Do I need DSD Decoding with a DAC?

[AstroBenny]

When would I use/ need it?

[Dackzy]

do you have anything that is DSD? if no, then no

[AstroBenny]

10 minutes ago, Dackzy said:

do you have anything that is DSD? if no, then no

I don't but what type of  things are DSD?

[Dackzy]

Just now, AstroBenny said:

I don't but what type of  things are DSD?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Stream_Digital 

[GamerDude]

Dackzy is correct, if you have and play formats like FLAC, WAV, MP3 and such, most DACs and even onboard audio would be able to handle such common formats. I have >4TB of DSD64/DSD128 tracks, so have DSD capable DACs is a must.

[Dackzy]

3 minutes ago, GamerDude said:

Dackzy is correct, if you have and play formats like FLAC, WAV, MP3 and such, most DACs and even onboard audio would be able to handle such common formats. I have >4TB of DSD64/DSD128 tracks, so have DSD capable DACs is a must.

ofc I am  

[SSL]

6 hours ago, GamerDude said:

I have >4TB of DSD64/DSD128 tracks, so have DSD capable DACs is a must.

 

lmao.

[GamerDude]

18 minutes ago, SSL said:

 

lmao.

Well, lmao all you want, doesn't change the fact I have a collection of DSD files so a DSD capable DACs a must.

[Listic]

Okay, but even if I intend to play back DSD content, why would I need a DSD-capable DAC to handle it?

I mean, I don't need an mp3-capable DAC to handle mp3 files, because the CPU can decode them quite alright. Why would the DSD format be different?

[Psittac]

4 minutes ago, Listic said:

Okay, but even if I intend to play back DSD content, why would I need a DSD-capable DAC to handle it?

I mean, I don't need an mp3-capable DAC to handle mp3 files, because the CPU can decode them quite alright. Why would the DSD format be different?

it's an audiophile thing that most people probably wouldn't see a benefit from.  When you're in the game of spending exponentially more to get that last couple percent of sound quality is where it comes into play and you need to have everything else rather high end to notice much difference.  At least that's my understanding.

 

There are far better ways to get improvements and DSD is more of an endgame solution

[rice guru]

6 hours ago, Listic said:

Okay, but even if I intend to play back DSD content, why would I need a DSD-capable DAC to handle it?

I mean, I don't need an mp3-capable DAC to handle mp3 files, because the CPU can decode them quite alright. Why would the DSD format be different?

In this case think of things like DSD and MQA sorta like DRM. (They aren't but kind of act like it just for clarity) At the end of the day they are just audio file formats. You need specific hardware or software to properly decode the file formats properly. As both formats themselves are encoded differently vs flac , wav, or mp3. Both file formats are also owned by specific companies dad by sony and phillips , mqa by tidal. And if you want your gear to be compatible you gotta pay which Ultimate drips down to the user. It's kind of like needing a blue ray player to play bluerays. You need the specific gear to play the bluerays properly and you won't be able to play it with a normal dvd player even though just looking at the 2 formats they basically do the same thing but underneath the hood there is more to it. Sadly I'm not very learned on the format topic so it's hard for me to get into true detail.  For me I just stick to flacs, WAVs and the occasional album in DSD but I just send to stay with FLAC, WAV and MP3 as they are. Much easier and cheaper to acquire.

 

 

[geo3]

7 hours ago, rice guru said:

In this case think of things like DSD and MQA sorta like DRM. (They aren't but kind of act like it just for clarity) At the end of the day they are just audio file formats. You need specific hardware or software to properly decode the file formats properly. As both formats themselves are encoded differently vs flac , wav, or mp3. Both file formats are also owned by specific companies dad by sony and phillips , mqa by tidal. And if you want your gear to be compatible you gotta pay which Ultimate drips down to the user. It's kind of like needing a blue ray player to play bluerays. You need the specific gear to play the bluerays properly and you won't be able to play it with a normal dvd player even though just looking at the 2 formats they basically do the same thing but underneath the hood there is more to it. Sadly I'm not very learned on the format topic so it's hard for me to get into true detail.  For me I just stick to flacs, WAVs and the occasional album in DSD but I just send to stay with FLAC, WAV and MP3 as they are. Much easier and cheaper to acquire.

 

 

While that may be true it doesn't answer his question exactly. 

 

13 hours ago, Listic said:

Okay, but even if I intend to play back DSD content, why would I need a DSD-capable DAC to handle it?

I mean, I don't need an mp3-capable DAC to handle mp3 files, because the CPU can decode them quite alright. Why would the DSD format be different?

Because the idea here is that DSD is a different signal that is sent to the dac. Typically those file formats are decoded by by the CPU to something called PCM, which pretty much all dacs understand. The difference between DSD and PCM looks something like this:

[rice guru]

3 minutes ago, geo3 said:

While that may be true it doesn't answer his question exactly. 

 

i kinda wrote my reply at 2AM last night  after being sleep deprived as well so I was a bit delirious so instead of just taking a second to google the answer and come up wiith something actually answer the question for some reason I decided to come up with that. thanks for actually answering the question. I kinda knew how it worked I just didn't know how to actually answer the question properly. 

[Derkoli]

I know this thread is very old, but I thought I'd just add onto what @rice guruand @geo3said.

 

12 hours ago, rice guru said:

Both file formats are also owned by specific companies dad by sony and phillips , mqa by tidal.

MQA is not owned by Tidal. It is it's own entity. It was founded in 2014 by Bob Stuart, the same guy who co-founded Meridian Audio. Technically "MQA Ltd." now.

 

DSD is Delta-sigma/Sigma-delta Modulation. It's totally different to FLAC, WAV, etc. which is Pulse-code Modulation.

 

DSD isn't just "DSD", you have different rates of DSD which are expressed as;

 

Standard rate DSD (DSD64) - 2.822MHz sampling rate.

 

Double rate DSD (DSD128) - 5.644MHz sampling rate.

 

Quad rate DSD (DSD256) - 11.289MHz sampling rate.

 

Octuple rate DSD (DSD512) - 22.579 MHz

 

Effectively, the number at the very end is how much higher the sampling rate of the DSD file is than a CD is. So DSD512 is 512 times 44.1kHz, so the bit depth is 1 bit, and the sampling rate is a whopping 22.5792 MHz.

 

But you might ask, how can DSD possibly have Dynamic Range when it's only got a singular bit of bit depth?

 

Well, the bit stream DSD spits out during the AD Conversion is just comparing the amplitude of 1 sample of a waveform to the next sample. 0 is used if the next sample is quieter, 1 is used if the next sample is louder. This allows us to actually get a Sine wave out of the DAC, not just a Square wave. This is why DSD has such a high sample rate. You need ALOT of samples to get a smooth waveform without using analogue filters.

 

DSD also has roughly 20 bits of Dynamic Range, or 120dB with correct noise shaping techniques applied, which shoves quantization noise up into ultrasonic (inaudible) frequencies, thus increasing SNR and Dynamic Range. CD's have 96dB of Dynamic Range, or 16 Bit. 24 Bit FLAC is 144dB~

 

Keep in mind only excellent DAC's can hit SNR values of 21 Bits.

Edited March 29, 2021 by Derkoli