Educate me about DSD

Spend your time finding new well-recorded music instead. Nothing wrong with the red book format done right.

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Blue Coast has FREE DSD samples (at various rates) and even PCM that you can compare in your own system to see what you think. I like the idea of DSD becoming more prevalent in a few years, but right now, mixing it is a bear and most labels aren’t ready to move to it from PCM after all their investment and having a source of engineers well versed in PCM, but not so many who know how to work with DSD.

Originally DSD was thought of as a great ARCHIVAL medium, not one necessarily for consumer listening, but with the better technology available today, some have thought to push its use.

Octave Records (PS Audio) and Blue Coast are two of those among others.

Paul McGowan (PS Audio) is an evangelist for it.

Another thing about SACD/DSD was the fact that it offers multichannel audio. If used properly this could add a lot to the music experience in theory, but it seemed most studios didn't have a clue what to do with them other than add some "ambience" noise or sound effects.  I'm a 2-channel guy myself so that attribute never appealed all that much to me. 

+1@gosta, I love everything @lordmelton listed (not sure about the Buggles though:) )  And I have many DSD titles by most of them.  Yet I am continually blown away by new standard resolution recordings like LIberty by Anette Askvik, Birds by Dominique Fils-Aime, So Handsome Hello by Woodkid etc.  So fun to explore and find new gems.  Still love the DSD stuff though not everything sounds amazing.

I joined in to learn a bit more about DSD. Somewhere along the way I tried some… DSD files, they sounded fine (on a previous system). I fiddled with buying downloads… of different resolution, my ripped CDs,… all my vinyl… etc. since buying downloads and storing them was a phase of technological progress that only lasted a few years and mostly disappeared with the advent of streaming I did not follow it.

I have done a lot of upgrades of my system over the last seven years. What has struck me is that the overall quality of your basic components is +99% of what you get sound quality wise. My ripped CDs, CDs, and streamed with the same mastere d albums sound exactly the same on my system. High resolution streamed albums sound a little better… but, it depends on the recording… late 50’s - early 60’s recordings are just jaw droppingingly good on CD, ripped CD, high resolution digital or vinyl. Basically, the format of a great sounding system is far less important than the recording and system that it is reproduced with. Basically you system is the most important aspect.

So, my point is that, if your goal is great sound quality, the order of optimizing your system is (assuming all digital) speakers, preamp, DAC, streamer, amp, cables, room treatments, power cords, then the digital formats.

Please do not misinterpret what I am trying to say. If you want to play around with comparing different digital formats… I am not discouraging it. But if you are still trying to build a fantastic system… this is something to discuss, once you have one… not a means to this end.

So enjoy 256 vs 512 or whatever. Great conversation.

‘If a title was actually recorded in DSD, then it’s DSD but if it was converted to DSD, then it’s only a shell’, so a recording engineer told me. He also explained that a DSD recording must play straight through from the beginning to end because you cannot have a DSD recording stop during recording. All that being said, I prefer DSD files to anything else where it pertains to sound quality. The only issue is that a DSD 64 cycle recording is twice as large as a PCM file. And, a DSD 128 cycle file is twice as large as a DSD 64 cycle and so on. So if you want to download a lot of DSD files, you better own a large hard drive! But yeah, DSD is my favorite.