Print

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

[dean70]

I am having issues with major stutter playing 2 of the 3 SACD albums. Two of the 2 channel versions play fine (as ISO, one being 2.0 channel only, the other hybrid 5.1 and 2.0 channel), 1 x 2 channel stutters (even when contents are extracted as DFF files), both 5.1 channel versions have stutter issues (1 SACD ISO and the other extracted DFF files). The stutter seems to pan around each of the channels in sequence.

Running an ASUS Essense ST with ASIO driver and no buffer setting in ASIO CP or under Output mode settings fixes the issue. I do not have such issues with other content (2 ch, 5.1ch high res PCM or BluRay). Not sure what else to look at. Any ideas?

[Matt]

What's your JRMark (Help > Benchmark)?

Anything less than 2500 will be a problem for DST compressed DSD.

[dean70]

Ah that what it is - JRMark is 1840. Just tried on another machine with JRMark of 4176 and it plays these same tracks fine.

I will convert these tracks to aiff files.

[dean70]

Converted to 24/176.4Khz aiff format complete with 30Khz low pass filter & plays fine now. Size has blown out from 3.5gb to 13gb, but have plenty of storage.  

[kstuart]

Technically speaking the 24/176.4 AIFF files will be "lower resolution" than the SACD files.

Will you and I ever have equipment on which we can hear the difference ?   Maybe, maybe not.  

BUT, if you think "maybe", then you could have simply converted the compressed DSD files to uncompressed DSD files, which would have allowed the lower spec PC to play them back.

By the way, if you have not upgraded Media Center in the last three months (in other words, your version is prior to 18.0.72), then all you have to do is upgrade to either 106 or the latest version, 136, and you won't have to bother with AIFF, because in 18.0.72, the following change was made:

" 3. Faster: DST decompression (used by SACD and DFF files) uses 4 threads for decoding instead of running single-threaded. "

[dean70]

Currently running v 18.0.136 - did manage to play 2 of the stereo SACD ISOs natively, but I dont think I will have any luck with the 5.1 channel versions.

The 176.4k sample rate was chosen as it is the final PCM sample rate anyway. All I am effectivly doing is the conversion off-line, instead of on-the-fly. Not sure if you lose any quality that way.

Thanks. I will have to look into uncompressed DSD. Not sure what tools can extract this - I ran a command line utility which only had the choice between DFF and DSF (not sure what the differences are).

[kstuart]

 -c, --convert-dst               : convert DST to DSD****

is how you convert to uncompressed DSD.

[6233638]

The 176.4k sample rate was chosen as it is the final PCM sample rate anyway. All I am effectivly doing is the conversion off-line, instead of on-the-fly. Not sure if you lose any quality that way.

Well if you are doing conversion on-the-fly, you retain the ability to play native DSD or use higher sample rates in the future if you upgrade your audio hardware.

But the reality is that if it's properly converted, there shouldn't be any difference other than filesize - DSD is very bit efficient once you start getting into very high samplerates. Though some might argue that you can't hear above 20kHz anyway, and 16/44.1 is sufficient for humans...

Thanks. I will have to look into uncompressed DSD. Not sure what tools can extract this - I ran a command line utility which only had the choice between DFF and DSF (not sure what the differences are).

DSF can hold metadata, and DFF cannot. The audio is the same.