i've conducted comparisons that would have met scientific standards and the results were exactly as expect: not all converters sounded identical but no one could tell the technique, manufacturer or model (and neither the sampling rate - and often not even the bit rate to answer your question*).
what you (or someone else) perceives as sounding 'different' or even 'better' will get dismissed as sounding 'identical' or even 'worse' by someone else; the differences between devices using the same technique can be as obvious or subtle as between devices using different techniques (dsd or pcm) but there's zero inherent 'universal' sonic benefit of dsd - neither back in the days when it became a thing nor now!
besides, assessement can vary depending on programme...


* at the time, i did mostly favour my meitner concerters over those built into my tascam cd-player or dat-recorder but over not necessarily over pcm-converters from lavry, weiss, crane etc. - these days, i rarely favour the dsd-converters of my tascam-recorder over pcm-converters (but then, i favour converting to digital as early as possible in the signal chain so my stand-alone 2-channel converters have largely become useless in recent years)...

In my post I'm not talking about listening at home to a SACD. It can be a very pleasant experience and SACD is still a premium release format. For example, I enjoy BIS Records releases and Jordi Savall SACDs.

SACD also good for releasing 5.1 recordings because of its multi-channel capability.

In my earlier post, I'm speaking as an engineer who attempted (twice with a super premium, best sounding dCS system) to use DSD as a production format.

The fact of the matter is that Deutsche Grammophon tonmeisters already rejected DSD because high rate pcm (192) sounded basically the same.

That's the conclusion I came to as well.

Audiophile world still juices over 256 DSD.

Did the DG people conclude that only 192k sounds the same as DSD, or is it also the case for 96k, as stated by Lavry in his papers ?

For me, I don't care about science - science has never put anyone, anywhere on a dancefloor. I care about my experience. My cheap ARCAM £650 SACD player BLEW AWAY CD's coming from a TASCAM Broadcast CD-450 connected through AES to a BURL B2 Bomber - maybe not your taste, but certainly, very good quality 2 channel conversion. My experience is what informs me. In full disclosure, I am someone who - in 2024 - loves tape and works on tape - the texture of analog recording and the spatial aspects of analog recording are approached by DSD - for my ears - in a way that is impossible - again - in my opinion and experience - with PCM. I have twenty years of experience recording on 2" 16 track and converting to 24/96 or 24/192. While this is my preferred method of creating files, the files WILL NOT contain the full spatial information contained on the 2" tape. PCM audio flattens and makes two dimensional the sound.
Going between CD's and SACDS of the same recording was revelatory to me. meters of cubic space suddenly appeared around the drums, around pianos - from DSD.
From SACD.

In my experience, if you work exclusively in PCM audio, these things become less important - clearly the world can live without these things.

I am the champion of niche weirdos.
I understand that I am rowing a small boat upstream.
My oar may soon be taken from me and I will have only my arms.
I trust my ears.
That is all I can do.


Be well


- Jack

it would be helpful for the discussion if you'd care about science: imo comparing sacd's to cd's is rather pointless - a more meaningful comparison would be sacd (dsd) vs dvd-a (pcm) but then, i don't know of any release for which it was documented that signals were split in the analog domain and then fed to separate dsd/pcm converters (and the additional stereo mix was often jzst a downmix anyway).

for me the, minor differences (IF there are any) ain't worth the pain to keep using dsd but hey, use what you want and what makes your clients happy! mine don't bother about dsd, not even those who did 20 years ago...

Science literally puts people on the dance floor in the modern age because it’s through science that all recording media was and continues to be invented, developed and adapted for our purposes.

To claim to be proud of your ignorance towards science, is a path towards close-mindedness.

I am wary of the bias towards science rather than experience, even decades of experience. my experience
contradicts the science.


Be well

- Jack

I find the comparison of 16/44.1 CDs and SACDs to be demonstrative of how very different DSD audio and PCM audio sound. I don't find it pointless at all. two minutes of known audio would reveal this to an attentive listener.
I understand that the limitations and/or cost of being able to edit in DSD make it impractical for most professional use - i do know some people who have still managed to bring DSD masters to a mastering lab so that the last steps of editing are done after conversion to PCM by the mastering engineer. I know that the UK Pyramix guy really wanted to show me how he could get me into an "affordable" 4 track setup for about £30,000..............




Be well

- Jack

The nice thing about Science is that (unlike most gods) it doesn't really give a damn whether you believe in it or not!

comparing cd's to sacs's is about as useless as comparing 1/4" to 2" tape but nevermind...

DG concluded that either was very good pcm.
Then they abandoned DSD.

There's very small but dedicated market for example see

https://www.nativedsd.com/catalogue/

And Merging Technologies still provide the hardware to do DSD and will even sell you

https://nadac.merging.com/product/merging-player

In stereo or 8 channel forms to play the recordings.

I can't imagine there are very many in use though, obviously Merging don't release sales figures.

Even there many of these recordings have been converted to 352.8 KHz PCM which they muddy the waters by calling DXD.

There's an even smaller hard core of Pure DSD where the mixing has been done entirely in analogue before it was digitised.

There seem to currently be 3166 albums on NativeDSD of which only 181 are 'pure'.

It's not just information theory and coding that is relevant here it's also confirmation bias, any sighted rather than blind test is worthless.

As Plush and ddy, both of which have been at the top of the industry for decades, said those blind tests were done and critical listeners could not reliably tell the difference between higher bit rate PCM and DSD.

