XXHighEnd

There seems to be a lot of misinformation and ridiculous hype out there on the WW Wonderweb but this is one of the better appraisals of DSD that I have read a sensible engineering discussion from The Engineering Director at Benchmark a manufacturer that sells a normal DAC but also with DSD. So he has no particular side to take.

http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=74

Very nice one Paul. I didn't know that.


Yeah, but there's always a little more than you can see. Mark Waldrep, the "interviewer" there and owner of that blog, is a PCM advocate. Only if you know that, you can see it through his short questions and responses. Read the audience responses and those from "Admin" (under the interview) and you can clearly see it (Admin is Mark Waldrep again).

In itself there is nothing wrong with it and would you know what I myself all blather around then you'd know that this John Siau could be me; he finalized the product and tells afterwards "you would be stupid to buy it for the DSD reason" and I may not finalize it because ... same. "But if the market wants it" John says ... So in the end a commercial story after all (that development, not the article/interview) and more difficult for me as a person.

But there's some more to this interview;

At last year's California Audio Show, Phasure organized almost all of the seminars. One of them was about our auditorial system and I co-presented that myself together with one of our NOS1 owners. Nothing about that now, but while we had 2 hours headroom on the official 1 hour seminar, we unexpectedly were kicked out of the room because someone else needed it (envision a room with 300 chairs). I was quite surprised and thought it was something outside the Audio Show and organized by the hotel itself. Anyway, out we went.

5 quarters later I was passing the room, and saw it was still occupied. Ok, let's see what this was about then, and I sneaked in. WTF ? this was some presentation of audio again, and I didn't know about it. Wasn't announced anywhere;

Within minutes I listened with open mouth and looked at graphs/plots about PCM noise and noticed that this guy knew his stuff and brought it fron an angle that was catching. Of course I fell right in the middle of it all so it was a bit hard to grasp what the underlaying subject was, but finally I noticed that this has been a "why PCM is better than DSD" and it was proven with all the graphs and words of which I (usually) only use the latter.
That was Mark Waldrep (he's a recording engineer and he is from Real HD Audio).

Later there was this session with I think 9 other recording engineers (all of great fame), and I noticed that nobody knew sh*t. I am serious. The talks were totally contentless, and it was up to someone stating that SACD could not be ripped, me raising my hand with a "but hey !" and nobody even understood what I was talking about (btw I see similar in that interview but alas).

Now I don't know what and how it happened, but it must have somehow been so that Mark Waldrep or wasn't even allowed to be in that group of 9, or that he did not want to be. I don't know. But the man is in my view an infinite miles ahead of all of the others. Remember, we listen to their music and have some complaints now and then. Well, maybe I now have a better understanding of the why.

Anyway, I missed the best presentation and that was was even on behalf of my own cut one. Sh*t happens.

Peter

Peter - this is very interesting background info. I had completely forgotten that Mark Waldren is "Dr. AIX" founder of AIX Records. I have some of his downloads and I have to say they are mighty fine sound quality. Actually the downloads come from iTrax but Mark W is founder of that also.

Paul