I’m back with an unpopular opinion, because I’ll never let this topic die.
Give DSD A Chance!
Oh boy, is Zeus on his lossless soapbox again? Yes, but not quite. You see, I’ve never had the opportunity to properly digest DSD files and I somehow have not acquired an SA-CD version of any album in my collection. So I’ve been navigating lossless waters for a while, hearing rumors about what DSD is and sounds like…and I pretty much wrote it off.
I’ll be the first to tell you that 24-bit audio is overkill for listening and doesn’t do much to improve the listening experience. It’s good for archiving music and for audio editing, but unless you have golden ears you’ll be hard pressed to differentiate between 24-bit FLAC and 16-bit FLAC.
DSD is different.
I’m listening to an ALAC rip of Gackt’s MOON album, sourced from DFF files (these are compressed DSD files, like how FLAC is compressed WAV), and I can confidently say that these sound way, way better than anything I have ever heard. I’ve listened to the songs off these albums over hundreds of times over the years. I had FLAC copies of all of these albums! The DSD versions blow them out of the water.
What makes them so much better is a combination of two things:
- Much better dynamic range. The quieter parts are quieter and the louder parts are louder and fuller.
- The spacing and imaging of the instruments are so much more precise. The levels between the instruments are also different. I’m hearing new things in the mix for the first time! Asrun Dream from MARS knocked me on my ass the first time - how did I go thirteen years without hearing whatever is going on in the left ear?
But I don’t want you to take my word for it. I want you to try your ears out. If you’re curious, hit me up on the side. I’m going to send you a ZIP file of snippets of three versions of the same track: one 320 MP3, one ALAC sourced from PCM, and one ALAC sourced from DSD. I only need you to do two things:
- Configure your system to play back the highest quality possible. On Windows, this is really simple. Right click the Volume icon, then click “Sound Settings”, then pick your audio device, and select the highest option it supports. If you have 24/96, you’re in good company.
- Configure your audio player to use WASAPI (if possible), or Direct Sound (if WASAPI is not possible). Foobar2000 is not configured to use WASAPI out of the box, you have to download WASAPI output support from here and then configure fb2k to use WASAPI output in “Library → Configure → Playback → Output → Device”. This is how mine is set.
- Share your findings with everyone else here!
I’m enjoying early Gackt in a way I didn’t find possible. I also see there are a few more SA-CD visual kei albums floating around. D’espairsRay REDEEMER is one? MYV’s “Japanese Kabuki Rock” album is in some other jank format called SHM-CD and maybe that’s worth exploring too?
HDCD with MACABRE may have been a lot of snake oil with a little bit of improvement under the hood (but not enough to justify the gimmick, which is why everything after skipped it), but I think DSD is the real deal. It’s just obnoxiously fucking large so I prefer to take a tiny quality hit and convert down to 24-bit ALAC.
Any takers on my challenge?