It’s pure common sense. Sales of DSD are minuscule compared to CD, LP, streaming. The music available as DSD are in general not RAP, pop, or country which makes up virtually all music sales or what is streamed.
Take Native DSD as an example. They have about 2500 albums on there site the vast majority are classical and jazz. Those are two of the lowest selling genre of all music and might make up 3% of all sales.
Just because a few audiophiles spend a lot of energy talking about DSD doesn’t make it important to the vast majority of consumers. I am not saying it isn’t important to people who hang out on some audio related forums, then again like minded individuals gravitate towards forums that are aligned with their interests. If you go to an equestrian forum you would think a lot of people are into that pastime. Same goes for bowling, yachts, mountain climbing…………
That may be true. But the vast majority of music listeners are probably also not interested in a standalone DAC, let alone a Vivaldi stack. The vast majority may be unaware that cheap, off-the-shelf chips can process high resolution DSD. And yet, here they are. My iPhone makes amazing images. And yet, sitting on my desk are cameras that cost far more and make much higher resolution files. That’s one of the benefits of being in any highly-focused hobby these days. In a world of billions, it only takes a small percentage to make a market worthwhile.
My point exactly, Nor should the acolytes of higher res DSD influence dCS’s decision to provide additional multiples of DSD in their future products.
That said if dCS is to continue to play in the same sandbox as MSB and Wadex, etc they will probably introduce higher Rez DSD in the new product lines.
I’m one who listens to mostly classical, and I have trouble grasping the high DSD thing. Apart from a few boutique labels, most transcode DSD to PCM for editing and back to DSD for retail. NativeDSD says as much. Some may prefer the sound of DSD and I fully admit the ‘just listen’ DSD sampler I got from NaitiveDSD sounds wonderful. I also like tape transfers in DSD if they were transferred that way.
But why on earth pay money for recordings that have been DSD to PCM to DSD round tripped, when your dCS will convert PCM to DSD for you?!
Having said that, there is a ton of fgpa power on all dCS DACs, I do wish dCS would upgrade the mappers to do DSD 256 as this seems to be the chosen rate for many engineers who work with DSD.