California Audio Show 2011

Light Harmonic

New Member
Jul 18, 2011
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California
Hi, there....

Other highlights of the show (for me at least) worth auditioning were

DaVinci 384K DAC "but" it is only a redbook dac so the MSRP of this DAC at $15K was felt to be way high inasmuch as it wasn't a DSD DAC as well (such as the Playback Designs)

Hi, Steve, thanks for you put us in the highlights... :p

Da Vinci DAC can playback redbook, of course. But our major focus is 384K/352.8K DXD file playback.
So Da Vinci is not only redbook dac, it can play 88.2K/96K all the way up to 352.8K/384K native PCB encoded digital files. About DSD, there is currently no USB standard to support that. Because Da Vinci follow the USB 2.0 Audio Class standard, that bring a good benefit that users don't need to install driver while using Mac OS, we currently don't support DSD yet.
 

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Thanks for your input and welcome to WBF

I enjoyed your room. For those not interested in DSD the DaVinci had lots to offer. My only reservation was its MSRP as for that money one can buy a PCM/DSD DAC/Player
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
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Seattle, WA
Steve, other than professional tools and obscure mechanisms, there is no good way to rip DSD files. So I am not seeing that as a practical issue for any DAC. If the product is being marketed for pro use, then there may be some merit. But otherwise no.
 

Ron Party

WBF Founding Member
Apr 30, 2010
2,457
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Amir, not yet. We attended a seminar about DSD with several recording engineers present, all of whom are recording in DSD and who are keenly interested in delivering to the consumers the same sound they are hearing in the studios. Blue Coast Records offers free DSD downloads. There should be little to no doubt there will be a future in this, hopefully sooner rather than later.
 

audioguy

WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
2,794
73
1,635
Near Atlanta, GA but not too near!
Has anyone downloaded any of the Blue Coast recordings?

Ron: I went to the Blue Coast records web site and they are quite proud of their music. Their Blue Coast collection (which has a lot of nice music by some folks I have never heard of) was $40 for the 24/96 version. A bit pricey. I don't mind taking shots at a CD for $17 where I may or may not like much of the music but $40 ? (I know. I'm cheap!)

HD Music only charges about $17 per album and Reference Recordings HRX, with a much better known library is about the same price as Blue Coast.

(I can't play DSD without some kind of plug-in on my server!!)
 

Mike Lavigne

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 25, 2010
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I did and the imaging was way off and far less focused than in the sweet spot

i've listened to the Acapella's with the Ion tweeter maybe 10 times now at least. it's clearly a formidable product line with many outstanding traits. but.....i've yet to hear the level of coherence that i could live with in an 'uber' speaker. it sounds wonderful, the highs are magnificent. but it sounds like a speaker, not completely real.

i can see the attraction of the excellence of the individual pieces and assume that someone, somewhere has achieved coherence with them.
 

Mike Lavigne

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 25, 2010
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Steve, other than professional tools and obscure mechanisms, there is no good way to rip DSD files. So I am not seeing that as a practical issue for any DAC. If the product is being marketed for pro use, then there may be some merit. But otherwise no.

give it 90 days and i think you will start to see DSD downloads poping up.....anyone currently making SACD's will offer DSD downloads at a similar price. they nsound better than 352/384 pcm but take less storage space. people who don't want to store silver discs can have the performance of DSD. after that happens nothing is in the way for the 'big enchalada'....which is 2xdsd 'near master tape' downloads.

stay tuned, this is gonna get good.
 

Ron Party

WBF Founding Member
Apr 30, 2010
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Cookie Morenco stated Blue Coast permits 3 free downloads per month. Here is the link. And here is the link for the Korg AudioGate software.
 

microstrip

VIP/Donor
May 30, 2010
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i've listened to the Acapella's with the Ion tweeter maybe 10 times now at least. it's clearly a formidable product line with many outstanding traits. but.....i've yet to hear the level of coherence that i could live with in an 'uber' speaker. it sounds wonderful, the highs are magnificent. but it sounds like a speaker, not completely real.

i can see the attraction of the excellence of the individual pieces and assume that someone, somewhere has achieved coherence with them.

I was looking at the Stereophile measurements and found that the High Violoncello II has a tilted up treble, about 5dB from 7 kHz on. Do you think that this excess of treble could be responsible for this "speaker sound" feature?
 

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Steve, other than professional tools and obscure mechanisms, there is no good way to rip DSD files. So I am not seeing that as a practical issue for any DAC. If the product is being marketed for pro use, then there may be some merit. But otherwise no.

I am quite aware of that Amir

However as Ron said more and more sites are releasing free DSD files such as Blue Coast Audio at the rate of 3 free per month

You can't play em if you don't have the DAC and I do :)
 

Light Harmonic

New Member
Jul 18, 2011
7
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California
Interesting... In theory, 1xDSD should be around the same information quantity with 192K PCB. 2xDSD is around DxD format. If there are more and more DSD music out there and good player to support that. It will be a good feature to add into DAC.
If we need to add DSD support into Da Vinci, it won't be hard to implement it by adding off-the-shelf good DSD decoding chips like many others are doing, Sabre ES9018 again? ;-)

Does anyone here knows any DSD DAC that doesn't need to install driver on OS?
 

Light Harmonic

New Member
Jul 18, 2011
7
0
0
California
Thanks for your input and welcome to WBF

I enjoyed your room. For those not interested in DSD the DaVinci had lots to offer. My only reservation was its MSRP as for that money one can buy a PCM/DSD DAC/Player

Thank you. We are open minded and interested in adding "cool" functions into our DAC. Also we would provide material-cost-only upgrade for all of our customers. Because almost all founding members of Light Harmonic Design Team all believe our products should be modularized, it is relatively easy for us.

So if DSD playback could be user friendly too (I mean, no driver, no copy right protection... etc). We would love to add this feature!
Actually, I recently learn that Pure Music from Channel D can play back DSF/DFF file directly to a lot of DACs.

Enjoy!
 

Ron Party

WBF Founding Member
Apr 30, 2010
2,457
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Thank you. We are open minded and interested in adding "cool" functions into our DAC. Also we would provide material-cost-only upgrade for all of our customers. Because almost all founding members of Light Harmonic Design Team all believe our products should be modularized, it is relatively easy for us.

So if DSD playback could be user friendly too (I mean, no driver, no copy right protection... etc). We would love to add this feature!
Actually, I recently learn that Pure Music from Channel D can play back DSF/DFF file directly to a lot of DACs.

Enjoy!

Sounds like someone is seriously considering adding/implementing a DSD solution. Excellent!
 

Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
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www.pugetsoundstudios.com
Does anyone here knows any DSD DAC that doesn't need to install driver on OS?

We use the Playback Designs, Digital Audio Denmark, EMM Labs and soon the Grimm without having to install drivers.

We do have a few thousand DSD files that we've ripped for David "just in case"!
 

Ron Party

WBF Founding Member
Apr 30, 2010
2,457
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Oakland, CA
Bruce, besides the Sonoma DAW and, IIRC, Pure Music, what else is currently available to play back DSD for the end user?
 

MylesBAstor

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
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New York City

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