Well there are a few issues here. Firstly, there
is a bug with the sacd_extract converter, which can cause there to be pops and clicks at the beginning or end of tracks when extracting DSF files.
But that does not seem to be the cause of this problem, as it's happening with SACD ISOs as well.
There is another issue, which - as I understand it - is due to DSD's 1-bit nature.
If a track is not
zero at the start of playback, it will click.
This means that some tracks will play back just fine if they are played sequentially with gapless playback, but will click if you
start playback with them.
This is neither Media Center's fault, or anything but the nature of DSD, and how the disc is mastered - at least that was my understanding.
I have tried converting one of these tracks to WAV, and it clicks at the start of playback every time - even in other applications.
It seems like this could be solved by having an option which would do a very short fade-in from zero when switching to DSD tracks that are out of order.
I have a taken a track from the middle of an album that must have been mastered with gapless playback in mind, which has a couple of seconds of non-zero "silence" at the start. (actually I wonder if it's a direct tape transfer and it's simply the noise of the tape causing this non-zero "silence" between the tracks)
This track will click at the start every time, no matter which application is used for playback.
But if I select the first hundredth of a second in Audacity and add a fade-in, the click completely disappears.
So perhaps this is something Media Center would be able to do at the start of a DSD playback sequence. (e.g. the start of an album, or the start of any DSD track which is not being played in sequential order)
I have another track which I thought had a few seconds of actual silence at the start, but still clicked when changing to it while another track was playing.
If I started playback on this track there was no click, but it would click every time I switched to it from another track.
Looking at the waveform, it seems that it's non-zero
right at the very start of the track (the first tenth of a second) before it is actually silent.
It seems that if I start playback on this track, the time it takes for my DAC to switch sample rates is enough to mask this click at the beginning, but I hear the click when I switch to it from another track, because the DAC is ready to play and doesn't cut off the very start.
I've checked Media Center's SACD conversion/splitting against other tools, and it does seem to be splitting tracks correctly, so it doesn't appear to be Media Center inserting this click at the start of the track - it seems to be the track itself.
And the final issue, that I have been complaining about for a while now, is that Media Center seems to be doing something wrong with its native DSD or DoP output, as my DAC is advertised as being silent when switching between any format, but clicks at the start or end of DSD playback in MC19 most of the time.
It also clicks when converting PCM to DSD, so it doesn't seem to be an issue with the tracks themselves, but MC's DSD implementation.
These complaints seemed to fall on deaf ears, as Matt was insisting that their implementation was correct, and they didn't hear it on whichever DAC it is that they were using for testing.
But this was barely an issue for me in MC18 - and that is still the case - compared to playback in MC19. So that is something which still needs investigated, in my opinion.
I had a similar problem getting him to acknowledge that there were problems with Memory Playback in MC19 with DSD files, until I had
evidence of this which could not be disputedSo I'm not really sure what the answer is here. When converting to PCM, it does seem that inserting a very short fade-in would help prevent clicks at the start of playback or when changing tracks with DSD files. Obviously you would not want to do this with sequential playback - only at the start of an album.
But the issue with clicks when using DSD to PCM conversion seems to be the tracks themselves rather than something wrong with Media Center's output - at least as far as I can tell anyway.