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RE: DSD(128) and higher resolution...

I have to wonder if the limitations boil down to USB limitations.

DSD audio is not a low-bandwidth ordeal; a DSD64 2-channel presentation will consume somewhere around 5.6 mbps of bandwidth. A DSD128 2-channel presentation will consume 11.2mbps of bandwidth. While I realize that's well within the USB 2.0 speed specs....are these devices using USB 2.0 chips to read drives? If they are...are the devices even capable of actually doing so?

There's a lot of "what-ifs" when dealing with USB transfer from either thumb drives or external hard drives. Kind of like back in the old pre-USB2 days where the highest HD audio we had under USB 1.0 was 24/96 because 24/192 was just too stinking close to the theoretical maximum bandwidth of USB 1. I had an Onkyo AVR that would stream off a USB stick; my success in getting 24/192 to work off a stick depended largely on what stick I had...some could push that much data, some couldn't. Over the network..it worked flawlessly...it also had a gigabit of bandwidth behind it at that point.

I think the other thing is that DSD128 is just far too niche for most mainstream support. Maybe they wanted to save a few bucks and not use the controllers to actually get DSD128 to the thing. Maybe they're doing it all in software and don't have the processing power to push DSD128 down I2S....or however they're streaming it.

I'm willing to bet it's an accounting decision; save a few pennies by using slightly slower components because only a very small percentage of already niche users will be affected.


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