Octave Records should become the #1 studio for the greatest artists seeking the best audio quality of their performance. We need that. But how do you attract the greatest artists?
@@tryingtotryistrying I don’t want to choose between music by greatest artists or music by greatest audiophile studios. I want both in one. So far that has been very hard.
Happy New Year Paul & PS Audio crew! All this recent talk has had me realize that I may not be an audiophile, but really a music lover who appreciates nicely designed gear. Suddle difference, but difference indeed! I probly will finally pick up a budget DSD DAC this year and make my own opinion.
Both DSD and PCM are not without issues. They simply are very different issues. Arm waving and banter might mean a lot to folks who think vinyl records are 'better' than state-of-the-art digital sound. DSD was one solution to digital hardware issues that are no longer limitations. But DSD production and DSD mixing issues are the problem. You'll have the only DSD studio in the world, but what does that mean to artists and agents who are quite satisfied with Red Book CDs? It'll mean plenty to the engineers and producers who have come to expect the product of DAWs to make recordings. Commercially available DAWs cannot handle DSD. One fundamental flaw of DSD production recording is that available computers cannot handle it without changing it to a workstation working format. DSD was designed to allow high quality archiving of existing musical material. Archivists don't have to mix, correct artistic errors, and later master for distribution. And don't expect even the best artists to *not* want errors fixed in post unless you want to do 20 or 30 takes to get it right while paying 1 to 100 musicians. Ask yourself (rhetorically): Why did Sony (DSD's inventor) abandon it, when they knew all its secrets? And why haven't Deutsche Grammophone (and a hundred other high-quality music producing companies) ever relished it enough to convert to it? Is there some fictional conspiracy theory? Should we doubt DSD's strong points? No. But there's a reason why it stands with creations like the 45 rpm LP and digital multitrack studio recorders in the invention hall of fame. Best wishes.
Kenwood had an interesting approach to FM demodulating using a similar technology. Their FM tuners would take the FM signal which because it is frequency modulated, the distance between waves changed slightly based on the audio signal voltage modulation. So by then just rectifying (cut half the wave) could be passed through a low pass filter and turn the FM modulation into a digital pulse density and then into audible bandwidth audio.
Paul, none of that explains why PCM files sound as good as DSD files, when the PCM files are derived from the DSD files (converted from DSD to PCM). Since such a PCM file has sound quality that is virtually equal to a DSD file, then it stands to reason that the two formats achieve the same sonic excellence, albeit via different coding. Since your testing of recording to both PCM and DSD, simultaneously has resulted in DSD being the clear winner, then it stands to reason that the problem is in the way that your studio is creating the lesser sounding PCM files. Is it your real-time analog-to-digital converters (one for PCM and one for DSD) that are not of equal quality? Is it the microphones you used for your simultaneously testing, not being of equal quality? The associated equipment is key and vital to your results. Paul, please list all of the equipment used in your testing that brought you to your conclusion that DSD is the superior recording format, the same as reputable reviewers do in Stereophile and The Absolute Sound. If you do not list your associated equipment, then how can we confirm your assertion that DSD is the superior capturing format, without knowing how you captured DSD vs how you captured PCM? Paul, if a reputable reviewer gave your FR30s a bad review, wouldn't you insist that that review include the amps, pre-amp, tubes, turntable, tonearm, cartridge, DAC, transport, room treatments, interconnects, and power conditioning? Well, you are giving a bad review to the sound captured by PCM, and your viewers should expect to see the associated equipment that you used, the same as you would expect to see for a bad review of your FR30s. (I am assuming that your FR30s sound amazing, and I am not knocking them -- rather, I am using them only for my analogy). Thank you.
I would like to hear the differences by myself. Paul always says that you can hear a difference between PCM and DSD recordings. And I want to Believe him. I tried DSD and PCM files by myself but it's hard to find original DSD recordings and PCM recordings that are the same songs and where PCM is unedited. There is a reason why he thinks that DSD is much better then PCM but I want to differentiate PCM vs DSD by myself.
