davo

Mark The reason you cannot get your Debussy to accept DSD is because we have not released the software update required to enable this. There are now a number of manufacturers, software companies etc and we are still in discussions as to the exact technicalities on how to implement this so what we (dCS) don't want to be doing is continually releasing beta updates every time the working group make a small change. We will keep all dCS customers posted as I'm sure the others will with their install bases.

All In response to Peter and Miska this is my last post on this subject. If you want to contact me please use [email protected] We (dCS) have been involved in various working groups and standards bodies over the years. Likewise we know that Gordon Rankine worked extremely hard for a number of years and actually developed a similar protocol but the difficulty was getting adoption. What we have suggested is a simple way of transmitting DSD to a DAC. Peter, we are not going to do your engineering or scoping for you but suffice to say that the hardware you use can be modified to accept DSD in some form. This is your design challenge (or not) however. Miska, we take onboard your comments r/e Windows but considering Microsoft don't support standard USB Audio Class 2 and drivers such as AISO cant work on mac or Linux it may be a long time to get DSD support the way you envisage. Again, what we proposed is voluntary, platform agnostic and of course there are other ways to do it so its up to you. dCS

Hi Peter I was directed to your post and felt the need to respond here for the benefit of all with an interest in DSD playback but I really do encourage that if you have technical questions or need guidance you contact us directly on the email address we provided when we spoke in person. I am afraid you must have misunderstood the discussions we had, and appear to be implying here that the dCS demonstration was DSD converted to PCM. I shall repeat, once again, the way the scheme works: The audio player takes the real, genuine, raw DSD DFF file. It then extracts the raw DSD from the file. To send this raw DSD to the DAC, we have to use a carrier format that is known to work for existing operating systems, and has infrastructure commonly in use, to ensure the standard is open and quick to implement. To this end we looked at the available formats, and some quick sums bring us: DSD = 1 bit at 2.822400 MHz per channel CD = 16 bits at 44100Hz per channel 16/176 = 16 bits at 176400Hz = 2.822400MBits a second per channel - the exact same number of bits as raw DSD. This means that we can pack the same data as either 16/176400 or 1/2822400. If we then use a very common format, 24/176400 we have an extra 8 bits per sample we can use as an indicator to the DAC that the data is DSD . So, if our original raw DSD streams are : Left : 00110011001100110011001100110011 Right: 01010101010101010101010101010101 We can pack them as the following 24/176.4 samples: Sample L1 10101010 0011001100110011 Sample L2 10101010 0011001100110011 Sample R1 10101010 0101010101010101 Sample R2 10101010 0101010101010101 The DAC receives these samples via the audio interface, and looks for the top 8 bits being 10101010 on both channels all the time. It can then discard these 8 bits, which leaves us with: Left : 00110011001100110011001100110011 Right: 01010101010101010101010101010101 The same bits that were in the original DSD file. The DAC can now feed this raw DSD into it's DSD input. As I'm sure you are aware, dCS released many of the converters (A/D, D/A and D/D ) that were used at the very beginning of SACD and we were part of the working groups that actually developed and implemented the format. We like to think we know the difference between PCM and DSD and how to process DSD. I am disappointed that a fellow manufacturer would misunderstand a fairly simple paper which I personally presented and discussed with you, and then go on a public forum inferring we are acting in an underhand manner rather than contact us to seek clarification. Again, if you would like to discuss any aspect of the suggested solution please feel free to contact us at [email protected]

Yonjay You only gave dCS 8 minutes between posting through their website and bemoaning after sales service. Anyway, Your Delius needs to be running 1.10 software not 1.03. This unit is approximately 10 years old so may need a general service too. Please check your personal email as we have sent details on how to get upgraded. Next time please be a little more patient. We try to help every customer but sometimes 8 minutes is just too short a window. Thanks