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Anyone know of a DSD DAC?

Whitehall

Whitehall

Super Member
Banned
Bought a new Oppo with a HDMI output. It occurred to me that a standalone DAC that took HDMI input and output line level analog might be an interesting box.

The Oppo's native conversion is to change to PCM then send to the DACs.

I suspect that this would be a VERY small market though.
 
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Whitehall said:
Bought a new Oppo with a HDMI output. It occurred to me that a standalone DAC that took HDMI input and output line level analog might be an interesting box.

The Oppo's native conversion is to change to PCM then send to the DACs.

I suspect that this would be a VERY small market though.
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Does the Oppo keep the signal as DSD through the HDMI output? I don't know if the HDMI stanard even allowes for this possibility. But if it does, that would be interesting. :scratch2:

One DAC that I know of that will actually do DSD is one of the EMM Labs units. But at >$10k, it is not exactly within most people's budgets. I'm not certain what the interface is done through though. But I think it might be firewire.
 
I've got the new 980 model and the owner's manual says that HDMI can transmit either PCM or DSD. There is even a screen menu choice.

Of course, players with great DSD DACs built in are already available.

HDMI can transmit DSD if there is a security code ringback from the reciever. Sony did it for their players and receivers with the latter doing direct digital amplification of the DSD signal. The top-end recievers also convert PCM into DSD to drive the MOSFET amp devices. A filter follows.

So far, the reviews haven't been too good for the musicality of these early implementations.
 
You have to specifically look for HDMI 1.2 (or above....we are now up to HDMI 1.3) if you are interested in transmitting native DSD digitally. The Oppo 970, for example. can output SACD digitally thru its HDMI 1.1 output, but it can only do that with a DSD >>> PCM conversion. The new Oppo 980, on the other hand, can transmit the native DSD datastream without conversion using its more advanced HDMI 1.2 output.

For your info, HDMI 1.2 was standardized for DSD transmission in September 2005. Only now are compatible players showing up on the market.
 
The Oppo DV-980H has version 1.2a of HDMI:

http://www.oppodigital.com/dv980h/default.asp

Compared it to my Sony DVP-9100ES and a DVP-N9000ES using the stereo analog audio outputs. The Sonys are smoother and "darker" in tone but the Oppo had more "bite" and was livelier although with more grain.

PS just got an email from Oppo support that said:

"SACD DSD is always processed at 24-bit/88.2Khz when converted to PCM."

That would explain the grain.
 
Actually..this is how I've been explained DSD by a few people.

While SACD has a 1+mhz sampling rate...it's only about as efficent as 88.2khz PCM...i don't know how valid this actually is, but it was broken down in a complicated fashion going into the differences between PCM and DSD.

The truth is...from what i can tell, the Sony units are the only ones that have DSD-native converters..and they're also SACD only...

the 88.2 khz conversion to PCM is a common one for DSD...and why exactly they convert to 88.2 and not something like 96 or 192 has something to do with how the PCM is constructed from the DSD stream and not a compatbilty thing for 44.1...

i could be totally wrong...i'm just remembering a conversation I had with an audio-guy.

i personally don't see why HDMI is the latest craze other than by force and the average consumers laziness/ineptness. I honestly don't want to be routing digital signals into a reciever to handle them....when was the last time a reciever had decent DACs in it? give me plain ol analog..i know where my 3 miles of cables go :)
 
While the bit rates are comparable, one could question whether the codings are really equal. Since each slice gets 24 bits, much of that would be unused as the bits determine the loudness of the signal. The higher sample rate in DSD might be more important to the ear.

With my Pioneer DV-563A, I always thought that the SACD sounded superior to the 96/24 DVD-A but that the 196/24 sometimes was even better.

That still leaves the question, why would upsample Redbook but not SACD when they had the 196/24 DACs?
 
I have a DSD-capable DAC.

It's an Analog Devices evaluation board AD-1955. No longer available. Cost me a whopping $165. I waited nearly a year on back order to get it.

The DSD input has it's own 10-pin header connection. Certainly not a common interface so I really don't know for sure how I'd ever use it. Maybe one day I'll read the engineering documentation that came with it - probably not though. ;)

I just use the normal toslink and or coaxial inputs and the fully differential/balanced outputs to my preamp. I run it off two 7.2AH VRLA batteries (requires +/-12V power).
 
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