With AKM, whether or not the DSD Direct feature is enabled depends on the DAC implementation.īack to the subject, DSD64 when compressed with WavPack creates very manageable file sizes as opposed to say FLAC compressed PCM 352.8 / 24 sources. With ESS you can never get rid of the HyperStream modulator for better or worse. Whether or not it will bypasses the internal delta sigma modulation of the DAC chip depends on the chip manufacturer and/or DAC designer. Without getting in to infamous PCM vs DSD war, I can say with DSD we at least get to bypass the internal digital interpolation filter that (most) PCM is subjected to in delta sigma DAC chips.
Offline DSD conversion makes total sense since it's a very taxing processing specially when working with higher order modulators. As Woland mentioned, if you totally rely on streaming services, keeping offline copies gets cumbersome. For 16x up-sampling, there is no option other than storing gigantic 705.6 / 786 kHz wave files.Ĭ. While FLAC and ALAC can handle sampling rates till 384 kHz, the file sizes are ridiculously big. Which means if we intend to defeat the internal digital reconstruction of the DAC chip, the sampling rate should be at least 352.8 / 384 kHz. Vast majority of DACs are Delta-Sigma chip based DACs which do 8x digital interpolation internally. An Rpi 4 will easily handle the load with more than enough room to spare in terms of CPU utilization.ī. PCM up-sampling even with long filters is still not as taxing as PCM-DSD modulation. I feel offline PCM conversion makes little sense.Ī. I am hoping making it open source will engage other devs to contribute to this project.Ĭlick to expand.My stance on offline vs real-time conversion is somewhat divided. There are several things to optimize - latency being the #1 issue (by decreasing the buffer size in the pipeline. Or do in 2 cascaded stages with different custom window techniques. It can either do single stage 1M taps at 705600. While I am not a fan of quoting taps as an indication of how good a reconstruction filter is quoting them here since gullible audiophiles will eventually ask. Presently, doing 16x up-sampling for only Redbook content (705.6K) on Rpi 4. But it sounds much better to me (actually my dissatisfaction with HQPlayer was the sole reason I embarked on this journey, but I digress ).
It's by no means a finished polished product like HQPlayer.
Post that, I intend to make my DietPi based Rpi 4 image open source which serves as a Spotify Connect client or as a DLNA renderer (Tidal/Qobuz via Bubble UPnP) and then up-samples using my custom coefficients.
There are all these confusing and poorly explained settings in the program that are supposed to affect the sound but I havent messed with them.Īnyway there is a free demo for it, it would be interesting to hear what you think.I am waiting on Henrik ( camilladsp author) to complete a feature enhancement which would eliminate the need of SoX in my DSP pipeline. It also allows upsampling like HQPlayer and is also really good, though not the same. its very strange, foobar and HQP (and pretty much all music I hear from my PC) have this similar digital/metallic sound compared to XXHighend. This player is just as resolving and hifi sounding but the sound is much different, like smoother and more natural. All modern DACs employ oversampling and delta-sigma modulation, however the hardware implementations are more or. HQPlayer also features several selectable high quality upsampling and downsampling algorithms as well as selectable dither, noise shaping and modulator algorithms. It is nothing like using Sox resampler in Foobar, which frankly sounded terrible.Ĭoming from HQP, XXHighend kind of sounded lack lustre at first, , but it just needed some mental adjustment. HQPlayer is a high quality audio player for Windows, Linux and macOS. Previously HQPlayer was what I considered the 'best' music player, with the use of its upsampling filters its very crisp and hi-fi sounding and seems to pull out more detail in the music. Have you guys ever heard of this music player? I didnt until very recently, wasnt sure what to expect but damn this was a real surprise.