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In Reply to: RE: Upsampling everything to DSD SACD posted by bullethead on November 17, 2020 at 17:13:47
I set my FiiO M15 to upsample PCM to DSD and it sounds a little better to me. All I noticed was a slight smoothing of the highs. In other words, it took the digital edge off of Redbook digital.
I own two digital players, a FiiO M15 with dual top-of-the-line AK4499EQ DAC chipsets and a Mytek Brooklyn Bridge with dual ES9028PRO DAC chipsets. The Brooklyn Bridge won't upsample PCM to DSD, but it sounds just fine anyway. The FiiO M15 player sounds just a smidgen better with DSD upsampling engaged.
Best regards,
John Elison
Follow Ups:
"it took the digital edge off of Redbook digital."
That doesn't ring true with my experience. I have no edge with Redbook but it took me a journey to get there... which means Audio Note nos dacs. And then I moved on to similar technology and chip but a slightly different flavor. My digital system is currently better than my analog rig at three times the price.
My point is... if you concentrate all your gear to optimize redbook, you will be rewarded far beyond the miles of extra upsampleing coding can provide, although it may be cheaper in the short run. But I buy Redbook CD's all day long for a few bucks a piece, so the payback is quick and you can listen to ALL kinds of music, not just "audiophile" music. .
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You've been raving about your FiiO for awhile now. It must be very good sounding and convenient for you. My setup uses a NAS (network attached storage) so I am doing most things over the internal computer network.
As an update when I clock the mini-computer which does the DSD work higher to 128DSD it creates a lot of heat. I would imagine a DAC that does this via hardware to be much better.
I used to ...
regards,
Mine is the M11. Bought in part due to what John had to say of it.
I have a ladder DAC (Lite Audio DAC-60) which I adore, but I rarely use it now. The difference isn't enough to always warrant turning it on because the Fiio is quite the cherry pie.
The M11 is the best streamer I have yet used. This goes up against a Logitech Squeezebox iTouch, Cambridge Audio CXN, and an OPPO Blu-ray player. It reads the files on the micro SD card as fast as cheetah on speed. I have thousands of albums stored on the cards I use with it.
Convenience, fine app, and impressive sound quality all in one package for $400. Bargain (as TAS might say).
The M11 is probably the most versatile FiiO player because it has dual ports for micro SD memory cards and it can address up to 4-TB. Of course, the largest micro SD card is only 1-TB so you can have as much as 2-TB of memory in the M-11. It's unfortunate, but the M11 Pro and the flagship M15 both have only one port for a single micro SD memory card. I think they both sound a little better, but that might be wishful thinking on my part. All of the FiiO players are exceptional.
Best regards,
John Elison
> You've been raving about your FiiO for awhile now.
Yes, FiiO players seem to work very well for me. I like the fact that I don't need to connect my computer to my stereo system in order to play digital music. The little FiiO players are totally autonomous and play digital music files directly from their plug-in micro SD memory card. I like that aspect, although it's kind of limiting because the largest capacity micro SD memory card is 1-TB so I need several and I have to switch them periodically to play all my music. I don't understand NAS systems and that's why I went with the FiiO players. Perhaps I should have learned how to use an NAS system.
I'm currently using the flagship FiiO M15 player. It sounds fantastic but it sometimes gets a little warm when upsampling PCM to DSD. However, it doesn't get very warm when playing DSD files or PCM files; only when upsampling PCM to DSD. It also drains the battery twice as fast in the PCM-to-DSD upsampling mode.
I also have a Mytek Brooklyn Bridge, which can play PCM up through 24/192 directly from a plugin USB drive. If I want to play DSD I have to use JRiver from my computer. Since I prefer not to use my computer to stream digital music files to my Brooklyn Bridge, I use the Brooklyn Bridge primarily for PCM and the FiiO M15 primarily for DSD. My Brooklyn Bridge also serves as an external DAC for my HDTV and my Oppo BDP-105D.
Best regards,
John Elison
That's a very nice setup. It is still amazing you can fit so much data on those little memory sticks and cards. I would say no need for a NAS, especially if you don't want to drive yourself crazy. I'm a pretty advanced user and my NAS sometimes still baffles me. I got it to work, but it is very complicated for the most part. You need a good level of experience in computer networking to get it to work properly. This is for the advanced NAS units one would need to use for audio with lots of storage.
Basically a NAS is a harddrive that you plug into your network router.
I was looking into Mytek about a year or two ago, it is supposed to sound pretty good for what you pay for it. I didn't upgrade and wound up keeping my Auralic Vega DAC instead which I like but I can only go up to DSD 128.
There are DACs that convert everything to DSD, if I remember correctly one is made by PS Audio. Someone here mentioned some SACD players are also doing that in hardware if you play a regular CD with the SACD player. Doing it in software requires a lot of power in terms of the processors, which cause heat and overworking the processing chips. And it maybe the case in your situation as well, since the battery is draining and the chips are working overtime.
I haven't looked too much into DACs that can upsample everything to DSD. That would be something I would be interested in.
I'm a pretty advanced user and my NAS sometimes still baffles me. I got it to work, but it is very complicated for the most part. You need a good level of experience in computer networking to get it to work properly. This is for the advanced NAS units one would need to use for audio with lots of storage.
Gee, that's not my experience at all. Last year when I retired my ten year old Win7 box with a MacMini, I opted to purchase a Synology 718+ instead of their pricey SSD storage. While you have to configure the drives, I chose a simple storage pool using all of one 2 TB drive with the other serving as mirror. I downloaded and installed LMS and pretty much that"s all I've had to do other than running updates on various internal applications.
My situation may be different than yours in that I have multiple systems. I purchased a 400 GB microSD card which is capable of storing my digital music library - just because. I could use it to provide a standalone server on a Raspberry PI, but enjoy the benefits of using a single digital library (which also contains about 500 videos) shared by no fewer than eight players around the house when you include the Roku sticks attached to bedroom TVs.
Basically a NAS is a harddrive that you plug into your network router.
Not if it is a good one. Mine is a managed storage environment using a quad core Intel processor that provides optimum data throughput for shared access using 6 GB of cache. It monitors drive health and periodically runs diagnostic tests on the drives and sends me an email reporting the results. Since the OS is a thin Linux based one, it runs for months without the need for rebooting. I'm away from home for the holidays and can access it remotely. As I type, I logged on and find it has been up for 39 days and reports good health.
Both the Mytek Brooklyn Bridge and the FiiO M15 sound excellent to me. I can't necessarily say one sounds better than the other. The Brooklyn Bridge will play DSD256 through its USB computer input. The FiiO M15 will play DSD256 from a plugin micro SD memory card. However, it will play DSD512 when connected to a computer via USB. Both the FiiO M15 and the Brooklyn Bridge will decode MQA. The FiiO can upsample everything to DSD if you select the PCM-to-DSD mode. The FiiO M15 costs $1300 and the Brooklyn Bridge costs $3000. They both sound excellent to me and I'm quite happy with both of them.
The Mytek Brooklyn Bridge is rated Class "A" in Stereophile's Recommended Components. The Mytek Manhattan DAC II is rated Class "A+" in Stereohpile's Recommended Components, but it costs $6000.
Good luck,
John Elison
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