Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Greta Bea]

hi there!
I have a problem when importing DSD I have a noise at the end of each track and only on the right side. The problem vanishes when I convert into FLAC 24/192, but not on the initial format.
Can anyone help? 

[kr4]

hi there!
I have a problem when importing DSD I have a noise at the end of each track and only on the right side. The problem vanishes when I convert into FLAC 24/192, but not on the initial format.
Can anyone help? 

Are these DSFs converted from ISO?  If so, the conversion  program is at fault.

[Greta Bea]

Not ISO, I have downloaded the trial version. Could it comes from there?

[kr4]

Not ISO, I have downloaded the trial version. Could it comes from there?

The trial version of what?  Are the files downloaded as DSF?

[Greta Bea]

I have downloaded the JRiver trial version for 1 month prior to buying it. I thought maybe it is the reason???
Yes, all files were DSF

[Greta Bea]

to be more accurate, I have downloaded the JRiver trial version to import CD in DSD format in order to convert them into FLAC 24/192 and then move them to a different device to read them. The noise is on the DSF.
not sure what you call ISO? and will this problem vanish if I buy the commercial version?
Thanks!

[Awesome Donkey]

A couple of things...

1. If you're trying to rip SACDs (or hybrid SACD/CD discs) you'll need an old PS3 running specific firmware and software to do so. If it's a hybrid disc (meaning it has both a CD layer and SACD layer) it'll only rip the CD layer.
2. Don't rip/import CDs as DSD files - it's pointless to convert PCM (CD) audio to DSD and by doing so you're just wasting hard drive space and there's nothing to gain. I'd always recommend keeping all PCM audio intact in a lossless format like FLAC and DSD files in .DSF, DFF or leave them in a ISO+CUE form).
3. If you need to output to a DSD DAC, just setup JRiver Media Center (via DSD Studio > Output Format) to convert to DSD on-the-fly.
4. It's also pointless to rip/import CDs (which is redbook 16-bit/44.1 kHz) and convert them to 24-bit/192 kHz. Again wasting space and there's nothing to gain.

Now, regarding the DSF thing...

1. There's a known issue with DSF files having a pop at the end, which I've confirmed using my SACD ISO rip of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here (ripping to .dsf tracks via .cue + .iso file). It's also a known issue with sacd_extract too, but MC doesn't use this.
2. You can try DFF files, these don't exhibit the pop issue. The downside to these is the lack of metadata support.
3. If you're taking DSD .dsf (or .dff files) and trying to convert them to PCM 24-bit/192kHz MC should already do this by default - you can also use Output Format to customize sample rates (or in this case setting any higher than 192kHz to whatever is the max your DAC support, e.g. 192kHz.).

Ultimately MC can upsample/downsample everything on-the-fly without the need to rip PCM to DSD, DSD to PCM, change bit rates and sample rates, etc.

[kr4]

to be more accurate, I have downloaded the JRiver trial version to import CD in DSD format in order to convert them into FLAC 24/192 and then move them to a different device to read them. The noise is on the DSF.
not sure what you call ISO? and will this problem vanish if I buy the commercial version?

Ok.  Forget the ISO.  Let's see if we can figure this out.
1.  The trial version of JRiver is not the issue.
2.  Where did you get the DSD (DSF) files?  Did you buy them or copy them?  If the latter, from what?  (You cannot rip SACDs in JRiver but only with a PS3.)
3.  If you are importing a CD (with JRiver) in order to get 24/192 FLAC, there is no reason to convert the files to DSD format.  You can convert them directly.

[dtc]

You can convert an existing flac file to dsd using the MC convert format routine (select a track,right click, select Library Tools - Convert Format). You can then try that file as a test cast to see how it plays.

[styxx10]

You can convert an existing flac file to dsd using the MC convert format routine (select a track,right click, select Library Tools - Convert Format). You can then try that file as a test cast to see how it plays.

Why??.... You would gain no increase in sound quality.

[RD James]

So if I am reading this correctly, you are converting CDs to DSD, and then DSD to 192kHz FLAC.
It seems that JRiver's DSD converter can add clicks/noise at the start/end of tracks - I've noticed it with SACDs when compared against other converters.
It should be able to convert to DSD and back to PCM without those problems, but I don't think DSD is a priority for JRiver.

However, I can see no good reason to do the conversion that you are with CDs in the first place.
You do not gain anything from these conversions, you are degrading the sound and inflating the file size by converting 16-bit CDs to 1-bit DSD and then 24-bit PCM.
You cannot do better than ripping CDs in their original 16-bit 44.1kHz format to a lossless file.
Converting that data to another format can only ever lose quality from the original.
If it were possible to do a perfect conversion from CD to DSD, the best possible outcome would be that it sounds exactly the same.

[JimH]

So if I am reading this correctly, you are converting CDs to DSD, and then DSD to 192kHz FLAC.
It seems that JRiver's DSD converter can add clicks/noise at the start/end of tracks - I've noticed it with SACDs when compared against other converters.
It should be able to convert to DSD and back to PCM without those problems, but I don't think DSD is a priority for JRiver.

