Multichannel DSD256?

[janosch simon]

hey all by accident i found https://www.channelclassics.com/ and was pleased to see that they have ALOT multichannel DSD256 as far as i know sacd multichannel are "only" dsd64 and after some youtubing i would love to try dsd256 but that seems to be not that easy....the dac side seems manageable ..found some dacs that can do 8ch (need only 6) ak4458,ESS Sabre 9018

but to get the DSD256 to the dac seems to be VERY tough commercial solutions use usb or ethernet... i looked at xmos and some diyinhl usb interfaces but seems non is nativ DSD256 compatbile. is there any commercial available usb interface that dont break the bank? and FPGA programing like in the comercial players like merging nadac cost around 12000$? little to much

any tips and input welcome

cheer janosch

 

[wealas]

The only mostly out of the box option I know of is a Beaglebone Black with the botic kernel. That would give you I2s output to feed most DACs.
A more questionable solution is multiple stereo USB interfaces driven by the same USB bus (to avoid clocking issues) and channel splitting done in the OS (ALSA on Linux).
I'm waiting for a better solution as well.

 

[janosch simon]

:O ids the beaglebone black able to do pcm768? cause on my stereo system which uses the dam 1021 and the dop to dsd board from iancanada its limited to dsd128 because of the rpi limitaion to pcm 384 hmmmm and multiple boards kind of suck but on the other hand 3 rpi cost less then of the commercial dacs the powercable exciting times


fun fact even the ps audio direct stream can only do dsd128 hmm

 

[wealas]

It sure can, I had it setup with Ian's McFifo playing native DSD512 (stereo though) fed from either MPD and Roon.

Not sure if the 100 mbit Ethernet would be able to handle 6ch DSD256 and a USB Gigabit dongle seems to strain the USB bus too much to work.

 

[janosch simon]

HMMMM HMMM hmmmm indeed 6 channes is demanding usb3? some of the commerical dacs use ethernet port for feeding the data or hdmi? but no idea how they manage it affraid with fpga an custom code BUHHH

 

[wealas]

There was some discussion over on the Xmos forums about bandwidth of the USB interface and there were some calculations based on the high speed USB packet size and how much audio data that can carry. If you search Xmos multi-channel DSD you should be able to find it.
I think there was speculation that in order to handle that much data you might have to use multiple Xmos chips but I don't think they had the newest gen chips when that discussion happened.
The merging interface seems very nice and they have a devkit that should be usable (when they release it) and you can do isolation using optical Ethernet and even break up the streams over multiple devices easily.

 

[janosch simon]

hmm on the xmos forum i looked one guy managed to get 4chanels multichannel native DSD - Page 2 - XCore Exchange but dont know which dsd flavor i just looked at some new uhd bd players the panasonic ub9000 can do dsd up to dsd256 but only 2 chanels im also not shure if it outputs mulitchanel dsd over the analoge outs or the hmdi hmhm seems not like a clean solution and merging is giving out there interface? thats interessing but the fact that the hole dac is 11500$ unlickly it will be cheap

 

[wealas]

They are not giving it away for free it will cost something but probably less than a the DAC
Here is the thread with the bandwidth discussion: DSD USB AUDIO 2.0 MULTICHANNEL REFERENCE DESIGN - XCore Exchange

also, another member on this forum said he got the diyinhg multichannel USB interface to do 4 channel DSD64 with firmware tweaks from the post you mentioned.

Also, Russ at twisted pear audio is working on a multichannel ESS90x8pro DAC so they will have to offer an interface with DSD support for it

 

[janosch simon]

thx for the link but no bandwidth discusion there? yeah would be great if russ brings something for the diy or diyinhk

 

[wealas]

Page 2, next to last post (from Ross). Not really a discussion... It's about DoP so divide by 2 for native DSD.

 

[janosch simon]

ah see hmpf not so easy all but nevertheless very exciting

 

[mterbekke]

Hi all,

Beaglebone Black/Green with a Botic driver can stream 4 channels of dsd256 each. There's no room for more dsd output channels (serializers) afaik, even though bandwith wise one would expect to be able to put out 8 channels of dsd128 and 16 channels of dsd64. The hardware and software just doesn't allow for more dsd output channels than 4.

It does allow for 8 channels of high res pcm, which seems the best option and it doesn't need a local usb connection which is all for the best imho. To me it's the best sounding solution also. Holographic, very detailed, full, organic etc.

 

[janosch simon]

HMMM yesterday i played and Multichannel sacd in my Denon DVD 3910 to my Marantz 7010 and it works fine through hdmi and the analog 7.1 sound was fine but afaik onle dsd64 any of you guys heard dsd256 live? the files i bought from channel classic i cant play yet only 2 chanel if i give my dvd 3910 a multichanel dsd file it dont plays it GRRRR

 

[kazap]

What size are the 5.1 256 DSD downloads for 60 minutes of music?


I think this calculation has to be wrong:




DSD256 multichannel (5.1) = 246.3MB/min =14.8GB/hr = insane?


That's a lot of bandwidth for loads of ultrasonic noise and low linearity. It would be much more efficient and practical to use PCM encoding surely?

 

[janosch simon]

hmm the file i downloaded was mahlers symphony 3 its 95min and 24gb
indeed insane

hm about pcm i dont know but the dsd gurus swear that dsd256 is the bomb and i just want to test it hihi
cheers janosch

 

[mterbekke]

44k1 × 256 × 5 channels = 56 Mbit/s = 7MB/s = 420 MB/minute = 25,2 GigaByte / Hour.

But I'm sure harddisk size is to no concern to anyone anymore these days. Besides: dsd256 can hardly be thought of as noisy and regarding linearity it is better than pcm, simply by nature.

Hard to edit though;-)

 

[kazap]

hmm the file i downloaded was mahlers symphony 3 its 95min and 24gb
indeed insane

hm about pcm i dont know but the dsd gurus swear that dsd256 is the bomb and i just want to test it hihi
cheers janosch

Wow. You must have good internet speed. My internet speed down here in Australia is too slow to consider that load so I hope you get the 256DSD playing and its the bomb. Looks like your surfing the leading wave of advances aiming to play 5.1 x 256 DSD.



Does DIYaudio iancanadas multichannel boards support your needs? Looks like its designed to do up to 8-channels DSD512, so looks to have you future proofed for when you do 76GB downloads of mahlers symphony 3 in 8xDSD512



DocumentDownload/McFIFOManual.pdf at master * iancanada/DocumentDownload * GitHub

 

[kazap]

44k1 × 256 × 5 channels = 56 Mbit/s = 7MB/s = 420 MB/minute = 25,2 GigaByte / Hour.

But I'm sure harddisk size is to no concern to anyone anymore these days. Besides: dsd256 can hardly be thought of as noisy and regarding linearity it is better than pcm, simply by nature.

Hard to edit though;-)

Thanks for the update. Im usually out of date. I was going off Wikipedia:

Because of the nature of sigma-delta converters, one cannot make a direct comparison between DSD and PCM. An approximation is possible, though, and would place DSD in some aspects comparable to a PCM format that has a bit depth of 20 bits

Direct Stream Digital - Wikipedia

 

[janosch simon]

haha no the download was in background several hours i have only a 16mbit line next year 100mbit yay heeh iancanada i hope answers to this thread unfortunately im not aware of any device that can provide i2s transfer with 768khz i believe is needed for quad dsd? hmmm gmm hmm D:

 

[Dimdim]

Native Quad DSD needs the equivalent of 384KHz of bandwidth. If you were to transfer Quad DSD via DoP you would need 768KHz.