Although all based on 44.1 kHz would the clocks and external wordclocks for Rossini and Vivaldi need updating too? I am unsure what that may entail as I cannot remember there being software updates for these items previously.
I donāt think so as both the clock as well as the receiving units (upsampler, dac) have only options for either 44.1, 88.2 and 176.4 or the 48, 96, 192 for wordclock frequencies.
As you say DSD no matter what speed is a multiple clock rate of 44.1 so that will work and a higher wordclock is not necessarily better.
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Agree with August, plus I donāt expect the Clocks would need any upgrade as even DSD256 (11.28MHz) is based around a 44.1k base clock rate.
With respect to the Vivaldi Clock getting firmware updates. In fact, the current Control board & Front-panel firmware version of 1.21 is a firmware upgrade (from 2017).
The Reference Clock Input port on the Vivaldi serves a secondary purpose of receiving firmware updates. The updates used to be distributed on CDs, and can be used with any Transport S/PDIF BNC output into the Vivaldi Clock Reference Input, and put into Upgrade mode.
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Iāve remained fairly quiet on this topic as my feeling had been that, in my very limited experience, DSD sounds better in many respects, but lacked ābiteā on transients.
Assuming (and this is a big supposition on my part) this is caused by the bitstream having to āramp upā the amplitude over a period of time, this thread did make me wonder whether a potential advantage of DSD256 would be that the higher bitrate might mean better transients?
I was able to play 256 and 512 on my MSB Select II. Though I completely understand the marketing, product alignment, and product life cycle implications of this limitation in the dCS lineup and specifically for the Vivaldi, I have yet to miss the capability in either speaker or headphone listening. I would love for my stack to have this capabilityāthough all my comparisons on the MSB failed to produce any reliable indicator I could hear the difference; I have about 15 recordings that I specially bought in multiple formats from various places for that specific purposeājust because I abstractly like having choices and flexibility. But if there are any missing transients, I have yet to perceive them in my listening room or see them on any milk cartons.
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On the transients, Iāve since decided this is down to the recording not the media!
In the past three weeks, I went out and bought an SACD ripper and two of Dire Straits albums on SACD (Brothers in Arms and Dire Straits) - I cannot hear any deficiancies with transients on either recording.
In fact, I rather like them (especially the latter) 
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Jeremy, props on getting by the ripper and using it. And I agree that differences in recording are more likely to be causes of a lot of differences we hear.
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I am a proud 15+ year dCS owner and so I donāt want my comment below to imply negativity:
My position on this matter is that if you spend as much as a BMW or a Porsche for a DAC, by a manufacturer who claims to be a worldwide leader in making DACs, then said DAC should have the playback capabilities of other leading DACs.
Thanks to Merging Technologies/Pyramix, there are some great recordings being made now in DSD256, by Eudora and others. Iād like the opportunity to hear what they sound like on my system.
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But are we actually listening to DSD 256 in the commercial release? If the DSD 256 programme material is edited in any way it is typically converted to DXD for editing and transcoded to DSD for commercial release. NativeDSD is very transparent about this only a handful of recordings are available in what they call PureDSD (edited in DSD or with an analogue mixer). Eudora may be one of them.
I have a handful of recordings i purchased in DSD 256 that I would like to be able to play back in native format. I would help me clean up the library a bit by removing 128 derivatives. But apart from that high rate DSD beyond 128 is a low priority for me personally.
Understood and valid points. To me itās completely unclear if
DSD256 recording ā DXD editing ā DSD256 release
<Outperforms/underperforms>
DXD recording ā DXD editing ā DXD release.
I stand by my desire to hear and decide myself : )
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Well I guess that is part of the fun of this hobby!
IMHO we have a fantastic PCM ā DSD (128) capability inside our dCS Dacs. Since this runs on purposely coded FGPA chips on the dac ring board, I would trust dCS over 3rd party software for conversion.
NativeDSD is a fantastic resource and they try to be transparent, but much of their catalogue is transcoded from PCM to DSD and DSD to higher rate DSD.
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The obvious omission is;
DSD256 recording ā DXD editing ā DXD release
Once edited in DXD, thereās no reason why (lossy) transcoding to DSD256 would sound any better than a native DXD release.
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exactly, but part of the nativeDSD business model is to provide super DSD releases, many of which are transcoded from DXD and up-resād (right word?) to DSD 252, 512 and beyond!
If one wants DSD from PCM source for sonic preference, I think we are better off letting the dCS platform do the transcoding.
With my old Esoteric player; DSD and PCM each sounded quite distinct. I have a much harder time telling them apart on my Bartok.
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This seems logical to me Anupc, but again, given the cost of the components, and that the option to hear with (virtually all) other leading brands exists now, Iād like that option too.
An increasing number of the NativeDSD discs start with a DSD256 recording. Accordingly, what you suggest, which directionally I agree with, would still require dCS to support DSD256.
It would seem simple that dcs could provide decoding for 256 in that it appears there is no enhancement heard. It would require only a software adjustment to display 256 and no additional actual decoding to produce the same result. Would appear others may be doing this
This topic has had circa 9,000 views and had had 195 responses posted.It has been running since May 2019. I am sure that dCS are well aware of the request and I cannot see any point in reiterating it further. They will either do it or not. It almost certainly has been considered by them and probably reconsidered. As there now seems to be be a strong marketing reason for it having regard to features offered by the competition IMO it is now no doubt a question of when and how rather then if ( upgrade, feature for a new product?) .
However dCS have a firm policy of not announcing new features before their release. So do not expect any response from them here.
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I agree.
I think the marketing reasons for doing it will (if not now, at some point in the future) outweigh the reasons for not doing it (barring it not being technically possible).
I can only hope we donāt forgo some greater benefit as a result.
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Regarding DSD and editing, here is a very useful doc from Merging that helps explain the limits of editing and mixing with DSD. See page 7 in particular.
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Thank you! 
Giving this another bump 
ā¦ itās the #1 post in the āFeature Requestsā category, both by number of Replies and number of Views.
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