 44.1k to 768k
case B: 44.1k to 1536k

In theory, case B should be better (correct?) but looks like that some DACs are having less noise with lower rate than 1536k. In this situation, not sure how HQPlayer can help.

@jussi_laako

@James_Sun

digital filter is something we should avoid as we don’t want DAC chip to add their flavor

No, that is essential part required to produce anything useful out of low rate PCM, such as 44.1k RedBook.

I was having HQPlayer upsampled source (e.g. 768k) in my mind. For these upsampled source, we would like to avoid digital filtering at all I believe. Correct?

BTW, sorry for my ignorance, is a real NOS DAC (not the fake “NOS” delta sigma DAC) means no digital filtering at all? Or there is real NOS DAC that do digital filtering too?

@jussi_laako

@James_Sun

is R2R the best?

Certainly not… We got delta-sigma (SDM/DSD) DACs because we got enough processing power to overcome the inherent limitations of PCM (R2R).
…

You would have the CS43131 doing some realy poor interpolation, and moderate quality delta-sigma modulator after feeding it with 768k PCM.

I am confused here. You seems to indicate that a good designed SDM/DSD DACs could also be excellent for PCM playback compared with R2R. Meanwhile, you mentioned that CS43131 (SDM/DSD DACs) is not doing a great job for 768k PCM playback. Looks like CS43131 is missing something in its design as a good SDM/DSD DAC for PCM playback.

Just wondering, what would a good SDM/DSD DAC do differently from CS43131 in playing back 768k PCM?

Someone mentioned that feeding a higher bitrate (e.g. 768k) PCM (or max the DAC supports) to a SDM/DSD DAC would leave the DAC less room to “adjust” the sound in SDM vs feeding 44.1k PCM. Is it not the case?

@jussi_laako

You get better result by letting HQPlayer do all that processing with better algorithms, rather than letting the resource constrained DAC chip do it’s own DSP processing. So instead of running PCM through such mediocre DSP, run all DSP in HQPlayer and through a DAC that doesn’t try to do any of it’s own DSP, but just convert the incoming digital data to analog - period. I consider that the fundamental point of a DAC. A bit-perfect DAC, not messing with your data, just doing what it is told to do, but do it well.

My interpretation of this is “just upsample all music to the highest bitrate DSD that your DSD Direct dac supports (without noise)” . (which I totally agreed. LOL.).

Reasons:

For upsampled PCM using HQPlayer, there is no perfect PCM DAC player exist:

1. NOS R2R DAC by its design has its own issue (otherwise, people would not design SDM/DSD DAC in the past). Modern R2R are doing much better but still suffering from the drawbacks of R2R design.
2. SDM/DSD DAC cannot be bit perfect as it always do OS

For upsampled DSD using HQPlayer, there is perfect DSD DAC player exist:

1. A simple DSD Direct Delta/Sigma DAC would do a perfect job.

[James_Sun (Creator of the no-pseudo-science.blogspot.com)]

@Cameron_Rector

This to me is the perfect statement. Fundamental and ONLY point of a dac. Unless I was buying a Playback Designs Dac. Then I would want to hear what Andreas Koch has figured out after 40 years working with DSD. Lol

Yes, I think, nowadays, given we have HQPlayer to upsample all our music to DSD256 or higher, what we need is just a very simple, basic DSD Direct DAC.

[Deric_Chan]

And you already have that available in all of ifi bur brown dac chip lineup of dacs, from zen v2, the signature series, neo to the pro. And it sounds fabulous with hqplayer

[Gerardo_Di_Gianni]

I’m looking for IFI neo IDSD for BB direct DSD
just a question with hqplayer : this DAC can do 44,1 e 48 x 512?
Thanks in advance
Gerardo

[Deric_Chan]

None of the ifi dacs support 48x dsd so only 44.1x

[tahsu]

Is there an agree suite of metrics to determine how well a DAC converts to analogue (assuming HQP is handling all dsp etc), for instance @dabassgoesboomboom has provided a number of metrics for the Cyan 2 in post #821?

