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[Bioman]

I am confused about the quality designation for HD recordings.  I purchased a while ago the 2XHD Audiophile Speaker Setup from Native DSD which plays fine and shows as both 4X and 2X on my DAC (Benchmark 3) when played.  So I know these work.  Yet when I purchased the Reference Recordings Beethoven 5th and 7th I was given three files labeled 64, 126 and 256.  Only the 64 would play which shows as a 5644 bit rate.  I suspect I am mixing apples and oranges here, can anyone assist?

[JimH]

Here's the Wikipedia topic on DSD.  NativeDSD probably has something on the subject, as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Stream_Digital

[Bioman]

That article seems to be saying is that the Bit Rate is too high for a DAC that tops out at 196Khz such as the Benchmark.  Would need one of the Mytek products or something else.

[Awesome Donkey]

Reading the manual of the Benchmark DAC3, looks like it only supports DSD64 (or 1X), which would make sense since it uses DoP and the max sample rate supported on it is 192kHz. To do DSD128 or DSD256, it'd have to support a sample rate much higher to deliver native DSD128/256 via DoP. So the 2X and 4X lights on the DAC are a bit misleading.

Here's a snippet of the manual;

The input format is 1-bit DSD
at a sample rate of 2.8224
MHz (high-resolution audio
format). Note: DSD must be
streamed in DoP format.

2.8 MHz or 2.8224 as it states in the manual would equal DSD64 (or DSD 1X). So yeah, looks like its limit is DSD64.

[dtc]

Late to the party.

DoP uses a PCM sample rate that is 1/16th the DSD rate. So, 2.8 MHz (1x or 64) uses 176 Khz, 5.6 MHz (2x or 128) uses 352 KHz and 11.2 MHz (4x or 256) uses 705 KHz.

The DoP format puts 16 bits of DSD data (0s and 1s) into each 24 bit PCM sample. The other 8 bits are used to identify the stream as DSD. That is where the 16 comes from - 16 DSD bits in each PCM sample.