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[DavidZ]

I just recently learned of JRiver's ability to convert PCM to DSD on the fly -- will give it a try this weekend. Has anyone done any comparison of sound quality of the upsampled versions vs. native playback? Thanks. -- David

[6233638]

I prefer to keep PCM as PCM, but some people like upsampling to DSD. I suppose it depends on the hardware used.
There are some measurements and discussion here: http://archimago.blogspot.com/2013/09/measurements-pcm-to-dsd-upsampling.html

[DavidZ]

Thanks -- I'll check it out.

[sirkus]

http://www.craigmandigital.com/education/PCM_vs_DSD.aspx

...We can clearly see that with this particular waveform, PCM produces a much more faithful copy of the original with both accuracy and precision...

http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=74

...The conversion from DSD to PCM is really an automatic thing, a very benign conversion. If you don’t change the sample rate, there is no loss of quality when expanding the word length...
...The loss of quality only comes when multi-bit PCM is dithered back down to 1-bit DSD. When you dither down to 1-bit, you’re adding huge amounts of quantization noise...
...We do not recommend it at all for any kind of studio production work. It’s just completely unsuitable for professional applications…for any production work. The only way it should exist, if it exists at all, should be as the final output from a mastering room, where for whatever reason we want to distribute this in a DSD format. Okay, let’s create a master in a DSD format that we can distribute....
...PCM is a wonderful format to do all your production work. Do all your mixing, all your EQ, all your processing that you’re going to do, everything that you’re going to do in the mastering process and then the very final output can be DSD. There will be some loss in quality when you do the PCM to DSD conversion, but this loss is just because of the limitations of the DSD and not due to any limitations of the conversion process. You’ll have a better result doing that than trying to do all the processing in DSD...

Seems better to buy a 384 kHz DAC than a DSD one

[Blaine78]

The result I find from upsampling, either DSD or higher PCM by software or hardware, music sounds somewhat smeared, lacking bite, or attack. overall less engaging.