If you do a search for this problem, I believe you will find that the click is a problem in the ripping of the SACD.

I don't understand your comment that DSD is not a priority for JRiver.

[Matt]

Could you provide a sample file that clicks at the end to matt at jriver dot com?

It might be that we're just reading a little too much data for some silly reason.  If I had a file, I could dig a little.

Thanks.

[dtc]

Why??.... You would gain no increase in sound quality.

Why - in order to test the problem that the person is reporting starting with a file that is known to play correctly, with a conversion that is not done in real time.

The question of sound quality is a separate discussion and there are different views of that. PCM DACs can sound different from one another and DSD DACs can sound different than PCM DACs. It is all in the implementation. Also, there are DSD only DACs. We should not get into a long discussion here, but there are many opinions on this topic.

[Matt]

I got a sample ISO file from RD James.  Thanks!

But unfortunately it transitions from track to track perfectly.

The recording was kind of noisy, but that's just the way it is.

I am playing as PCM instead of DSD (I didn't have a DSD DAC handy) so I don't know if that matters?

Thanks.

[Awesome Donkey]

If it's the same type of issue that plagued sacd_ripper (which was actually fixed last year), it's because there's truncated sample data in DSF files at the end.

How I was able to reproduce it was by taking .dff tracks of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here SACD ISO then converting them in MC from DFF to DSF*. The issue would then occur in the .dsf files at the end of each song (a pop during the gapless song transitions).

I wish my Internet upload speed wasn't so horrible, or else I'd upload a couple of the tracks to test.

* There's another way to prevent this issue when converting DFF to DSF files. It's by repackaging the files instead of re-encoding them. This could prevent the issue completely when dealing with DFF to DSF (or vice versa) conversions.

[dtc]

...

* There's another way to prevent this issue when converting DFF to DSF files. It's by repackaging the files instead of re-encoding them. This could prevent the issue completely when dealing with DFF to DSF (or vice versa) conversions.

The conversion from dff to dsf should be very simple to implement. All it takes is to write out a dsf header and copy all the audio data directly over from the dff file. It would be a special case, but would be easy to implement. It would be nice to see it in MC.

There may be others, but I have used Vinyl Studio to convert dff to dsf without going through PCM. I have not tried it for gapless files, but it has a gapless option so may well work correctly. Worked fine when I used it on dff files. Not sure if the trial version will do it or not, but it is only $29.

[Awesome Donkey]

The conversion from dff to dsf should be very simple to implement. All it takes is to write out a dsf header and copy all the audio data directly over from the dff file. It would be a special case, but would be easy to implement. It would be nice to see it in MC.

+1 for this!

However I'm not sure if it's possible to do the same from an ISO + CUE. If it was, this would be great (and would be preferred when dealing with DSD files, IMO). I guess you can see how sacd_extract handles this.

[RD James]

I got a sample ISO file from RD James.  Thanks!

But unfortunately it transitions from track to track perfectly.
The recording was kind of noisy, but that's just the way it is.
I am playing as PCM instead of DSD (I didn't have a DSD DAC handy) so I don't know if that matters?

Thanks.

Here's a recording of how it sounds on my system when I start playback or skip tracks: http://www.filedropper.com/trackskipclicks

It's not the playback device because:
1. It happens with all devices that I tested
2. That's a loopback recording which never left the PC

That was DSD to 96kHz PCM.
JRiver was set to a half second gapped fade, but it still clicks even if I use several seconds.
Setting some amount of silence for hardware synchronization just delays the click.

[RD James]

bump

[Mark_Chat]

From all my reading into DSD when I backed up my my SACD using a PS3, the problem is the .dsf file format.

It requires audio data blocks of fixed size (4096b per channel) to be written, including the last data block. The metadata is then appended to the end.

If the audio data remaining to be written to the last block is less than 4096b, which of course it almost always will be, then there is left over data which has to be written. Whether it is repeated zeros or not, I have no idea.

DSF files therefore do not play truly gapless

I ripped my SACD to iso then extracted the DSDIFF edit master +cue for both multichannel and stereo tracks, which JRiver plays ball with nicely.
One problem with leave in it .iso format is that all multichannel SACD and some stereo SACD use DST compression on the DSD data within the iso and it is quite CPU intensive for a PC to decompress multichannel DST to DSD and then convert DSD to DOP or PCM, causing stuttering even on a high end machine.

[Awesome Donkey]

Odd, all my DSF files split from my ISO+CUE copy of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here play gapless. But then again, I first split the ISO+CUE to DSDIFF (using sacd_extract) then repackaged (and not converted) the DSDIFF files using a Mac app (dff2dsf) to DSF. After that there's no gapless issues that I can detect.

Also I'm wondering, should we start a request for MC to repackage DSDIFF files to DSF instead of converting them (and thus avoid the PCM conversion)?