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Well One Month In and DSD is a Total Bust for Me

Posted by Dynamite Ham (A) on October 14, 2016 at 10:22:04

This is not a troll, just my observations after a month or so of listening to DSD. My dac is an Eastern Electric Minimax Supreme with Sparko Labs op-amps. Software is HQ Player running on a six month old, fully loaded Macbook Air. All HQ player settings are optimal, in fact, I am running the exact same settings used in the Doug Shroeder review on Dagogo.com. The gentleman who set up the Mac used in Doug's review was kind enough to help me with the various settings for DSD and double DSD. Speakers are Magnepan 1.7s, USB cable is one meter Kimber, all system cables are Kimber Select. I have both tube and solid state amps/preamps that I've used with this setup and I'm confident I was getting the most out of both the EE dac and HQ software.

I have many, many years of experience listening to various dacs and players that do digital upsampling and in all cases I found them to be inferior to straight playback of 16/44 sources. IMO instruments sound like they are encased in plastic when upsampled and there is a certain "sameness" to recordings that are upsampled. And that's what I hear with DSD, a sameness to all recordings that is typical of upsampling. Also, I find that most recordings seem to be smaller in size when reproduced with DSD upsampling. On the plus side DSD recordings seem to present a full 360 degree view of the musicians or orchestra, although again quite a bit smaller that they would appear non-upsampled. The sound is also very smooth and detailed, but when I A/B it with the non-upsampled 16/44 recording I prefer the native version which IMO is more honest sounding.

I did download a dozen or so native DSD and double DSD recordings and found them to sound pretty much the same as non-DSD, perhaps this is endemic to the HQ Player software?

So to my ears, and my tastes, DSD is not worth the bother and IMO is inferior to native 16/44 digital playback. Probably not a popular opinion on a PC Audio forum but I call 'em like I see 'em. Tastes differ and YMMV. Enjoy the music.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Atma-Sphere Music Systems, Inc.

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