Upsampling PCM or DSD in 2022

I’m relatively new to this forum, and I’m certainly not looking to make any enemies here. I’ve always maintained the view that if someone is happy with the sound of their audio system, and it gives them joy listening to music, that is a beautiful thing—and it would be a self-serving, destructive act to attempt to sully that experience for them by criticizing their choices.
 

However, I see a lot of talk on here about the “sound” of a DAC, particularly in favor of PS Audio’s $6,000 take on this technology, and Paul McGowan’s “proprietary” terms he invokes to describe its ephemeral results. And it is a very different thing when one is suggesting to others that the indefensibly priced DirectStream is “the only way to go” if you want to achieve the pinnacle of sound, from a component that shouldn’t have a “sound” to begin with—especially when their claims are as scientifically baseless as the language used by the marketing mouthpiece of the manufacturer himself. Has anyone ever asked themselves what factors justify that price point, for a device that exists almost exclusively in the digital realm?
 

What exactly should a DAC “sound like”? A DAC is nothing more than a computer, designed to convert a digital sample of an original master back into its original form with the least amount of errors possible—errors that take the form of noise, distortion or “jitter” when our amplifiers transmit the signal to our headphones or speakers. If a DAC is doing its job properly, it shouldn’t have a “sound” other than what was intended in the mastering process. If it sounds “warmer” than other DACs, assuming that all other components are unchanged, then that’s either a product of distortion (errors) or of the cognitive bias introduced by having spent $6,000 on the device itself. Logically (and therefore scientifically), the DAC should be an invisible part of the signal chain—reproducing the original master as faithfully as possible, allowing us to tailor the sound to taste in our choice of amplifiers, DSPs/ASPs and headphones.  
 

For those in the market for a DAC, or an audio system in general, please do your research before spending your hard-earned cash on your choice of components, and please be very wary of the advice you receive from others, particularly when they are suggesting to you that you would be a pinhead if you didn’t buy into the marketing claptrap from “premium” brands. A very wise audio engineer once told me to spend my hard-earned cash in the following order of cost, from least to most—and it has always served me well: Cables—>Streamer—>DAC—>Amplifer—>Headphones. The latter component is the most personal one, the one that has the most significant impact on the resulting sound. Find a DAC that has the best measurements (lowest noise, distortion and error rate)—if you do your homework you’ll find that recent advances in technology have brought us options that require a minimum of expense to do the job exceptionally well. Peace.

@srkbear Thanks for trying to save us all from the snakey oil salesmen out there. It's highly appreciated.

However Paul McGowan's SACD/CD transport is a ground breaking product that outputs pure native DSD over I2s to a DAC, eliminating and freeing the user from restrictive conversion processes.

As far as the sound of DACs is concerned it's more of how much more detail, soundstage, presence, realism, imaging etc., not just warm or cold.

We don't tailor sound using amplifiers and other components, we look to find a synergy that will bring us as close to the live event as possible. Whether that's a concert or studio session.

I wasn’t being snarky in my post, so I’d appreciate not being condescended to or demeaned in turn, if I may so ask. I’m well aware of PS Audio’s coup in circumventing Sony’s DRM licensing limitations. Perhaps a little explanation of the back story of this stroke of genius is in order so folks won’t continue to mistake it for “innovation”. 

Sony is the original inventor of SACD technology, as you know. And since the inception of the format, Sony has forced all manufacturers of SACD players to follow their own hardware limitations, namely downsampling all digital audio streams to a maximum of 48 kHz and 16 bit. Sony also owned a majority of the masters originally released in the SACD format, and they invoked this restriction to prevent bootleggers from pirating their own digital masters that far exceeded the resolution of standard Red Book CDs. 

You’ll note that PS Audio, the only outfit who has managed to circumvent these restrictions, did not release their DirectStream DAC in isolation—they did so with the simultaneous release of first their PerfectWave SACD player, that was designed to offer this benefit when coupled with one of their proprietary DACs, via McGowan’s beloved IIS protocol. Then they “upgraded” the technology to their DirectStream line, at even higher prices. 

PS Audio could not have achieved this “innovation” without the express permission and cooperation from Sony, without incurring major lawsuits. Even high dollar Marantz SACD players do not have access to the bit perfect DSD layer, because they are just as restricted by Sony’s DRM rights as any other manufacturer is. So PS Audio did not achieve this breakthrough by any strokes of technological brilliance—they merely bought the rights to supersede the licensing limitations from Sony, who would only agree to this if the format was limited to a non-standard (at the time) transmission protocol—namely, IIS. 

So that $6,000 price tag you paid for to gain access to that DSD layer largely went  to Sony for their licensing rights. There’s no magic otherwise in PS Audio’s DAC or SACD player, nor is there anything superior about IIS over standard USB (despite McGowan’s inscrutable claims to the contrary). It’s all a ruse to get you believe that McGowan has mystical gifts as an engineer, and to convince you to part ways with a month’s worth of salary to buy these two units as a pair accordingly.

Lest you misunderstand my motives, I’ve long been tempted to buy into this just so I could access the only way possible to play my SACDs natively through my headphone setup. If you’re happy with these assets, as I’ve said before, I champion and celebrate that for you, and I have aspired to what you have myself for some time. Where I take exception is when folks start implying that the DAC itself offers superior performance over much less expensive offerings, or when folks pass along McGowan’s unsubstantiated scientific claims that he promotes to obfuscate the truth behind DirectStream’s technology, the “benefits” of IIS, and his profit-seeking motives. PS Audio is inarguably savvy, but their ingenuity is in strategy, not so much on the bench. Peace.

As a friendly aside, factors such as soundstage, presence and imaging (I have to set aside “realism” because I think that term is undefinable) are all primarily a matter of the headphones used to play back audio streams. There is no way for any of these factors to be packaged into a digital audio stream, and again, if you think logically about the function and purpose of the digital to analog conversion process, there is no way these attributes could exist at this stage of audio processing. A DAC’s purpose is to recreate in an analog format what existed in the original master when it was sampled into a digital format. If you can explain to me how “soundstage” could be carried forward in this format, I’m anxious to hear it. 
 

There’s a great deal of misappropriating analog terms into the digital realm in these rooms. These nebulous claims are exactly what manufacturers want us to do to convince ourselves that they actually mean something when they claim that their DAC “takes our listening experience to another level”. I think it’s at great risk to our wallets that we fall for these unsubstantiated concepts that defy the logic of how digital audio works. There is no “sound” in a digital audio stream until it reaches our amplifiers—there’s only an encoding of the original master, full stop.

@srkbear 

You don't think the filter in the dac has any influence on the sound?