Template for DSD Surround and Stereo Playback
My DSD Template
Hello,
Like you I’ve made the leap to deal with a technology oft maligned but which consistently sounds the best to my ears. It is a big investment in time and money to achieve full advantage of DSD in your system so buyer be ware. In a years time we may see shift to 32 bit music at which point PCM may reign supreme again, however, the file size vs quality leads me to say DSD will be relevant long into the future.
I though it might be valuable to some of you to share the way I’ve maximized use of SACD and DSD material to enjoy the music I love best.
Template 1: Surround Sound- DSD Surround Jute box via HDMI
I believe this is the real killer feature of DSD material. In order to enjoy DSD in surround, however you need a system capable of reproducing surround music (ie 5.1 speaker system or 5.0 I suppose) and probably SACD ripping capability (not easy) as most surround material is on physical discs (although you can purchase surround files from native DSD but they are usually more expensive than the discs). Many receivers, especially ones designed in Japan are capable of decoding DSD natively over HDMI. I think this is the crux of my blog post: how to get a DSD jute box going to store and reproduce surround DSD. So here it is, my template for doing so:
Hard drive 2TB or less with DSD rips in surround DSF format (formatted NTFS or Fat 32)-> usb input of Sony Blu-ray player capable of playing DSF files (ie BDP-S6200 cheap!)-> HDMI output to DSD native receiver-> 5.1 surround (its magic, really)
One could purchase a 4k+ dac and try to play from the computer but you can get a hold of a cheap Yamaha receiver with HDMI DSD native playback and a Sony Blu-ray player (check that it has this capability first) for pretty cheap. Spend the rest on good speakers.
Template 2: Stereo
My best stereo system is attached to my computer via a PCM only Dac that I bough last year for a considerable sum and I don’t really want to go through the hassle of trying to sell it in favor of a dac that can do dsd but probably not PCM as well (especially where most material is in PCM still). So here is my stereo template
DSD download or SACD rip in Stereo-> Hybrid DSh file using DSD Master-> iTunes -> PCM Dac -> rotel/b&w stereo system
Both of these setups allows on-demand play of music which was my aim and while the surround setup is a bit of a hack it is native playback and sounds amazing. Can’t wait for my SACD shipment from hong-kong to arrive. Keep it up Sony Hong-Kong!
Enjoy the music,
arw
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