So in watching so many PS Audio video blogs on You tube compiled and delivered by Paul McGowan, he constantly makes the case for DSD being the superior medium for streaming music. This being the case, I wonder how easy is it to play this medium on the Uniti Star. Can you play a SACD in this unit and it plays the superimposed DSD format?
Any advice or help would be appreciated, and any comments regarding the DSD quality would be welcome.
Thanks
Trevor
The Star will play the CD layer of the SACD not the DSD.
Thanks Guinness so its not going to work that way. Appreciate the information.
You can play downloaded DSD albums, stored on the Star. But not everyone likes the way Naim play DSD. I personally don’t, finding the sound dull.
Naim converts (internally) DSD to PCM before playing, some like the conversion and some do not. As a Roon user I convert DSD to PCM as it sounds better to me.
And needless to say I like DSD, when recorded well they are more realistic & dynamic, not remotely dull.
Why there is this divided opinion, I don’t know, I can speculate, but that tends to go down a goat trail.
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I have a large amount of DSD files, most of them extracted via my SACD collection. I only choose to keep these versions when they are my preferred masterings of these albums. If they sounded dull, I would look for a better version of the album. I prefer to play the extracted DSD files on my ND5XS2 because they sound better than the corresponding SACD played on my Oppo BDP105. I think people get hung up on the format. If it’s a good recording and it’s mastered well, DSD should also sound good on Naim equipment, even if it’s converted to PCM in the process. Of course, there are plenty of examples of poorly mastered SACDs/DSD files and these will sound bad no matter the equipment used.
I find the DSD on Naim not that good, but converting on roon to PCM gives good results.
The PS Audio Direct Stream DAC makes DSD really shine, even an IFi Pro iDSD does a great job on DSD, on Naim the DSD is a little lifeless so is best is converting to PCM before sending it to the streamer, and then it plays very good.
Just my experience with it, Naim turns the DSD in a very relaxed presentation but the music feels a little lifeless and gives the wrong idea on the format.
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