@@patrick12399 Paul has said, in more than one video, that the difference in sound quality between DSD and PCM is related to capturing the live sound and performing real-time encoding. He has also said, in more than one video, that when you convert a DSD file to PCM file, the sound quality is indistinguishable (I do not have his exact quote -- but that was his meaning). The above points to: 1) The two formats are of equal quality (that is, equal sound quality). 2) When PCM loses, due to the real-time recording process, then it is due to the real-time recording process. The above is why I am asking Paul to lay out his equipment list. I have asked in 4 or 5 videos, and he has not done so. I am starting to think that maybe his investment in DSD could have been reduced if he stuck with PCM, after he would iron out the PCM recording issue with sound quality -- and as such, he might not want to visit this subject and come to terms with his investment decisions (perhaps he would regret going the DSD route if PCM is its equal)? Just a guess, because all I can do is guess when Paul will not list his equipment for his simultaneous PCM and DSD recording and listening tests. Another guess is that Paul might be too quick to take his recording engineer's word on this topic. Paul seems to genuinely like him, and perhaps he does not wish to offend him with questioning his engineer's advice -- even when it affects major business decisions. Or perhaps Paul is not familiar with the equipment used to record PCM and DSD, and is too proud to say so or ask his team to spell it out? We have to guess when our host does not fill in the blanks. It is routine for reviewers (and that is what Paul did -- he reviewed the sound quality of PCM recording vs DSD recording)... it is routine for reviewers to list the equipment. So all we can do is guess why Paul will has not done so. Paul prides himself on answering questions. He does so every day, and with the best intentions (and is appreciated), which leaves the question of why he leaves this "equipment list" as unanswered?
@@NoEgg4u Yeah you are right. He said it more the one time. But he also said that there is a difference between DSD and PCM capturing (not recordings that was my fault). I want to hear it by myself. And then we can maybe analyze both recordings and look if the equipment he uses for PCM are as equal as the DSD equipment. He also mentioned that he don't want his investment back. He just want to take some great artists and capture the music as close to realism as possible. The question is why he does choose to use DSD instead of PCM. He should capture music in PCM and DSD and release the files. At best with his Equipments he used. So everyone can see if DSD is better than PCM. I know you should take everything you hear with a grain of Salt and try to make your own opinion and this is why I want some data from him. Like you. One hint: Maybe he doesn't read the TH-cam comments and you should try to contact him in a different way. Maybe Email? Or when you live in America you can visit him and take a look by yourself. He mentioned that too.
With DSD, there a very limited editing, (butt editing between silence allowed) no processing. Octave records reconverted everything in analog for this reason. So they used the DSD to get the colour of the format, process-edit in analog and re-encoded in DSD. The recording industry based on DSD used PCM at 352.4kHz to allow edit and processing, and get back to DSD. Being all the way native with DSD make sense for Live recording but not very practical for studio work.
If anyone needs a real-world example of what PCM sounds like - just look at those early Casio keyboards, and the "quality" of the instrument sounds they could produce. Man - we've come a long way!
Thanks for the explanation Paul, though it does generate a question. If its much easier to see PDM as an analogue wave form, why is it more difficult to edit?
Probably because you have only 1 bit to work with unlike 16 or 24 bit where you can lower or increase the bits to edit the waveform. If I were to ask I would probably try to think of a way to "cluster" affect multiple 1 bits in order to affect the phase, frequency levels. As the way I see it in a decently loud tone if you switch enough 1s to 0 it will suddenly become quieter as the cluster of 1s became less dense thus giving less energy to the speaker. But how does DSD handle the frequencies? since as Pual says... The louder you are the more clustered 1s are but how is it with the frequency? Say I want a 4khz tone, how does it look in PDM? How does 4khz tone look in PDM when it's loud or quiet?
I have no experience working with DSD, but my understanding is that with DSD you can't easily assess the actual amplitude of the signal at a given point in time, because DSD does not encode this directly (while PCM does). So simply making a cut between 2 separate DSD bit streams will typically introduce a bias in the signal. The easy workaround is to transcode the DSD recording to PCM for digital editing and processing, and then convert back to DSD for the final master. Personally I don't see the point of DSD for music production as it seems to create more issues than it solves, but I guess an argument could be made to release the final master in DSD format.
It's more difficult to edit in a multitrack digital environment because those environments have been built over decades to work with PCM. If I try to fuel my car with something other than gasoline, my car won't run well, even if the other fuel is "better," because my car is designed to run on gasoline only. Put three decades and the equivalent amount of money behind it, and we'd have DSD in a fully-featured DAW environment like we do with PCM.
