Understanding DSD recording and playback

Master engineer and designer, Ted Smith explains DSD, the heart and soul of Octave Records and how we make magical recordings.

[marklawrence]

Just superb Ted - thanks for this. Excellent 👍

[ReelHifi]

WOW thanks I have never heard this explained so well thank you Ted :)

[budgetaudiophilelife-long]

🤗 THANKS TED …GREAT JOB EXPLAINING A COMPLEX SUBJECT FOR US LAYPEOPLE 😎
😓NOT AN EASY THING TO DO FOR AN ENGINEER 😉😍😍😍

[joesharkey]

About 06:00 you talk of the problems with PCM chips: they have to use massive DSP filtering to get any quality.

But don't you need a huge amount of math at the front end to get DSD at all? Suppose I want a "pure" DSD recording - I don't think you can. Anything over 0.5 is ON, anything less is OFF. So, if I feed in a sine wave, I will get a "pure DSD" square wave... (Ignoring your analogue to DSD which has a 3 state system!)

Is the math easier to do the oversampling and noise shaping at the input side or the output?

[PooNinja]

Being a random error myself I appreciate this breakdown.

[AllboroLCD]

Talk about getting into the weeds on these dac chips! Must take a lifetime of experience to engineer such complex chips/circuits.

[gstanley]

Ted, I appreciate the discussion. So, why is DSD so challenging to edit… bandwidth, computer power, something else?

[lamont]

Good day, Sir! Very nice explanation in this subject…thanks much!
Could you please refer to us out here in YouTube land your top three or so personal recommendations for a good and realistically affordable DAC? Let’s say 300 or less??

[editorjuno]

Coming from a fairly discerning music listener's P.O.V., I get the distinct impression that DSD is a classic "solution in search of a problem." For human listeners who haven't been psychologically conditioned to listen for its supposedly audible advantages, Red Book CDs and 44100 Hz lossless files are as good as digital audio media needs to be. The physiological limitations of -- and the *huge* psychological factor(s) involved in -- our listening experiences dominate!

[SquareBrick]

A DSD stream looks a lot to me like what comes out of a Class D amplifier. Aside from noise shaping in the DSD stream, what's the difference?

[hugoromeyn]

DSD is like FM but in the digital domain.

[Scopolamine]

I agree that the difference between PCM and DSD may not be that different in fact I have many PCM CDs that sound superior to DSD. The best DSD CD that I ever heard was recorded by Mark Levinson for Red Rose Audio. He did the recording himself. I believe there were 6 to 8 CDs that Mark recorded. I won’t be touching DSD for a long time until it’s absolutely a known quantity that is not going to be discontinued.

[ThinkingBetter]

DSD-64 is better than red book CD 44.1kHz 16 bits PCM, but PCM can beat DSD with higher sample rates and is supported through modern audio architectures used in digital studios, home audio gear and leading streaming services. DSD is not. Nowadays you can stream bit perfect up to 192kHz 24 bits PCM FLAC from services such as Amazon HD music which is more resolving than DSD.

[JonAnderhub]

That has to be the worst explanation I have ever heard about the difference between DSD and PCM.
Incidentally, for the most part nobody does 16 bit PCM any more except for CDs, which are a fading media.
For the most part, the industry has moved to 24 bit, 48 Khz for consumer delivery but not necessarily for recording as 32-bit floating-point at up to 192 Khz is easily sustainable of the average computer these days.
The dynamic range offered for 32-bit IEEE floating-point arithmetic is 1530 dB.

[paulaston]

Sorry, couldn’t understand a word he is on about, obviously he is aiming at the initiated.

[Skye_the_toller]

All those theory is fun… but…. And a big but… the current problem is bad recording, cheap recording and a lack of good studio and competent sound engineer… a lot of high rate DSD or PCM sound weak…. So… comparing pcm and DSD is theoretically good, if you can compare the same apples!

[victorlgcarvalho]

Too bad DSD didn't become the standard.