I’ve just now experienced my greatest listening-experience for a long time. I don’t know if this topic is in the right place, but it has to do with endpoint hardware so I’ll put it here.
The source is Dire Straits - Brother in Arms, SACD 88.2 kHz/24 bit in 5.1 (local file).
As far as I’ve understood there isn’t a lot of possibilities when it comes to 5.1 with Roon, but that’s wrong as long as you have an endpoint that can handle the 5.1 stream. You need HDMI for the job. I planned to buy an expensive DAC, but ended up with an $50 HDMI cable instead. My ROCK server is a HP Mini G3 which only has DisplayPort++ (three of them), but in ROCK they all show up as HDMI.
So, I bought a passive adapter cable DP++ => HDMI put it into the DVD input on my Marantz SR6008, and from there everything is history. I could feeI that the Marantz really was doing what it was meant to be doing, that is multichannel sound. And as I’m sure a lot of you people know, the Marantz sound is something special, once bought one and youll never buy anything else. Ive had the SR6008 for more than 7 years, and it’s still here. There will be a new one coming this summer, though.
I hope that TIDAL and the other serious music streaming companies will pay attention to what the SACD format really is capable to do.
They will not, because even if DSD did offer any sonic benefits (it doesn’t, but that’s another discussion), the ridiculous size of DSD files would kill them in egress costs.
I think Tidal’s answer to this multi-channel is Atmos which does offer sonic benefits as well. Like the Ops title states, it was a revelation in music listening for me.
Multichannel might be nice sometimes, I guess, but Atmos has nothing to do with DSD. But then apparently neither OP nor others here were actually listening to any DSDs to begin with anyway.
Hmm, that makes me a little suspicious about what they ripped there. Even if you specifically asked for PCM-converted rips, I think they should have given you the original DSD ISO image and/or tracks. Not that those would be sonically superior, but when you rip something, in principle, it’s better to preserve the original bits for backup /archival.
Thx for your reply, Marian. I am a litle green when it comes to DSD and SACD. The ripps are a gift from a friend, some of them are ISO, but most of them are not. Does that mean that a PCM-ripp are lossy?
Thx.
I’m hoping someone can educate me here. How do you go from 16-bit/44.1k stereo to 24-bit/88.2k in 5.1 surround?
I realize things can be up-sampled but isn’t this just making stuff up? It’s not the original recording, so whatever it is, it’s data that has been fabricated, no?
I’m not assuming any deceit here, I’m just inquiring, being curious about the non-DSD rip. Up-converting the CD layer is easy, emulating surround not so much.
Yes, indeed, sounds rather strange. FLAC is not known for carrying DSD audio. DSD is always 1bit encoded having x MHz, not kHz. DSD is basically a different kind of digital audio signal representation compared to PCM. Quite different animals. Both have their own possible encoding and file types. DSD files usually have a file name extension like .dsf, .diff and .iso whereas .iso contains a whole SACD. These all are not associated to any PCM related file formats like FLAC, AAC, MP3, WAV, AIFF and the like.
Regarding your FLACs. These may be DSD2PCM converted files, esp. if you have multichannel FLACs. If stereo, they also might be a rip of the PCM layer of a hybrid SACD.
Again, PCM and DSD have a completely different digital representation of the recorded audio signal.
In case you play a real DSD track via roon it will show “DSD”, not “FLAC” or anything else, just “DSD” with some additional info. BTW, roon currently does not support SACD .iso files.
Many say the main “quality” difference between DSD and PCM mastered recording is simply the different mastering compared with a common CD master.
Hybrid SACDs also contain a stereo PCM layer. Some say this PCM layer sounds pretty much the same like the DSD layer in case DSD is stereo as well.
In addition some recordings are created natively as DSD, with special non-PCM hardware. You may find such recordings at one of the rare DSD download stores.
You usually don’t hear differences between DSD and converted lossless PCM. If coming from the same mastering.
The advantage of native DSD recordings is often (not always) the benefit of a more elaborate recording process compared to common CD/PCM mass productions. But there’s no general guarantee that DSD would always sound “better” than PCM.
And really well re-mastered recordings available as SACDs are usually rather expensive.
But, just wait until you get your hands on a great multichannel mix.