tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54126211726711466992024-03-13T09:57:20.291-04:00DSD MasterHigh Quality DSD-to-PCM Conversion Utility for Mac<br><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/app/dsdmaster/id829431988">Purchase</a> DSD MasterRichard @ BitPerfecthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06494815939640960187noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5412621172671146699.post-54715030313319133412016-10-25T11:44:00.001-04:002016-10-25T11:49:04.631-04:00Announcing DSD Master v1.2.3<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-poZp8n47kRw/WA990xqnODI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/DANTsu515R0AOMydfTyudFOSwC8Xm23XQCLcB/s1600/DSDM%2BV123%2BAnnouncement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="87" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-poZp8n47kRw/WA990xqnODI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/DANTsu515R0AOMydfTyudFOSwC8Xm23XQCLcB/s400/DSDM%2BV123%2BAnnouncement.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This version <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">fixes an incompatibility with case-sensitive OSX file syst<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ems</span></span></span>.<br /><br />Version 1.2.<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">3</span> is a free update for all existing DSD Master users.</span></span>Richard @ BitPerfecthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06494815939640960187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5412621172671146699.post-29638970036108771322016-01-06T21:23:00.003-05:002016-01-06T21:23:29.535-05:00Announcing DSD Master v1.2.2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iaBhm1LwPZw/Vo3L8Ka8sGI/AAAAAAAAAL0/ZAsLFuKVtrQ/s1600/DSDM%2BV122%2BAnnouncement.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="130" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iaBhm1LwPZw/Vo3L8Ka8sGI/AAAAAAAAAL0/ZAsLFuKVtrQ/s400/DSDM%2BV122%2BAnnouncement.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">This version corrects a flaw with the previous update when creating Hybrid-DSD files.<br /><br />Version 1.2.2 is a free update for all existing DSD Master users.</span></span>Richard @ BitPerfecthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06494815939640960187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5412621172671146699.post-21448065810354629402015-12-22T12:18:00.000-05:002015-12-22T12:19:09.559-05:00Announcing DSD Master v1.2.1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mZvjQz7NX_Y/VnmFsHQc3EI/AAAAAAAAALk/KXumSTPUmB8/s1600/DSDM%2BV121%2BAnnouncement.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="130" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mZvjQz7NX_Y/VnmFsHQc3EI/AAAAAAAAALk/KXumSTPUmB8/s400/DSDM%2BV121%2BAnnouncement.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">DSD Master v1.2.1 is released. This is a minor update of v1.2 and includes a couple of bug fixes.</span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Fixes a bug where no no output file was produced when specifying a manual Gain setting.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Corrects the progress bar to show time spent writing metadata.</span></span></li>
</ul>
Richard @ BitPerfecthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06494815939640960187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5412621172671146699.post-51924023944862713732015-12-07T16:12:00.002-05:002015-12-07T16:13:57.990-05:00Announcing DSD Master v1.2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jistlP9uL60/VmX1u8TpEoI/AAAAAAAAALU/LA4gDa5Cbe8/s1600/DSDM%2BV120%2BAnnouncement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jistlP9uL60/VmX1u8TpEoI/AAAAAAAAALU/LA4gDa5Cbe8/s400/DSDM%2BV120%2BAnnouncement.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We announce the release of version 1.2 of DSD Master. This update provides some minor performance enhancements and also some stability improvements. V1.2 is a free upgrade for existing DSD Master users.</span></span>Richard @ BitPerfecthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06494815939640960187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5412621172671146699.post-74638040573188410642015-05-07T11:39:00.001-04:002015-07-21T14:50:45.803-04:00Announcing DSD Master v1.1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Jb-cOFGfJlw/VUuHEHsMF9I/AAAAAAAAAGo/-CyDgb-dZ3o/s1600/DSDM%2BV110%2BAnnouncement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="83" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Jb-cOFGfJlw/VUuHEHsMF9I/AAAAAAAAAGo/-CyDgb-dZ3o/s400/DSDM%2BV110%2BAnnouncement.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">After
a successful first year we are finally announcing our first update to
DSD Master. This update is mainly a spin out of minor bug fixes, but it
also includes a major under-the-hood revision of our DSP engine in
preparation for some significant enhancements of capability.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The
new DSP engine delivers a significant increase in processing speed, yet
with a dramatically reduced physical and virtual memory footprint. Conversions are even more accurate, and we now use what we term "<i>True Analog</i>" normalization, which ensures that our PCM conversions do not encode for implied "inter-sample peaks" which can be a problem in certain circumstances. Improved queueing logic allows large conversion batches to be managed more efficiently.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We
have eliminated a stupid bug that requires new installations of DSD
Master to make a PCM conversion before it can create Hybrid-DSD files,
and another bug which leaks files handles and prevents large conversion
batches to be run.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Finally, there are some minor cosmetic changes, including the ability to select files for conversion via a "<i>File</i> | <i>Open</i>" dialog on the menu bar.</span></span>Richard @ BitPerfecthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06494815939640960187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5412621172671146699.post-3848668117484443182014-05-01T15:14:00.000-04:002014-05-01T15:14:26.447-04:00DSD Master, and Importing into iTunes<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">Many audiophiles who use iTunes as their principal music library tend
