Conversion to DSD: Does It Eliminate Digital Glare?


Hi All

  This question is for people that have gear capable of converting vanilla redbook pcm CD files in to DSD.
To my knowledge this would include the Sony HAP ES and certain DACs, such as one that I am interested in, the Mytec Manhatten.
   I currently have two highly resolving CD Players, the Oppo 105 and the Denon "Anniversary Edition" SACD/CD player.  I listen to Classical Music about 99.9% of the time.  Rest of the system is Parasound PreAmp JC-1 and Power Amp A-21 with B&W 803- Diamond speakers; Bluesound Vault-2 and Node-2;
and a MacBook Air via Thunderbolt/Firewire adapter into a 10 year old Apogee firewire dac.
  My complaint is that some CDs, particularly in full Orchestral passages, tend to harden, particularly the strings.  My SACDs (I have over 100) don't do that, and I tend to attribute this to the DSD used in SACDs.
I am therefore interested if converting vanilla rebook CDs to DSD tends to eliminate this problem.    
mahler123

Showing 2 responses by todd129

I would agree with those above who say no. Experimented with DSD upscaling quite a bit.

I've also never quite heard this "digital glare" -- and suggest examining other factors, like the knowledgeable guys above have suggested. Maybe someone can enlighten me on this. 

looking forward to this discussion -- interesting question. 
You guys mean aliasing then?

"a nasty high-frequency ringing called Aliasing—a special analog lowpass filter is needed during recording, just prior to sampling—the infamous steep “brickwall” (anti-aliasing) filter, set at half the Sample Rate. In the past, these filters caused audio degradation (unwanted phase shift), since they acted on frequencies very close to the highest perceptible audio frequencies. It plagued the earliest CD recordings"