[Gerardo_Di_Gianni]

Thanks so much for info

[Stefano_Antonelli]

@Deric_Chan

None of the ifi dacs support 48x dsd so only 44.1x

At least the Pro iDSD does …

[erekola]

And all NEOs

[jussi_laako (Jussi Laako (Signalyst))]

@James_Sun

Probably I didn’t specify clearly. I was focusing on the h/w limitation.
If we use (both using HQPlayer to upsample)

case A: 44.1k to 768k
case B: 44.1k to 1536k

In theory, case B should be better (correct?) but looks like that some DACs are having less noise with lower rate than 1536k. In this situation, not sure how HQPlayer can help.

It always depends on the implementation too. Challenge with PCM (R2R) DACs is that it needs to settle within ±1/2 LSB in fraction of the sample period. Otherwise the accuracy is lost. For this reason you cannot keep increasing output rate forever and expect performance to improve. While you need high enough rate that the analog post-filter can remove the images without messing up the wanted audio band.

@James_Sun

I was having HQPlayer upsampled source (e.g. 768k) in my mind. For these upsampled source, we would like to avoid digital filtering at all I believe. Correct?

Yes…

@James_Sun

BTW, sorry for my ignorance, is a real NOS DAC (not the fake “NOS” delta sigma DAC) means no digital filtering at all? Or there is real NOS DAC that do digital filtering too?

NOS is not necessarily related to digital filtering, but oversampling in general. For example Cirrus Logic chip you were talking about is SDM DAC. Even if you bypass it’s digital filter with higher rate PCM input, it is still oversampling to several MHz using linear interpolation and then it feeds the resulting data to it’s delta-sigma modulator before passing the produced bit stream to the D/A conversion stage. So it cannot be NOS with PCM inputs, because it’s D/A conversion stage is incapable of dealing with PCM data.

In Direct DSD mode it would pass the DSD input data straight to the D/A conversion stage. Which the D/A conversion stage is able to handle.

A real NOS DAC is a bit-perfect DAC where the input data actually ends up in the D/A conversion stage untouched. Maybe we should be in addition talk specifically about bit-perfect DACs.

@James_Sun

You seems to indicate that a good designed SDM/DSD DACs could also be excellent for PCM playback compared with R2R. Meanwhile, you mentioned that CS43131 (SDM/DSD DACs) is not doing a great job for 768k PCM playback. Looks like CS43131 is missing something in its design as a good SDM/DSD DAC for PCM playback.

HQPlayer is designed to be the “missing something” part. HQPlayer is the required DSP-front-end for the D/A conversion stage.

@James_Sun

For upsampled PCM using HQPlayer, there is no perfect PCM DAC player exist

Pretty much yes. Although if you like to do that, Holo Audio Spring / May is about best you can get at the moment, and can operate quite nicely. There are couple of other R2R implementations I would like to get on my test bench though.

@James_Sun

For upsampled DSD using HQPlayer, there is perfect DSD DAC player exist

Yes…

[Phil_Active_Audio]

Hello Jussi, are you still using a Merging Hapi in your setup?

I just purchased one with the DA8P output card and I wonder what is the best internal Roll Off Filter to you (I choosed Apodizing, linear phase and sharp roll-off)?
In regards to HQ Player, what is the best or ideal format to send to the Hapi knowing it is based on a ESS DAC?

Thanks in advance.

[Deric_Chan]

I have the pro and it does not do 48 properly. I think initially it does support 48 but later firmware update which enable mqa decoding but makes 48 not working properly

I had the Neo as well, it had static noises with 48. But it really does not matter, just convert everything to 44.1x dsd is fine

[Stefano_Antonelli]

@Deric_Chan

I think initially it does support 48 but later firmware update which enable mqa decoding but makes 48 not working properly

… that’s not good for such a dac …