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Author Topic: Starting with DSD  (Read 3507 times)

fidelious

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Starting with DSD
« on: July 25, 2018, 12:11:39 am »
Owned a Philips DVD 963 SA SACD player years ago in my pre-JRiver era and was impressed by its authoritative sounding SACD playback compared to 16-bit-PCM-with-upsampling (which was great too). Nowadays, finding vinyl too far away from the convenience & usability of digital audio (especially with JRiver MC), I would like to experiment more with DSD.

My last JRiver-DSD experience was a little disappointing - due to the inability to use JRiver's "internal" volume control. But that's not JRiver's fault I guess, it's DSD's  ;D

Owning a PCM and DSD capable DAC (ifi micro iDSD) and low-powered PC hardware (Intel Core Duo 2,4 GHz), I would be interested in easier playability of DSD alongside PCM, making the "Output Format" choice dependent on the source material. And if possible by some algorithmic magic, I would love to be able to use JRiver's "internal" digital volume control with DSD as well.

Keep up the good work!
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Awesome Donkey

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Re: Starting with DSD
« Reply #1 on: July 25, 2018, 03:39:26 am »
Enable DSD bitstreaming, that way when you play any DSD files it'll automatically bitstream those type of files, while leaving PCM files as-is. You can't control volume or use any DSP while bitstreaming. Typically, volume has to be set at 100%, otherwise you might get just noise when attempting to bitstream DSD.

But... as far as I know, there are a few DACs that do support volume control while bitstreaming. For those DACs there is an option to enable volume while bitstreaming (right click on the speaker icon next to the volume slider, and select "Enable Volume When Bitstreaming").
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rlawlis

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Re: Starting with DSD
« Reply #2 on: July 31, 2018, 02:21:05 pm »
Also, make sure you do not have DoP enabled if your DAC can handle quad DSD or higher.
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RD James

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Re: Starting with DSD
« Reply #3 on: July 31, 2018, 04:00:57 pm »
Quote from: fidelious on July 25, 2018, 12:11:39 am
My last JRiver-DSD experience was a little disappointing - due to the inability to use JRiver's "internal" volume control. But that's not JRiver's fault I guess, it's DSD's  ;D

Owning a PCM and DSD capable DAC (ifi micro iDSD) and low-powered PC hardware (Intel Core Duo 2,4 GHz), I would be interested in easier playability of DSD alongside PCM, making the "Output Format" choice dependent on the source material. And if possible by some algorithmic magic, I would love to be able to use JRiver's "internal" digital volume control with DSD as well.
I'm not sure why people are suggesting that you enable DSD bitstreaming.
It sounds like your problem is that bitstreaming/encoding is enabled, and you need to disable bitstreaming/encoding.
With bitstreaming/encoding disabled Media Center will convert DSD to 64-bit 352.8 kHz PCM and resample if required by your DAC, which enables all DSP functionality such as internal volume control and volume leveling.
This is what I recommend using for DSD; I see no reason to bitstream it. For the best quality, I recommend enabling SoX resampling and setting dither to TPDF - though these options may be more than your CPU can handle. The one advantage of bitstreaming is that it's light on CPU usage.
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