Upsampling PCM or DSD in 2022

@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?

Of course filters influence the sound of oversampling DACs. But filter algorithms in all DACs are all built around common standards with a finite list of variables they can play around with, and there’s nothing particularly innovative or earth-shattering between one DAC manufacturer’s vs another’s. In the case of brands that share the same DAC chipset (such as an ES9039pro), they’re all defined by the options hard coded into the chip, and are just given different names.

Regardless, there’s certainly nothing about PS Audio’s filters that are any different from those offered in other DACs, and there’s definitely nothing magical about them that warrants a $6,000 price tag. Anyway, the discussion of filter options is not germane to my point about the myths of IIS being an allegedly superior digital audio transport or about the outrageous price points given to these “boutique” DACs that don’t measure any differently than a cheap delta sigma SMSL 400ES or a Topping d90se. In fact the affordable DS DACs of the past few years measure demonstrably better than the offerings from the likes of PS Audio and Chord, and they absolutely trounce the measurements of archaic, pricey R2R ladder options.

This phenomenon isn’t something that leads to any subjective differences in sound quality that would convince the acolytes away from the high dollar boutique brands, because we reached the limits of the human ear years ago with digital to analog conversion. An eight year old Chord DAVE sounds every bit as good as a Topping d90se because the Topping’s superior distortion scores and noise floors are not audible (to this point, even though I somewhat hypocritically demand DACs capable of PCM 768 and DSD 512 personally, anything above a SINAD of 96 or a shade above 16 bit is completely inaudible, and the human ear has been proven to be incapable of discerning resolutions much higher than Red Book CDs).

So in spite of the fact that we’ve scientifically proven that advances in digital technology have now allowed mass production of DACs that provide the highest possible audio reproduction that can be achieved, outfits like PS Audio are going to keep writing ever more inscrutable and technologically advanced-sounding one sheets that will keep convincing their customers to shell out wads of cash for the “latest” in DAC technology, despite the fact that the technology reached its finite limits in the last decade and there’s no place left to go.

The future of the audiophile industry, when it comes to DACs, is wholly dependent on cognitive bias and the reliable consumer base that is psychologically held captive to the myth that high cost correlates with quality. Given that DACs are nothing more than computers, why else would otherwise sensible folks still shell out $14,000 for a Chord DAVE in 2023, when the the device’s tech is almost nine years old? Think about other digital devices with nine year old tech—2014’s cell phones, computers, televisions, etc, and ask yourself whether you’d pay ultra premium prices for one of THOSE. 2023 prices for the iPhone 6–take a moment and just think about the motives of ritzy audio manufacturers vs common sense, for the sake of your wallet if nothing else!