@@billsallak4887 That is true too, all popular DAWs use PCM because it's just so much easier to process and edit. I'm just not really convinced that putting that kind of money behind an all-DSD DAW will be actually worth it. Such a DAW has to be incredibly more resource hungry and probably can't to much processing in real-time. That's probably why Octave Records are going the old-school analog route for mixing. I have serious doubts that this approach will really pay off outside of some very naturalistic (and niche) music productions that don't need anything else than what an old-school analog mixer can provide (while adding noise and distortion of its own). But I applaud Octave Records for putting their money where the mouth is! I'll be very interested to hear what they will release!
@@jaydy71 Frequency lives in the time domain, the x-axis in Paul's illustration. It is the number of times the signal (bit density) rises and falls per second. The same is true for PCM except that the amplitude of the signal is digitally encoded in 16-24 bit words rather than the density of the one bit pulses.
It is 11200 KHz (Quad DSD) or 2800 KHz (Regular DSD) instead of 192 KHz. The faster clock rate allows for a more detailed capture of the sound especially reverb and sound texture.
Some of the reasons is that DSD needs much less Filter to convert to analog so you got much more analog and true sounding music. I think the only Filter for DSD conversion is a low pass filter.
imagine analogue recording being continuous and in theory having infinite sample rate, a higher digital sample rate (more frequent) makes the captured data closer to analoge
@@philiptong4978 Yes, but "closer to analoge", what's the point with that when we have already surpassed what the humans can hear, or even record in the studio, since we don't have good enough hardware for 24 bit recordings yet? We have good enough equipment (quiet rooms) for 192 KHz sampling frequency but not for 24 bit. Anyway, I have around 250 SACDs and the best sound-quality I have on any disc is on a HDCD and my next best sounding disc is a "lousy" CD. I don't even have a SACD on the list of my "Best sounding recordings" more than Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon but that SACD is just because it's so much more fun with it's multichannel surround-sound. Well, I let everyone else of you think that DSD is much better than 24 bit 192 KHz but I sit on the fence and waits for a recording that will convince me about DSDs superiority.
First few times I saw you explain DSD I believed it hook, line & blinker... but now I'm wondering why you keep explaining it. You know the line the lady doth protest too much?
I think because many new people are coming to this party late and need to be educated on what DSD is and why it is better going forward than other recording technologies. Even now, there are people just getting into streaming of music and starting to ask questions about why some files sound better than others. If DSD is ever to catch on as a recording standard across many studios and record labels we need an audience that is educated to at least have a rudimentary understanding of it.
No it didn't explain the mixing process. We know that PDM can basically drive the output stage of a class D amplifier but mixing with DSD simply can't be done in the time domain without some kind of conversion into another format. How else would you set/adjust input channel volume levels and sum them together? Seems like your just maintaining the mystery with more ambiguity.
Frequency lives in the time domain, the x-axis in Paul's illustration. It is the number of times the signal (bit density) rises and falls per second. The same is true for PCM except that the amplitude of the signal is digitally encoded in 16-24 bit words rather than the density of the one bit pulses.
Looking into this a bit (pun unintended) it seems like the difference between PCM and PDM is best compared to pixelating in imagery. PCM is like a dot matrix printer which fills in the space using code and stochastic randomness or quantizing. So then the analog from that is "filled in with quantized information from a constant on-off switching function, as it "builds" the sonic shape. PDM is more like a highly accurate full-spectrum stylus pen moving up and down. It fills in with an actual representation of the sine wave from zero to whatever its frequency range and amplitude is. So it's kind of full bore, as in, if you could record that way with a phono stylus, ut would need a record groove of varying width and depth to accommodate the wide and deep changes in both frequencies and amplitude. So PDM moves in real time with the signal, only producing an equivalent impulse. Whereas PCM is in constant on-off mode, filling in the signal with multi-step, pinpoint constancy using artificially generated filler to blend in the gaps.
I have a Denafrips Terminator Plus R2R Ladder DAC. I can listen to Paul's recordings in DSD and 192/24. I believe due to the nature of R2R dacs, the 192/24 sounds clearly better in my system. I think you'd really need a PS Dac to take full advantage of the DSD files. Anyone have similar/different experiences?
PCM is nativilly handled by R2R dacs which is why PCM sounds better on them. DSD is nativally handled by delta-sigma dacs. Most dacs out there are delta-sigma. The problem comes when the dac needs to do real time conversion from DSD to PCM or the other way around.
It's 98% marketing. He wants to create a niche and needs to sell people on dsd. The only other way to compete is to build a list of big records (resume), which is much more difficult.
