Was watching Darko on YT a few days ago and got inspired to see how DSD music would play on my system. I have a $7k system in my truck, but spent much less at home. Run a M2 Mac mini as my Roon Server to a Bluesound PowerNode Edge with a Bluesound Pulse Sub and a pair of JBL L52 Classics. Have been tweaking for months and it sounds great.
Took a few attempts but Roon now auto-imports DSD to the proper place, but also learned it is downsampling it to 192/24 when sending it to my setup. Regardless, the free DSD Jazz sounds great.
Have been searching around for DSD Options this weekend, and have been stumbling through what appears to be a bit of history and focus on mostly classical and simple jazz. It’s difficult to find Rock or Metal on DSD, enjoy classical and jazz as well but an interesting situation.
I’ll find reasons to spend more money on my home setup, but will there be options above 192/24 for us headbangers?
Hi Shawn
From memory none of the Bluesound devices play DSD at all, it all has to be converted to PCM to play back. I have a PowerNode 2i and it caused me confusion for a while as everything else in my house plays nicely with DSD
There is not a lot of native dsd available for Rock and Metal, but plenty of high resolution 24/94 and above available via BandCamp, Qobuz and other download shops. With your current setup you are probably better off sticking to these sites.
There is even some 24/192! albums available but if you want to go down the route of converting to DSD at some point then it takes more processor power to convert higher rates.
PCM vs DSD is not the night and day difference some would have you believe. It most deals in techno babble around timbre, attack, transients, noise (and where to put it), brick wall filters, harmonics, and before filling up a bingo card……
Generally, the people who care about these things are chasing realism, or musicality, of real instruments played in real music halls recorded by people who want to preserve the sound of those musicians at that time in that space.
Rarely, does rock and metal need such attention. And, therefore, the advantage of PCM or DSD disappears. This is the primary reason those jazz recordings sound fantastic; not that they are in DSD.
Now, that’s not to say there are no spectacularly good rock and metal recordings. Or that I don’t appreciate using a specific DSD filter to emphasize the attack on a strong studio recorded rock album. But, I wouldn’t chase it. Almost all the DSD I listen to is PCM converted to DSD in realtime.
One other reason you won’t find a lot of multitrack recordings in DSD is that you can’t mix in DSD (there is the very rare console and recording label that can but it may be more work than it’s worth). Any “popular” multitrack studio recording is going to be mixed and engineered in PCM. It’s questionable if converting the master to DSD for sale as an album vs just leaving the album in PCM provides any benefit at that point.
I’ll call this out specifically. DSD rates and PCM rates are only loosely correlated. That is, some DSD rate cannot directly map to a specific PCM bitrate and bit depth.
On the PCM side the highest rates you’ll see for sell are 24/352.8 sometimes called DXD. This is similar to DSD256 if IIRC. But, again, this tells you nothing about the mastering and if these really high resolutions are providing any benefit at all to the recording.
You might also want to investigate ripping SACD if you have not already.
Although SACD are becoming quite expensive to buy now, but I have bought about 40 in the last two years and I have really enjoyed listening to them on physical media but also ripping the stereo and multi channel variants for playback through Roon. Not as high as you are looking at but very good quality and MoFi still do regular new(ish) SACD production runs.
When you talk about DSD playback, do you mean the capability to play DSD files as in converting them to PCM, or sending them via DoP which prevents the highest DSD rates. Or, do you mean native DSD.
If you want native that is a long and more complex conversation, and will require specific DACs, streamers, and even Operating Systems (for example, MacOS cannot do native DSD and locks you into DoP.)
As a general rule of thumb, I use PCM for Rock, Metal, Techo, Industrial, etc. I reserve DSD for more acoustic sources, Jazz, Chamber Orchestras, etc. If the original music is or uses distortion/feedback/synthesizers then PCM. If it is acoustic instruments mainly, then DSD.
A simple reality of a lot of the rock and metal out there is the wall of sound/highish distortion recording that was popular through the 80’s. That made it largely unsuitable for DSD transfers so there isn’t much of it out there. Also DSD tends not to have the attack and perceived excitement of PCM. Your M2 Mac has all the power neeeded for DSD transcoding on the fly. But you would need a DSD streamer DAC a to benefit fully. And that is a whole other rabbit hole.
I’m not an expert on DSD, but I’ve collected the following Rock DSF DSD files over the years…
Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral DSF DSD64 in 5.1 & 2.0
Alice In Chains - Greatest Hits DSF DSD64
Nirvana - Nevermind DSF DSD128
Pink Floyd - The Wall DSF DSD128
Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road DSF DSD64
David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust DSF DSD64
Janis Joplin - Pearl DSF DSD64
I have an SMSL M500 and use DSD over PCM v1.0 as the DSD playback strategy/encapsulation (setting in Roon) which shows DSD 5.6448MHz (playing a DSF DSD128 file) on the M500. I’m not sure if that’s the proper/best way to do it but it sounds delightful to my ears.
Then, imho, you are doing it the best way. Others ways could be “different” and whether or not they sound better or worse would be up to your own ears. Unless you are perceiving an issue, I’d resist the “grass might be greener” lure.