Is there a better digital audio format?

Digital audio has used somewhat the same format for nearly 40 years, is there something better on the horizon?

[zerdave]

I greatly appreciate this channel and the info Paul shares but I think every person who considers themselves an audiophile should take a course to record and mix a couple of songs themselves so they can get a better sense for what actually goes on behind their favorite music. I see too many people commenting here that don’t seem to understand just how much gear and processing your favorite music has gone through before it reaches your desired format...and how much budget gear at that (beat up SM57s, gunked up old tube amps, countless pieces of rack gear both digital and analog and of all levels of quality through multiple busses and summing, etc etc etc). The music making process is not what I would call “pristine” even when great care is taken. The “magic” we hear and love is amazing performances put through gear that the engineers felt helped those performances. After all, what is art without its color choices? Mixing engineers use that gear like an artist uses their colors. It’s not about a “perfect recording” in the end. It’s about how it makes us feel when we listen to it and if it took a thousand pieces of gear to get it there, then that’s what it takes. I think we should all remember this when we listen to our favorite music. Modern DAWs can do 32 bit 384khz so I don’t think there is any limitation to PCM as a format anymore...I would be curious to hear a comparison of DSD and PCM in its highest resolution.

[goodsound]

DSD is better, ok, but why exactly? more accurate reconstruction filters, no time smearing? Please give infos, not only opinion.

[Antoon]

DSD is great but the quality of the artist, composition, instruments used and sound of the recording room is far more important. DSD recordings sound very real but if the reality is a crappy song recorded in a small rehearsal room with rented gear and mediocre musicians I prefer a great recording from great musicians in PCM.

[thomass.]

Unfortunately the format won’t matter much if the music is not interesting. Conversely, if the music is good, the playback format matters less. Find good music you enjoy and all the techie stuff just fades away.

[TheRealNewBlackMusic]

What we do is we mixdown to tape one quarter-inch running at 15 IPS then we go to the DSD from the tape and master from DSD. That's gives us a dsd and tape premaster for archive. We usually master to pcm 24 96 but for our upcoming vinyl we will master back to tape. Wow this stuff makes your head hurt😉

[ThinkingBetter]

Best format is PCM because it works through the entire plumbing of digital audio. The audio fidelity of PCM is as good as you make it to (higher sample rate and higher sample resolution). The problem with DSD is that it doesn't actually work with any codecs or DSP audio processing in modern audio architectures. DSD over PCM is a hack. It's fair to say that 44.1kHz 16 bits is not perfect, but PCM is not limited to that. Nowadays you can stream (e.g. from Amazon HD music) bit perfect 192kHz 24 bits. Besides modern DACs actually are not optimized for DSD but rather use a combination of sigma delta and other decoding principles in combination.

[Rene_Christensen]

Are there any scientific studies to support dsd being better than pcm?

[laurentzduba]

I wish we audiophiles can pick one based on ultimate sound quality, but in the end, we are at the mercy of the decisions made by major labels. Thank God for PS Audio's Octave Records.

[BartholomewSmutz]

The DSD to PCM and back to DSD conversion reminds me of Sprockets on SNL when something was translated From English to German then back into English. Or was it the other way around?

[barbecuetechtips]

All my DSD collection is direct from the original reel to reel tapes.

Here I am looking at reel to reel and cassette tape to buy.

[gotham]

So you take the DSD files, then convert them to PCM for editing, then convert them back again to DSD? How is that better than just recording directly to PCM in the first place? Inquiring minds want to know.

[ford]

@Ed Fort  The big problem is that almost all music is recorded in PCM 48khz or 96khz and a lot of music is mixed and eq adjusted poorly!

Proper adjustment of the EQ. and other tIng when making a song is more important than if it is PCM. or DSD. !

[TheEmmef]

DSD is digital and can hopefully correct for media/stream errors, so possible both signal values (bits) and the timing (sampling rate, pulse width or ...) _must_ be quantized in some way: that's just, albeit complex, physics. That also means that the digital information rate is limited.

I can imagine that at the same price-point and information rate, it is easier to construct a better ADC or DAC for DSD when compared to some other formats. Studios often use internal formats internally that can contain much more information than DSD. However, recording the source in DSD might profit from a better ADC. And also converting it to DSD might improve playback at the consumer, because of the relatively better DAC. In general, however, I guess a studio "downgrade" to 192/96 kHz at 24-bit and a very good DAC also works for the consumer.

Pay attention, however. A lot of equipment uses professional studio-grade ADC/DAC but a crappy analogue path and a shitty power supply. That gives good specs under ideal conditions. However, it might voice radio signals for you or require laboratory-grade cleaned power sockets. My advice: buy something else, even if you ditched your fridge already.

[budgetaudiophilelife-long]

🤗 HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY …. But seldom popular 😉😍😍😍

[QoraxAudio]

When is octave records going to release albums on vinyl?

[doylewayne]

Yes, 'analog kid, digital man, DSD grandpa ! Thanks Paul. :-))

[YnotNomis]

DSD all the way. I don't know all the techincal stuff, but since I heard DSD music files, even when I upsample my Flac and Wav music files to DSD, it just sounds better, clearer and easier to hear for my ears.

[gotham]

"Digital audio has used somewhat the same format for nearly 40 years, is there something better on the horizon?"
How is DSD "on the Horizon?" SACD was launched over 20 years ago, and is now nearly extinct.

[davidcampbell]

Octave Records DSD recordings are the best of the best. Silky where there's silk, gritty where there's grit. It's as real as it gets, for me at least. Whatever your taste in music, it's surely high fidelity.

[josefbuckland]

Mmm what about these multi track tape recorders in the studios. If that’s the zenith well let’s have some of that please