That's really helpful linuxfan, thanks. The question about how to get DSD to the renderer was bothering me late last night so I was going to do some quick research this morning, now I can relax a bit more with my coffee.
Cheers
Ray
The problem is that there is no real standard for "native" (unpackaged) DSD streaming. DoP is the closest thing to a proper standard we have.
A lot of people seem to think that DoP is somehow inferior to "native" DSD, despite the fact that DoP is just a way to package the exact same bytes that a "raw" or "native" DSD file contains.
Most "hi-res" audio is in 96/24 or 192/24 PCM FLAC format. DXD is a 352.2/24 PCM format for editing DSD (as DSD can't be edited/processed using normal studio tools without conversion to PCM), and is not intended as a distribution fromat. Nobody records in DXD natively.
I am not sure I would classify DSD as a "hi-res" format. It was a reasonable archival format for analog tapes back in the 90's.
Gents, thanks for all the information. Obviously piqued further interest!
Just wondering if we are straying well off- topic as this thread started with Media Slice Player which is a self-contained server/renderer by the looks of it but we are now talking about a full blown network streaming system. My own understanding was limited and was not able to differentiate between various technologies used so appeared to have 'bombed' this thread with queries 😀
@Ray, not sure if you wish to move the discussion to a more relevant thread or you do not mind sitting pat with the current thread?
TIA
Just wondering if we are straying well off- topic as this thread started with Media Slice Player which is a self-contained server/renderer by the looks of it but we are now talking about a full blown network streaming system. My own understanding was limited and was not able to differentiate between various technologies used so appeared to have 'bombed' this thread with queries 😀
@Ray, not sure if you wish to move the discussion to a more relevant thread or you do not mind sitting pat with the current thread?
TIA
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Shall we say "Super Hi-Res" then 😉
2L- the Nordic does DxD natively.
They also indicated that DxD sounds a little better than DSD but I think this is mainly due the conversion process from DxD to DSD.
FYI, Natively recorded direct-to-DSD Master is available form Blue Coast Records | Exceptional Acoustic Recordings
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Whatever buzzword you like... 🙂
Yes, and hats off to them for being pioneers, but they aren't exactly a high-volume label.
So reducing bit rate from 17 Mb/s to 5.6 Mb/s improves the sound?
I guess that depends on the terminology/definition. From what I understand, a lot of the Blue Coast Records recordings are first recorded and mixed in analog (with a good analog master tape being the equivalent of 13 bits / 48 kHz) before the final master is recorded in DSD (to try to avoid having to convert to PCM for editing/processing). Is that "native"?
Be as it may, yes, there might be some "pure" "native" audiophile recordings from specialist labels, but anything from the major labels seems to have been processed in PCM at some point.
Mostly remastered from analog tapes but there are ones which are direct DSD using Sonoma DSD recorder- they call it DSD Pure! these are what I would go for rather than the converted ones. Of course at this stage there only few selections out there ...
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Correct me if I am wrong, but it is my understanding that the process involves first recording the raw sound in DSD, then playing it back in analog for mixing, and re-recording in DSD for the final product (so it will at least be an analog-digital-analog-digital chain).
Not sure how you came out with the figures but I was not actually comparing DxD vs DSD. if you look at 2L-Nordic they offer various formats but the digital master is done in DxD and from these all the other formats are derived, including DSD. So, if you are planning to get their labels choose DxD for the highest performance.
One of the reasons why I checking to see if media servers support DxD streaming.
Also, for DxD capable DACs like ES9018, one could then turn off the oversampling and get this "NOS" performance when playing DxD?
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Right, I misread your sentence about DXD compared to DSD. Thanks for the clarification. It is still kind of funny to use DXD as a recording and distribution format, as it was only developed as an intermediate format for DSD editing.
Mostly, yes this way but there are versions that are kept entirely in the DSD domain. So again need to check how the creation is done.
Also, check out Acoustic Sounds for more DSD labels but I would think these are mostly remastered/converted versions
Back to my queries again, can Media Servers stream DSD (natively) ?
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How do they do mixing and editing?
If you use DoP, the media servers don't need to know if it is PCM or DSD. DoP data is still native DSD, it is just packaged in a container that looks like PCM to the server and software.
I've been digging a bit into the issue with respect to my use of AssetUPnP and got pointed at this, which helped my understanding a lot;
DoP open Standard | DSD-Guide.com
Once I get my DAC up and running (maybe this weekend!) I'll download some free DoP material and give it a try.
Ray
From some UPnP servers, yes. From SqueezeBox/LMS, currently no.
See post 60 ... particularly the last paragraph where I suggested you test with "oShare".
OK, so I guess it boils down to definitions - is DoP "native" DSD or not? I would consider a packing format that doesn't change the content of the DSD data "native" (as opposed to conversion to PCM). When streaming PCM, it is packaged in TCP and IP frames too, but we don't consider that non-native.
Did more tests... this time connected a usb drive with music files to the Netgear router i.e. set it up as a Media Server - fairly straightforward as everything configured automatically.
PlugPlayer can now direct music from the Netgear Media server to the renderer (Samsung gear) without problems. I can also do the same thing from a Win7 PC Media Player
So it seems that PlugPlayer cannot 'serve' out music from an iPhone itself!
Maybe this Apple thing😕
Has anyone else tried to get this working?
Does not really affect my plans as I am not intending to use the iPhone as media server but rest of the family are obviously disappointed!
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