Request for DSD256 playback

And to me, this is why the Octave Records, Blue Coast, 2L, Sound Liaison and other similar offerings matter: whatever their choice in technology, they have developed a stage for artists who care about the production quality of their music, and a retail outlet for customers who likewise appreciate that quality. We win regardless of the technology employed, because the goal is quality reproduction and there are multiple paths to it. The old joke comes to mind about audiophiles buying music in order to listen to their equipment. Here, itā€™s a good thing. :grin:

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I would like to add Channel Classics to the list.
Jared Sacks is doing a great job with high quality native DSD recordings, teaming with top musicians (Rachel Podger ā€¦).

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Been there done that! :rofl: Must be a decade ago now, I blew out my mid-range driver ceramic cone with the canons firing on the Telarc 1812 Overture SACD (Kunzel/Cincinnati Pops).

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We did an event in a previous life of mine where we trashed the bass drivers on a Ā£170k pair of speakers on exactly that part too ā€¦ one of the sales guys was sat beside the speakers at the time and said that he was watching the cones with a degree of amusement until at one point he said that he saw the cone leap outwards, pull tight on the roll surround, buckle and just stay there ā€¦ followed shortly by a really acrid smell.

One of the attendees commented on the appropriate manufacturers forums that evening that it had been a wonderful event and the first one that heā€™d been to where the 1812 Overture had been played with real cannon smokeā€¦ :smiley:

When we did the same event the following year I was unboxing kit for setup and opened up the speaker boxes and some ā€œwagā€ in shipping had stuck big notes in with the speakers saying simply ā€œNO 1812!ā€ ā€¦ :laughing:

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Hi Colin ā€“ yeah, it still goes round and round and makes noises. As does the bluetakwonder

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Just curious, what speakers were those?

Grand Utopia EMā€™sā€¦

First day of a three day event too. :frowning:

Would the event have been the one run by Signals, in Ipswich? Iā€™d been looking forward to hearing that system! Now I know the culprit, perhapsā€¦

ā€¦it maaaaaaaayyyyyyyy have been.

Good I asked. I shouldnā€™t play 1812 too loud on these, then. :grinning:

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/me starts PTSD twitchingā€¦ :laughing:

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ā€¦whatā€™s really scary is, at first glance, just how much you look like Steve, my best mate from uni there! :laughing:

Iā€™m revising this thread now two years later since Iā€™ve been spending more time on NativeDSD and would like to share my viewpoint with @support and @Andrew, whose past posts I have greatly valued, and benefited from.

First, supporting DSD256 it is not a one-sided equation, i.e., if there is more product, dCS will support it. If dCS supported DSD256, there would be more DSD256 content because many of us, dCS customers, would buy it, creating more demand. Second, I believe that the industry leader in DACS and signal processing, dCS, should do precisely that, LEAD, and not wait for its customers to make enough noise to introduce new features. Echoing @PaleRider, why give us an excuse to look elsewhere? Finally, I findā€“honestly and with no disrespect intendedā€“this last statement ā€œthe cost is astronomicalā€ simply offensive. The cost of the Rossini APEX DAC is $32,800. The cost of the Vivaldi APEX DAC + Upsampler is $71,500. It would seem that since dCS already supports DSD128, there would be some room in the current pricing to increase support to DSD256. dCSā€™s competitors are finding a way to do so.

Accordingly, Iā€™d like to add my voice to those of others requesting this feature. Hopefully it will be introduced soon.

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I found this spreadsheet which lists all of the manufacturers and products currently supporting DSD256 playback. There are over 200, but not one from dCS:

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I have been a dCS user for 20 years - albeit the ā€˜Classicā€™ stack. It seems strange to me that dCS even in that Classic stack provided upsampling to DSD from PCM and SACD playback so must have great expertise in that field. Having ripped all my SACDs and bought a lot of DSD downloads from Native DSD and HDTT to name but two I am pursuing DSD 256 and upward playback. I have bought a Chinese NOS ladder DAC which allows DSD playback up to 1024 via USB and am enjoying the quality of those files for the first time.

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New video from Octave Records discussing HD audio recordings. Hoping dCS @support gets the message that the future is not upsampled redbookā€¦

ā€œThis system is capable of 64 channels at 4x DSDā€

I think you meant ā€œ64 channels of 4x DSDā€ (not 64x DSD :laughing:).

By the way, Iā€™m not sure what Paulā€™s on when he claims ā€œThereā€™s nothing like it in the world.ā€ (@ 4.27min) :roll_eyes: Itā€™s a standard Merging Pyramix DAW with 2 x HAPIā€™s (that you can see in the rack). Nothing special that other Studioā€™s donā€™t also have.

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Thx @Anupc, yes, that would be a lot (!) Typo corrected, thank you!

He states Octave records everything in 4x DSD. That is hopefully where more studios are headingā€¦

Actually, what I found interesting is that Paul choses to not mention that the Merging Pyramix DAW converts the recorded DSD channels into DXD for all editing/mixing (via the Avid S1 console).

So, does it make any sense to then lossily re-convert DXD into DSD? Is theres any real benefit to DSD256 when all the mixing/editing was done in DXD?? :grin:

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A lot of DSD audio files submitted for sale are not in native DSD form. Many have been made from other sources like DXD. We cannot playback in DXD - unless you own a specific DAC that supports that - so DSD 256/512/1024 is all we have available - but not to dCS owners/users! I guess you would have to compare the original DSD file with the edited DXD version/converted to DSD to answer your question?