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In Reply to: RE: DSD Numbers. posted by PAR on February 22, 2017 at 04:11:24
NO, I have been listening to mch SACD in PCM , now in DSD This a very complex receiver.
Edits: 02/22/17Follow Ups:
I do not understand your answer. There is no such thing as PCM multichannel from an SACD. I am unable to find anything in your receiver that does digital to digital conversion so that a DSD signal is converted to PCM.
Of course you can send a PCM stereo signal from the player to the receiver and have the receiver do some DSP processing to create a fake surround sound effect ( p.83 in the manual).
Par,unless I have misunderstood Kal's interesting intervention,you are incorrect to say there is no such thing as PCM multichannel from a SACD. I was always suprised that Kal never tried out the DA5400ES AVR which is the natural partner for the XA5400ES to evaluate digital mch. I believe he dislikes receivers preferring pre- pros which are of no interest to me. I hope Kal gets a Marantz SA-10 for a Stereophile review.
I posted this message ( approx) before but it seems to have disappeared.
" ,you are incorrect to say there is no such thing as PCM multichannel from a SACD"
Not quite. There is no such thing as PCM multichannel from SACD*. However some players like yours can convert the DSD stream from the SACD DSD layer to PCM. This is what appears to have been happening for you in the past.
According to Kal the player needs to have a handshake with the receiver so that it knows that the receiver is capable of handling DSD data. Once it knows this then it stops converting and sends DSD via HDMI to the receiver. I would guess from your postings that when you reconfigured the settings you unknowingly sent the handshake code. Thereon the player stopped converting DSD to PCM and you had a full DSD experience.
* The CD ( PCM) layer of an SACD disc is redbook standard. Redbook has no provision for multi channel. If there was such a thing as a redbook protocol for multichannel then the disc playing time would be very short on a 12cm disc due to its data capacity in this format.
Too few channels.
LOL
The XA5400ES will output DSD (mch or stereo) via HDMI but it will also output PCM (mch or stereo) from the DSD layer of the disc depending on the handshaking with the connected target component.
I became familiar with this when I tested the XA5400ES and was surprised to find that it output mch PCM when I connected it to 2-3 preamp/processors which were supposed to be capable of handling DSD as can Disbeliever's Sony AVR. It turns out that the player demands a particular handshake code and, with a trivial firmware update to those pre/pros, they immediately elicited DSD output from the player.
It is unfortunate that Disbeliever has been listening to PCM rather than DSD but he was getting real multichannel and high resolution (24/192, most likely).
Kal, that is very interesting and I am, like you, surprised.In fact I was walking home from the supermarket 30 or so minutes ago and used the time to ponder on what the OP had said. I started to wonder if the player had a D to D conversion capabilty. So when I returned I had a look at the XA 5400ES manual and there is no mention of any such thing.
It isn't however my first accidental discovery of this type of thing with a Sony transport. I was suprised to find with an early dCS transport which used a Sony 555ES mechanism, that even though the SACD layer was selected and DSD was therefore available on the Firewire outputs there was still output duplicated in PCM on the SP/dif ports. Speaking with dCS they advised that this was a factor caused by the Sony transport design rather than being the result of anything from dCS. It also was not mentioned in the user manual.
The really odd thing to me is the need for a handshake code when both of the OP's components are from Sony and are meant to be mated together.
Edits: 02/22/17
This is not unique to Sony. For example, until a recent firmware update, all Oppo players would automatically output PCM from HDMI unless the handshake indicated that the target component was DSD-capable. The new firmware offers options of PCM only, DSD only (with silence if the target cannot handle it) and Auto (what it had before).
In addition, until the relatively recent appearance of DoP, it was not possible to output DSD over S/PDIF, so a default to PCM should be no surprise.
SONY said the receiver converts to PCM at the final stage. So are you saying that I have been listening all the time to DSD mch,despite the receiver display only now showing DSD 3/2.
Not after Kal's interesting response.
Edits: 02/22/17
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