DSD from a Server to dCS Delius via Firewire?


I've been looking at the dCS Delius, which has firewire as an option and is DSD compatible. Since I'm in the process of ripping all of my CDs to hard drive (again, last time to make mp3s, this time to make wavs). I started wondering... If you have a firewire out, could you run firewire from the computer to the Delius and theoretically get jitter-free playback?

I realize there isn't (or at least I don't know of any) software to upsample 16/44.1 to DSD on a WinXP box, but some bright bulb will do that eventually, right? Is there enough processing firepower in a generic (or even higher end) WinXP box to do that kind of upsampling? You know, kind of a software dCS Purcell?

On that note, but on a more practical theme, any dCS Delius owners able to comment on whether you can run firewire from a music server directly into the Delius? Is the firewire port DSD only? I'm guessing the firewire version of the Purcell is a firewire output only to connect to the Delius?
edesilva

Showing 2 responses by bigamp

To clarify, the Weiss takes PCM via firewire, but not DSD. My point was that there are some DACs that can receive certain signals via firewire.

I agree, the Delius can't receive DSD from a PC via its firewire port -- the Delius port is strictly used between two DCS components and only for the DCS proprietary encrypted signal.

I did a little digging around 6 months back on how to get a DSD signal out of a PC and into a DAC. At that time, the only solution I came up with was using a Merging card in the PC that outputs DSD, along with sofware that supports DSD such as ProTools software. You will also need a DAC that can receive a DSD input, such as an SDIF-3 or RAW DSD input. The EmmLabs DCC2 and Danish Audio Denmark AX24 DACs can receive these signals.

Please note that this is just what I came up with through a little online research, so you would need to vet this out.