Have you hears at least a couple of good DSD recordings so far? No one needs to market DSD to people who have already heard some good DSD recordings or analog transfers. DSD sells itself once people have heard it.
Early adopters and creators of new technologies are often met with skepticism. Nothing wrong with that. But there are obviously engineering and psychoauditory reasons DSD, if used correctly, should sound better than 24-bit/192KHz. At this point it is still early in the game, but we'll see 20 years from now if DSD has more than a niche audience or if more studios and labels adopt it and more musical artists ask to be recorded with it. One issue is in the mastering. While studios have mastering engineers that know how to do current PCM, acquiring the skills necessary to do DSD correctly will require a reset and that will take time and effort.
@@edfort5704 DSD is 10+ years old. I run merging ada8p converters. It is a superior format but will always remain a very small niche due to not just the cost associated with playback, but the extreme limitations in editing. I just mean Octave is choosing to market DSD as making their offering superior to others, when the quality of the artist and mixing skills is MORE than 99% of the equation.
Just Me... Paul this is your YT Channel and you can do on it as you wish. But you have become a broken record (pun intended) -- This channel is nothing more than an infomercial. I just Unsubscribed. I hope you don't make me unsubscribe from your other channel. Best of luck with Octave Records
Thank you Paul. You explained that very well. Easy for my little brain to comprehend. Cheers...
Octave Records should become the #1 studio for the greatest artists seeking the best audio quality of their performance. We need that. But how do you attract the greatest artists?
@@tryingtotryistrying I don’t want to choose between music by greatest artists or music by greatest audiophile studios. I want both in one. So far that has been very hard.
Happy New Year Paul & PS Audio crew!
All this recent talk has had me realize that I may not be an audiophile, but really a music lover who appreciates nicely designed gear. Suddle difference, but difference indeed! I probly will finally pick up a budget DSD DAC this year and make my own opinion.
Thank you for this imaginative and original PDM explanation.
Both DSD and PCM are not without issues. They simply are very different issues. Arm waving and banter might mean a lot to folks who think vinyl records are 'better' than state-of-the-art digital sound. DSD was one solution to digital hardware issues that are no longer limitations. But DSD production and DSD mixing issues are the problem.
You'll have the only DSD studio in the world, but what does that mean to artists and agents who are quite satisfied with Red Book CDs? It'll mean plenty to the engineers and producers who have come to expect the product of DAWs to make recordings. Commercially available DAWs cannot handle DSD. One fundamental flaw of DSD production recording is that available computers cannot handle it without changing it to a workstation working format.
DSD was designed to allow high quality archiving of existing musical material. Archivists don't have to mix, correct artistic errors, and later master for distribution. And don't expect even the best artists to *not* want errors fixed in post unless you want to do 20 or 30 takes to get it right while paying 1 to 100 musicians.
Ask yourself (rhetorically): Why did Sony (DSD's inventor) abandon it, when they knew all its secrets? And why haven't Deutsche Grammophone (and a hundred other high-quality music producing companies) ever relished it enough to convert to it? Is there some fictional conspiracy theory?
Should we doubt DSD's strong points? No. But there's a reason why it stands with creations like the 45 rpm LP and digital multitrack studio recorders in the invention hall of fame.
Best wishes.
Kenwood had an interesting approach to FM demodulating using a similar technology. Their FM tuners would take the FM signal which because it is frequency modulated, the distance between waves changed slightly based on the audio signal voltage modulation. So by then just rectifying (cut half the wave) could be passed through a low pass filter and turn the FM modulation into a digital pulse density and then into audible bandwidth audio.
Paul, none of that explains why PCM files sound as good as DSD files, when the PCM files are derived from the DSD files (converted from DSD to PCM).
Since such a PCM file has sound quality that is virtually equal to a DSD file, then it stands to reason that the two formats achieve the same sonic excellence, albeit via different coding.
Since your testing of recording to both PCM and DSD, simultaneously has resulted in DSD being the clear winner, then it stands to reason that the problem is in the way that your studio is creating the lesser sounding PCM files.
Is it your real-time analog-to-digital converters (one for PCM and one for DSD) that are not of equal quality?
Is it the microphones you used for your simultaneously testing, not being of equal quality?
The associated equipment is key and vital to your results.
Paul, please list all of the equipment used in your testing that brought you to your conclusion that DSD is the superior recording format, the same as reputable reviewers do in Stereophile and The Absolute Sound.
