![]() This is opposed to the sheet for the ESS ES9038PRO that specifies “up to 768 kHz PCM, DSD256 via DoP and native DSD1024.” The spec sheet for the newer ESS ES9039PRO does not indicate that DoP is used for DSD rates below DSD1024, rather that it supports sample rates of “up to PCM 786 kHz & native DSD1024”. ![]() Now what is also clear going through the ESS docs is I’m not sure they are being interpreted correctly. If you subscribe to the “all processing can induce noise that affects audio quality” camp that believes that’s why FLAC being uncompressed on the fly sounds worse than uncompressed WAV, you certainly won’t feel good about DoP. There is obviously a fair amount of computation that needs to happen to read and decode the market bits, make sure the marker continues to denote it’s a DoP stream, buffer the 16 bits of data and feed them to the DAC, and possibly skip the pad bits, rather than just feed the DAC a raw bitstream of native DSD bits. DĪnd is passed to whatever mechanism is used for DSD processing directly.ĭoP means the data comes in and must be processed in frames: įurthermore, processing must be done to make sure the DSD markers are alternately 0x05 and 0xFA to mark the PCM data stream as being DoP, the 16 bits need to be passed on, then the receiver needs to possibly skip the pad bits and go on to read/check the next DSD marker. “Native DSD” means the DSD data stream can be sent from the receiving mechanism on to the DAC as: D0 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5. To follow up on this, in only the broadest possible sense, there is certainly “room” for things to be different here. It certainly wasn’t ever done like this in the studios, and the fact that (incompatible) workarounds are needed to transmit it via HDMI hardly plays into the idea of it being “native”. Personally, the notion of “native” DSD being the holy grail is a bit counter to transmitting it via an HDMI cable. With DoP, there is no PCM conversion - the DSD bits are preserved exactly, including timing. You can easily verify that DoP isn’t PCM – simply corrupt the DoP markers (by, for example reducing the volume in non-DSD aware playback software), and you will hear the raw DSD (which sounds like noisy music at -48dB). ![]() The dCS implementation of DoP is done within the FPGA of a product – and is effectively a shift register with some logic to detect the markers DoP. This part of the article really doesn’t track, as there is no way to ‘convert’ anything via DoP. The difficulty that was experienced in getting any audio at all from this “native DSD over HDMI” solution illustrates exactly why you need an agreed upon standard. This was utilised in, for example, Galaxy Studios for some of the seminal DSD recordings. One of the things to consider is that dCS were a pioneer of DSD, and in the early days of DSD – before there was ‘native’ DSD storage – dCS had to design ways of storing DSD on PCM equipment (DSD 4-wire, P3D). Before DoP there was no unified way of playing DSD from a PC or Mac. The DoP packing method has been (co-) developed by dCS’s Andy McHarg and is supported by a number of manufacturers.Ĭorrect, and it is realistically one of the things that kept DSD as a format alive. Dalibor tells me they’ve been testing this premise for years now, and in their findings, DoP always sounds worse than native DSD.Ĭopper Magazine: An Exciting and Inexpensive Device to Improve SACD Playback – Well, Maybe Not! There couldn’t possibly be any difference between DoP and native DSD. Of course, there are tons of audio professionals and audiophiles who will tell you that bits are bits, and digital is only 1s and 0s, and that DoP has zero impact on sound quality. I can’t begin to tell you how that information shocked me – I think I had a more intense reaction to that revelation than some of the analog guys probably did during the big Mobile Fidelity controversy last year! Dalibor had been telling me for a couple of years to avoid any devices that used DoP for DSD (and there are a lot of them), because the PCM conversion that is part of the DoP process negatively impacts the sound quality. ![]() That’s even true of their newest flagship chip, the ESS ES9039PRO, which allows for up to DSD 1024 natively – my current DAC, the Gustard X26Pro, has a pair of ESS ES9038PRO chips with the same limitations. Their chipsets all convert DSD via DoP throughout the range from DSD 64 to DSD 256, and only the very highest DSD rate is replayed as native DSD with no conversion. PS Audio’s Copper magazine has an interesting piece by Tom Gibbs discussing that DoP is not true DSD and negatively affects sound quality:Īpparently, if you’re using a delta/sigma DAC that employs ESS SABRE PRO chipsets, and are listening to anything in the DSD realm from DSD 64 through DSD 256, the output isn’t actually native DSD – it’s converted via DoP.
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