Thread: Channel Classics does DSD!

we have solved the problem and now you will get track names to go along with the dff dsd files.
thanks for your patience!

albeit limited to 2 channel

DSF supports mono, stereo, 3.0, quad, 3.1, 5.0 and 5.1 channels...

With DSDIFF you can theoretically have also 2.1 channels.

It didn't take me long to decide I really needed to download the Mahler Symphony No. 2 DSDs from Channel Classics. Everything seemed to go smoothly (though these files are large and everything takes a bit longer). I imported the files with Pure Music (v1.85a at that point in time), laboriously tagged everything (which I'm glad to see should be fixed for future downloads), and settled in to enjoy. The sound on this recording is spectacular, the Mytek is handling things wonderfully well, and I'm deeply into the music when, a little shy of 9 minutes into the 5th movement ... we're suddenly done. Musicus interruptus. I tried regenerating the Pure Music bookmark for the track, re-importing from scratch -- nothing changes. All the other movements are fine, but the fifth movement cuts out at, I believe, 8:56, when the PDF booklet says it's supposed to be 34:13, and the file size seems to bear that out.

This set off a fair bit of email correspondence with both Jared Sacks at Channel Classics and Rob Robinson at Channel D (developer of Pure Music). Both were very responsive to my pitiful whining. Along the way, I did a fresh download of the problem track from Channel Classics and updated PM to 1.85c. Neither of those steps made a difference.

This morning, Rob at Channel D revealed his discovery that the problem was not with the track but with PM. (Channel D went to the trouble of acquiring the track from Channel Classics.) He also provided me with a version of PM (1.86d2) that solved the problem, and I've just finished enjoying the 5th movement in its entirety. In my excitement, I didn't confirm this with Rob, but I'm guessing that since the first movement (duration of 21:39) always played with no problems, it's somewhere between there and 34:00 that the problem manifests itself, and it's fairly easy to see why this wasn't discovered sooner.

Anyway, I'm a happy camper now and wanted to thank both Jared and Rob publicly for their assiduous tackling of the problem. Should you encounter this problem, contact Channel D tech support and don't suggest to Jared that his DSDs might have malformed headers.

The price of the Channel Classics DSD's is what it is (and doesn't seem so bad to me compared with the price of, say, the Blue Coast DSDs), but if you can get over that hurdle, the sound is truly awe-inspiring. (As some empirical indication, PM reports a dynamic range of 31 for the 5th movement of the Mahler 2.)

--David

Chris (and Miska) are you guys saying this DSD packaged over PCM workaround, works on a non DSD "certified" DAC? like any old PCM DAC?

No down conversion to PCM. Just DSD all the way?

Is that what you are eluding to?

Chris (and Miska) are you guys saying this DSD packaged over PCM workaround, works on a non DSD "certified" DAC? like any old PCM DAC?

Only for the data interface parts... DAC needs to understand the scheme and know how to extract the DSD stream and handle it as such. It is just a way to lure this stream over bit-perfect intermediate data transfer stages, including the OS, without those understanding anything about DSD. While still being able to tell it different from PCM at the receiving end.

No down conversion to PCM. Just DSD all the way?

Yes, no conversion, pure DSD.

Ok. Looking forward to finding out from Chris which DAC!!

Perhaps he's got a beta firmware update for the dCS Debussy?

And it is a DSD-enabled DAC. It seems you are under the assumption that any ole PCM DAC can do DSD. That is not true. What Miska said was that the DSD can get to the DAC, but if it's a, say, Benchmark or Antelope or Berkeley or etc it won't play DSD (until those DAC mfgers who have DSD-capable chips do a hardware mod to get the new easily obtained DSD signal to process in DSD). He's simply saying the dCS packing protocol is universal, but the DACs aren't!

Then, good for Meitner and for you!

Cheers!

Roch

Is but one.

Michael, did you try using foobar plugin to edit the diff metadata? Or did Channel give you a re-download? If so, what was in the metadata .....full track numbering. Etc?

Hi,

Some questions (under Windows 7):

You need 32 or 64bits to run HQPlayer?

You run HQPlayer direct from the PC port USB 2.0?

Thanks,

Roch

Ted,
Aren't I correct about .dsf supporting more metadata? I just edited it easily in Jriver. I believe the foobar plugin can search online for metadata as well. My caps is not connected to the internets. It's not that hard in Jriver anyhow.

I will say this about the Dvorak recording in Budapest: by far the best dsd version I've heard of this symphony! I have the telarc recording in cincinnati and an older recording in Chicago I ripped from sacd. In comparison, this is really special and is worth the price for sure. I will stick with sacd for now until a better metadata scheme arises.

and the folks at BlueCoast chose DSF. But DIFF has more freeware plugin editing support currently (foobar, Jriver?). Takes your picks!

I think everything done by Fischer/Budapest is incredible. The Mahlers are awesome. Great to hear you liked the Dvorak.

You need 32 or 64bits to run HQPlayer?

Either one works, installation package contains 32-bit and 64-bit binaries, right one is installed based on detected system architecture.

You run HQPlayer direct from the PC port USB 2.0?

All the interfaces work, I use the different inputs roughly as much, but it's largely due to my testing work... Which one is optimal depends a bit on situation.

Just to be clear. The meta data problem is solved and all tracks now have meta information about the works.

I have brought two 24 / 192kHz FLAC downloads from the China Channel (and been very impressed by quality of the albums), but have one request re metadata: to include the 'Chinese Character' name for each track / album along with the English Translation, just makes it more "complete" :-).

Did find some variation in the meta data between the two albums though - lower case used, some tracks with ending with ???? etc. not a biggie but did mean a little work fixing the tagging after transferring them to my music library.

Originally Posted by tailspn

Is there interest in those, or multi-channel DSD .dff files on USB memory sticks?

I'm really only interested in the stereo files at this time, but have bought several of those. I'm actually just using Audirvana+ to convert DSD > PCM into my Bifrost DAC, so certainly not getting the best out of them, but they still sound great!

Chrille, I recommend we take the Mytek and versioning out of this Channel Classics thread, but the net/net is that there are no stock SACD players that provide SDIF outputs for use on the Mytek mastering DAC. Those SDIF inputs are for a rare modded player or a pro source (Sonoma, etc). You need to rip via a hacked custom PS3. Pm for more details.

Originally Posted by tailspn

Send me a mail, and I'll send you a Channel Classics coupon if you're interested. Still got plenty.

All - The coupons work great. I got a wonderful DSD download I hadn't yet collected from Channel Classics for free so please take tailspn up on his offer if you're interested.