If you do not list your associated equipment, then how can we confirm your assertion that DSD is the superior capturing format, without knowing how you captured DSD vs how you captured PCM?
Paul, if a reputable reviewer gave your FR30s a bad review, wouldn't you insist that that review include the amps, pre-amp, tubes, turntable, tonearm, cartridge, DAC, transport, room treatments, interconnects, and power conditioning? Well, you are giving a bad review to the sound captured by PCM, and your viewers should expect to see the associated equipment that you used, the same as you would expect to see for a bad review of your FR30s. (I am assuming that your FR30s sound amazing, and I am not knocking them -- rather, I am using them only for my analogy).
Thank you.
I would like to hear the differences by myself. Paul always says that you can hear a difference between PCM and DSD recordings. And I want to Believe him. I tried DSD and PCM files by myself but it's hard to find original DSD recordings and PCM recordings that are the same songs and where PCM is unedited. There is a reason why he thinks that DSD is much better then PCM but I want to differentiate PCM vs DSD by myself.
@@patrick12399 Paul has said, in more than one video, that the difference in sound quality between DSD and PCM is related to capturing the live sound and performing real-time encoding. He has also said, in more than one video, that when you convert a DSD file to PCM file, the sound quality is indistinguishable (I do not have his exact quote -- but that was his meaning).
The above points to:
1) The two formats are of equal quality (that is, equal sound quality).
2) When PCM loses, due to the real-time recording process, then it is due to the real-time recording process.
The above is why I am asking Paul to lay out his equipment list.
I have asked in 4 or 5 videos, and he has not done so.
I am starting to think that maybe his investment in DSD could have been reduced if he stuck with PCM, after he would iron out the PCM recording issue with sound quality -- and as such, he might not want to visit this subject and come to terms with his investment decisions (perhaps he would regret going the DSD route if PCM is its equal)?
Just a guess, because all I can do is guess when Paul will not list his equipment for his simultaneous PCM and DSD recording and listening tests.
Another guess is that Paul might be too quick to take his recording engineer's word on this topic. Paul seems to genuinely like him, and perhaps he does not wish to offend him with questioning his engineer's advice -- even when it affects major business decisions.
Or perhaps Paul is not familiar with the equipment used to record PCM and DSD, and is too proud to say so or ask his team to spell it out?
We have to guess when our host does not fill in the blanks.
It is routine for reviewers (and that is what Paul did -- he reviewed the sound quality of PCM recording vs DSD recording)... it is routine for reviewers to list the equipment. So all we can do is guess why Paul will has not done so.
Paul prides himself on answering questions. He does so every day, and with the best intentions (and is appreciated), which leaves the question of why he leaves this "equipment list" as unanswered?
Relax some. It's only audio.
@@NoEgg4u Yeah you are right. He said it more the one time. But he also said that there is a difference between DSD and PCM capturing (not recordings that was my fault). I want to hear it by myself. And then we can maybe analyze both recordings and look if the equipment he uses for PCM are as equal as the DSD equipment.
He also mentioned that he don't want his investment back. He just want to take some great artists and capture the music as close to realism as possible. The question is why he does choose to use DSD instead of PCM. He should capture music in PCM and DSD and release the files. At best with his Equipments he used. So everyone can see if DSD is better than PCM.
I know you should take everything you hear with a grain of Salt and try to make your own opinion and this is why I want some data from him. Like you.
One hint: Maybe he doesn't read the TH-cam comments and you should try to contact him in a different way. Maybe Email? Or when you live in America you can visit him and take a look by yourself. He mentioned that too.
@@morbidmanmusic My comments were not meant to trigger you. I apologize for angering you.
Perfectly explained!
However, mastering PDM is quite a nightmare.
With DSD, there a very limited editing, (butt editing between silence allowed) no processing.
Octave records reconverted everything in analog for this reason.
So they used the DSD to get the colour of the format, process-edit in analog and re-encoded in DSD.
The recording industry based on DSD used PCM at 352.4kHz to allow edit and processing, and get back to DSD.
Being all the way native with DSD make sense for Live recording but not very practical for studio work.
If anyone needs a real-world example of what PCM sounds like - just look at those early Casio keyboards, and the "quality" of the instrument sounds they could produce. Man - we've come a long way!
Wrong. Don't listen to brainiac above. His comparison is ludicrous..and very uneducated and PCM or DSD
@@morbidmanmusic Aside from blatant ad hominem, can you provide any evidence to your argument that my statement is "uneducated"? I'll wait.
