I also experienced a "smoothing" of the sound. Interesting how that description of DSD remastering or upsampling is consistent.
The DAC in the Sony is a custom FPGA so the remastering implementation might be different.
DSD Remastering Software Experience
My Sony TA-ZH1ES DAC has a feature called DSD Remastering that works with any type of file you send it. The effect is it noticeably smooths out the music making it sound closer to analog. Last night I did a comparison with an actual SACD (Bob James-Feel Like Making Live) with DSD Remastering turned off and a streamed version of the same tracks from Tidal with DSD Remastering turned on. The differences were so minute I had to listen very carefully to tell the difference. The SACD was about 10% closer to sounding like a live performance in that you could notice the acoustics of the studio they used and the decay of piano notes, bass strings, cymbal brushes hung in the air just a tiny bit longer. I was using a Paradigm Link as a streamer in this comparison. With a different streamer the differences might even be closer to the actual SACD.
DSD sounds better than any other digital format I have listened to. Has anyone else used a DSD Remastering/upmixer and care to share their experience? I know both Marantz and Onkyo have their own proprietary products that do something similar.
I was not expecting the comparison to be this close and am a bit surprised that streaming can sound almost as good as an actual SACD (which are limited in availability and expensive).
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IMHO, you have barely scratched the surface of what your Sony TA-ZH1ES player and Tidal streaming is capable of with Paradigm Link as your source. Try and feed your Sony player with a high quality streamer like Aurender N100 or N150, There are all sorts of bargains on N100 on used market. Once you have a replacement, consider comparing a ‘native’ DSD file on your Aurender server with upscaled or remastered file from Tidal. Looking forward to your feedback! |
@soix Which Dac are you using that performs in both capacities? It seems I’ve read about this in the past but can’t seem to recall who builds it. |
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