A comparison with Red Book CD is pointless people in this market have been buying 24/96 or 24/192 FLAC downloads from places like Presto Music for sometime now.

Speaking as someone with a foot in both the mathematical and classical musical performance sides dismissing both the theoretical studies and the real world blind listening tests which don't depend on the underlying technology is baffling to me.

I make music.
I record music
have been doing so for more than thirty years.
The comparison of Red Book CD and SACD is more than adequate to demonstrate their entire different sonic architecture. for me. for many I know.
However baffling it may be, I use my own ears.
I am not asking that you agree with me.
I am not dismissing the theoretical studies or blind listening tests - I am simply saying that my own experience - what I hear and what I have heard - is far more important to me than the science. I find that people use science to validate their own opinions. In the past forty years, I would imagine the vast majority of scientific studies have been funded by those selling the technology
most flattered by the studies.


Be well

-Jack

I might add that the studies are done to evaluate the necessity of using a technology to target a large market of people.
So it would not be incompatible to find the result of a study stating that there is no significant discernable difference between DSD and PCM, and a single individual within that study who guessed it right every time and hears a clear difference between the two.
It's not because there is no statistical difference between the two formats that some individuals wouldn't be able to perceive a clear difference. The result of the studies done by notably DG as stated by Plush, is used to decide whether or not a market is exploitable. They wouldn't change their mind about it if a person or two in their sample can hear a difference, because statistically it would be meaningless.
Just my 2 cents.

To be blunt a very large number of highly skilled professionals disagree with you on the merits of PCM and DSD and the industry has pivoted away to the point there is one company servicing the tiny remaining market.

SACD is almost dead and CD sales are declining year on year the relevant comparison is between 24/96 or higher PCM downloads and DSD256 or higher downloads.

If you can make money by serving the remaining market fine. Just don’t expect me to have any respect for someone who is wilfully ignorant about how the systems work and how to construct an unbiased test of those systems and dismisses the opinions of those that do.

Oh, that’s right Jack, I forgot - the science hasn’t caught up with you yet.

Jack, this is so flawed.

I trust my own ears.
I am not asking you to trust them.
my knowledge of how the systems work is irrelevant next to the visceral experience of listening and recording.
I personally love how DSD and SACD sounds - it is the best sounding digital to my ears. I work in PCM because it is the industry standard - it is how 98% of my clients take home the work we have done on 2" 8 track or 2" 16 track.
the sound of PCM has improved over thirty years, but, it is
as far from inspiring - for me - as a fluorescent lightbulb.
I understand that its role in your life is most likely very different.

SACD is a niche market, much like vinyl.
SACD is - perhaps - the most robust it has ever been.
the two US Houses that produce SACDS know their market
and regularly sell out of the products they create.
That market has grown - as far as I understand - every year for the past decade.

There is no science that will cause me to re-evaluate an experience over which it has no purview. If you need to call that "willful ignorance" - I am ok with that.


Be well


- Jack

I think DSD of any flavor sounds different than PCM of any flavor. I’ve heard enough of both to get a good sense of the differences. They are not particularly similar technically either. I don’t know why it’s so hard to believe they sound different from each other.

If the test device says its right and your ears say its right its right.

If the test device says its right and your ears say its wrong you have measured the wrong thing.

If the test device says its wrong and your ears say its right it doesn't matter.

I've never known a test device to spend money on music.

Problem is, the ear/brain mechanism is easily fooled, and can vary from day to day, and even hour to hour . . .

Of course it does...

...And its a good thing too because if it didn't work that way nobody would ever listen to recorded music in the first place!

That’s a great point, that’s why we can listen to the same songs over and over again and hear something new. It’s impossible for us to focus on anything more than just one aspect of a recording at a time.

It might be the vocal on the first pass, but another day you might be focusing on the bass line, or where the snare is falling - and all that sort of stuff.

It’s lovely to be an imperfect, forgetful human being.

I remember reading (in some long-forgotten music rag) where John Lennon was quoted as saying that on some days he would play a record and it would sound slow, and the next day it would sound fast. (Same record, same gear.)

(I have never managed to find that interview again.)

...But it makes me wonder if this might have had something to do with him telling George Martin that he was sure the two versions of Strawberry Fields could be edited together (despite being in two different tempos and in two different keys).

Yes. Such “experiences” happen when you are a major drug user.
And Martin (being a professional) was able to deal with some situations though being annoyed with band members being unable to fulfill their jobs.

Well when Tony and Plush leave you know the party has finished!

I revisited DSD last year as I was tipped off on some Tools that looked useful. Basically you can do some stuff in the DSD realm but its clunky and takes a while. Free though...

I have had many looks at Pryamix DSD but it is still limited to what is possible and returning to PCM I'm satisfied.

They also happen when you are not.

...Which (by all accounts) was not too bloody often. (And in this case, Lennon was correct that speeding one version up and the other one down would match them to one another.)

...But my point here in bringing all this up was NOT to knock the scientific aspects here, but just to point out that humans' perceptions are not exactly correlated to what is really goin' on out there in the real world.

All this kinda stuff necessarily comes into play when we're evaluating things like "DSD v. PCM" (or the like).

I'm just trying to put things in perspective.

And to be fair to the Beatles, speeding up tapes was common in those days - some songs were sped up, quite a lot for more “energy“.

It’s also worth noting George Martin used tape speeding and slowing down effects so he could overdub the piano parts on tracks like “in my life“ at half speed, so when played back, he mimics a harpsichord effect.

Psychoacoustics is just one more area of science (as valid as any other).