🤗. THANKS PAUL FOR EXPLAINING IN LAYPERSONS TERMS 🤔😍😍😍
My pleasure. Thanks for being a part of our community.
Thanks for the explanation Paul, though it does generate a question. If its much easier to see PDM as an analogue wave form, why is it more difficult to edit?
Probably because you have only 1 bit to work with unlike 16 or 24 bit where you can lower or increase the bits to edit the waveform.
If I were to ask I would probably try to think of a way to "cluster" affect multiple 1 bits in order to affect the phase, frequency levels. As the way I see it in a decently loud tone if you switch enough 1s to 0 it will suddenly become quieter as the cluster of 1s became less dense thus giving less energy to the speaker.
But how does DSD handle the frequencies? since as Pual says... The louder you are the more clustered 1s are but how is it with the frequency? Say I want a 4khz tone, how does it look in PDM? How does 4khz tone look in PDM when it's loud or quiet?
I have no experience working with DSD, but my understanding is that with DSD you can't easily assess the actual amplitude of the signal at a given point in time, because DSD does not encode this directly (while PCM does).
So simply making a cut between 2 separate DSD bit streams will typically introduce a bias in the signal.
The easy workaround is to transcode the DSD recording to PCM for digital editing and processing, and then convert back to DSD for the final master.
Personally I don't see the point of DSD for music production as it seems to create more issues than it solves, but I guess an argument could be made to release the final master in DSD format.
It's more difficult to edit in a multitrack digital environment because those environments have been built over decades to work with PCM.
If I try to fuel my car with something other than gasoline, my car won't run well, even if the other fuel is "better," because my car is designed to run on gasoline only.
Put three decades and the equivalent amount of money behind it, and we'd have DSD in a fully-featured DAW environment like we do with PCM.
@@billsallak4887 That is true too, all popular DAWs use PCM because it's just so much easier to process and edit.
I'm just not really convinced that putting that kind of money behind an all-DSD DAW will be actually worth it. Such a DAW has to be incredibly more resource hungry and probably can't to much processing in real-time.
That's probably why Octave Records are going the old-school analog route for mixing. I have serious doubts that this approach will really pay off outside of some very naturalistic (and niche) music productions that don't need anything else than what an old-school analog mixer can provide (while adding noise and distortion of its own).
But I applaud Octave Records for putting their money where the mouth is! I'll be very interested to hear what they will release!
@@jaydy71 Frequency lives in the time domain, the x-axis in Paul's illustration. It is the number of times the signal (bit density) rises and falls per second. The same is true for PCM except that the amplitude of the signal is digitally encoded in 16-24 bit words rather than the density of the one bit pulses.
So, how does the recording engineers tweak the density in the modulation?
That mic hates your watch.
So on my Lumin X1 should I convert all FLAC to DSD on streaming content?
I can't understand how something can bee better than 24 bit 192 KHz PCM since that's already is as good as what our hearing is as best. As best!
It is 11200 KHz (Quad DSD) or 2800 KHz (Regular DSD) instead of 192 KHz. The faster clock rate allows for a more detailed capture of the sound especially reverb and sound texture.
Some of the reasons is that DSD needs much less Filter to convert to analog so you got much more analog and true sounding music. I think the only Filter for DSD conversion is a low pass filter.
imagine analogue recording being continuous and in theory having infinite sample rate, a higher digital sample rate (more frequent) makes the captured data closer to analoge
search for "Why Does DSD sound better than PCM?"
@@philiptong4978 Yes, but "closer to analoge", what's the point with that when we have already surpassed what the humans can hear, or even record in the studio, since we don't have good enough hardware for 24 bit recordings yet?
We have good enough equipment (quiet rooms) for 192 KHz sampling frequency but not for 24 bit.
Anyway, I have around 250 SACDs and the best sound-quality I have on any disc is on a HDCD and my next best sounding disc is a "lousy" CD.
I don't even have a SACD on the list of my "Best sounding recordings" more than Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon but that SACD is just because it's so much more fun with it's multichannel surround-sound.
Well, I let everyone else of you think that DSD is much better than 24 bit 192 KHz but I sit on the fence and waits for a recording that will convince me about DSDs superiority.
can you stack the 1 bits on top each other is that how you doing it
that would make sense!
First few times I saw you explain DSD I believed it hook, line & blinker... but now I'm wondering why you keep explaining it.
