Explain to me dsd

I guess my question is that if my files are all flac, would I gain anything by buying an Aries to stream since it is capable of dsd streaming into my Emm dac2x that upsamples to dsd (if I understand correctly).

From what I can gather, it seems to me that the DAC 2X is doing what  DSP engineers call 'interpolation'. In practical terms, this means that the sampling frequencies for all your digital inputs are converted to ~5.6 MHz (or the equivalent of DSD128).

The Aries streamer appears to output DSD data according to the DSD-over-PCM (DoP) specification, v 1.1. This means that it's actually using the PCM format to send DSD data to a DoP-capable DAC (the DAC2X). This is probably ideal for your DSD music files. 

On the other hand, if all you have is music already in a PCM format, it makes sense to simply send that as-is to the DAC 2X and let it do the conversion to the DSD sample rate.

Of course, you'll probably get the best information if you contact EMM Labs directly. 

Yage I think your response is spot on

While all this tech is fun, I wouldn't say upsampling, or converstion from PCM guarantees one or the other is better. Your ears make a better arbiter than white papers. :)

Best,


Erik

Seems as though HDMI may soon become obsolete, never liked them  anyway. Some audio products like Lyngdorf provide for HDMI input.
These cable changes are sure beginning to looking like a ripoff.