You know the line the lady doth protest too much?
I think because many new people are coming to this party late and need to be educated on what DSD is and why it is better going forward than other recording technologies. Even now, there are people just getting into streaming of music and starting to ask questions about why some files sound better than others.
If DSD is ever to catch on as a recording standard across many studios and record labels we need an audience that is educated to at least have a rudimentary understanding of it.
No it didn't explain the mixing process. We know that PDM can basically drive the output stage of a class D amplifier but mixing with DSD simply can't be done in the time domain without some kind of conversion into another format. How else would you set/adjust input channel volume levels and sum them together? Seems like your just maintaining the mystery with more ambiguity.
I can understand how DSD sampling replicates volume from your video but how does it replicate frequency? You only explained the volume angle.
Think more voltage than volume. "DSD sampling replicates" voltage levels. The rate at which the voltage changes is the frequency information.
Frequency lives in the time domain, the x-axis in Paul's illustration. It is the number of times the signal (bit density) rises and falls per second. The same is true for PCM except that the amplitude of the signal is digitally encoded in 16-24 bit words rather than the density of the one bit pulses.
@@glenncurry3041 Thanks for that answer. You and Carl were quite helpful in explaining what I hoped Paul would have explained.
Looking into this a bit (pun unintended) it seems like the difference between PCM and PDM is best compared to pixelating in imagery. PCM is like a dot matrix printer which fills in the space using code and stochastic randomness or quantizing. So then the analog from that is "filled in with quantized information from a constant on-off switching function, as it "builds" the sonic shape. PDM is more like a highly accurate full-spectrum stylus pen moving up and down. It fills in with an actual representation of the sine wave from zero to whatever its frequency range and amplitude is. So it's kind of full bore, as in, if you could record that way with a phono stylus, ut would need a record groove of varying width and depth to accommodate the wide and deep changes in both frequencies and amplitude. So PDM moves in real time with the signal, only producing an equivalent impulse. Whereas PCM is in constant on-off mode, filling in the signal with multi-step, pinpoint constancy using artificially generated filler to blend in the gaps.
I have a Denafrips Terminator Plus R2R Ladder DAC. I can listen to Paul's recordings in DSD and 192/24. I believe due to the nature of R2R dacs, the 192/24 sounds clearly better in my system. I think you'd really need a PS Dac to take full advantage of the DSD files. Anyone have similar/different experiences?
PCM is nativilly handled by R2R dacs which is why PCM sounds better on them. DSD is nativally handled by delta-sigma dacs. Most dacs out there are delta-sigma. The problem comes when the dac needs to do real time conversion from DSD to PCM or the other way around.
It's 98% marketing. He wants to create a niche and needs to sell people on dsd. The only other way to compete is to build a list of big records (resume), which is much more difficult.
Have you hears at least a couple of good DSD recordings so far? No one needs to market DSD to people who have already heard some good DSD recordings or analog transfers. DSD sells itself once people have heard it.
Meh.
@@morbidmanmusic If that's the way you feel, stick with PCM; no one is forcing you to buy or listen to DSD.
Early adopters and creators of new technologies are often met with skepticism. Nothing wrong with that. But there are obviously engineering and psychoauditory reasons DSD, if used correctly, should sound better than 24-bit/192KHz. At this point it is still early in the game, but we'll see 20 years from now if DSD has more than a niche audience or if more studios and labels adopt it and more musical artists ask to be recorded with it.
One issue is in the mastering. While studios have mastering engineers that know how to do current PCM, acquiring the skills necessary to do DSD correctly will require a reset and that will take time and effort.
@@edfort5704 DSD is 10+ years old. I run merging ada8p converters. It is a superior format but will always remain a very small niche due to not just the cost associated with playback, but the extreme limitations in editing. I just mean Octave is choosing to market DSD as making their offering superior to others, when the quality of the artist and mixing skills is MORE than 99% of the equation.
Sounds like the JPEG of sound.
That is what digital is..
@@morbidmanmusic Most of the time. Not if the sample rate is high enough.
WINDOWS XP
Paul, PCM is american, DSD is japanese, what side are you on? hahaha ;)) MQA is Thatcher!!! hahaha
Just Me... Paul this is your YT Channel and you can do on it as you wish. But you have become a broken record (pun intended) -- This channel is nothing more than an infomercial. I just Unsubscribed. I hope you don't make me unsubscribe from your other channel. Best of luck with Octave Records