to be individuals who accumulate large music collections. I myself have
close to 30,000 tracks. However, I have heard from many BitPerfect
users who have as many as 75,000 tracks. A friend of mine has close to
7,000 CDs arrayed across many, many storage shelves, so I can see how
that wou<span class="text_exposed_show">ld be possible.<br /> <br /> When
you have a collection that big, your best solution is to store the music
off-line, on an external HD or, better still, a NAS (which is my
preferred solution). When it comes to iTunes, this naturally raises the
issues of whether or not to allow iTunes to copy your music into your
Media Folder upon import, and whether or not to allow it to Organize
your music fielder for you. Both of those features are implemented as
check boxes in the Advanced tab of iTunes’ Preferences menu. When you
start off using iTunes, and you have a small music collection, having
iTunes do all the heavy lifting for you can be a bonus, but eventually
you reach the point where you are no longer happy with the way iTunes
does things and you want to do it yourself. Most BitPerfect users -
myself included - fall into this camp. There is no way I’m letting
iTunes organize my music for me <br /> <br />
However, if you are happy letting iTunes do all the organizing of your
Music Library, then there are some things you need to be aware of when
using DSD Master.<br /> <br /> DSD Master has a neat feature which allows
you to automatically import the files it has created into iTunes.
However, if you have iTunes set to “<i>Copy files to iTunes Media Folder
when adding to the library</i>”, you will need to look out for a couple of
things. First, if you set DSD Master’s output directory to be, for
example, a folder on your Desktop, then after the files have all been
created and successfully imported into iTunes, you will have duplicates
of each - one in the folder on your Desktop and the other somewhere in
your iTunes Media folder. You won’t need both copies, so you can safely
delete the original one on your Desktop. Of course, if you specify the
iTunes Media folder as DSD Master’s output directory this problem goes
away completely.<br /> <br /> An interesting thing happens if you choose to
check iTunes setting “<i>Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized</i>”. This does
two things. First, it organizes the music files in the iTunes Media
folder into folders by Artist, and sub-folders by Album. This
information is gleaned from the metadata in the music files during the
import process. Secondly, it is also liable to rename the files
according to some internal Apple logic. At this point, I don’t know
what that logic is, but if you are creating Hybrid-DSD files, these will
be renamed from “<i>filename.DSDh.m4a</i>” to “<i>filename.m4a</i>”. There will be
no loss in functionality, but if you were hoping to rely on the “<i>.DSDh.</i>”
to identify the Hybrid-DSD files in future, then this useful feature
will be lost.<br /> <br /> Thanks to BitPerfect User Eric Tan for drawing my attention to this.</span></span></span></span>Richard @ BitPerfecthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06494815939640960187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5412621172671146699.post-74813742625040795072014-03-10T10:12:00.001-04:002014-06-23T10:39:35.613-04:00Minor Bug in DSD Master<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It appears that there is a minor bug in DSD Master. We will issue an update with a fix pretty soon, but in the meantime the workaround is very simple.</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">If the first thing you try to do with DSD Master is make a Hybrid-DSD file it will fail. Instead, it is necessary to first make an Apple Lossless file. You just have to do it once. That is all that is needed to make the bug go away forever. After you have done that you can create Hybrid-DSD files.</span></span>Richard @ BitPerfecthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06494815939640960187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5412621172671146699.post-28587506648356440182013-11-17T17:55:00.000-05:002014-02-27T11:27:06.029-05:00History<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">BitPerfect Sound Inc.
has been interested in DSD playback since early 2012. Initially, our
interest was in learning about the format, and understanding how it
works and how the various playback solutions functioned. We wanted to
understand how Sigma-Delta Modulators work (these are the complex
devices which create a DSD data stream), and to understand why - also
how, and even if - DSD sounded different to high-resolution PCM. We acquired some software, co-opted some fellow-travellers, and began to experiment with converting PCM to DSD and vice-versa.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">One
of the first things we discovered was that different software which
performed the DSD-to-PCM conversions produced
PCM tracks which sounded markedly different. On one hand, this should
not have been a
surprise, since we knew that the conversion process is inherently not
lossless, but on the other hand you can never be certain whether the
differences will actually be audible, given the superb audio
specifications claimed for both DSD and high-resolution PCM. It was
therefore a considerable surprise to us that the differences were not
only audible, but that the magnitude of the differences was so great.
This was concerning to us, since even the poorest performing (at least
based on our subjective assessment) </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">software is being </span></span> used to produce commercial products for purchase and download.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We were interested to see
if we could understand the factors which can result in adverse sonic
characteristics. It turned out that, yes, we could identify those
factors, and having done so we used those results to define an algorithm
and methodology which we believed could produce significantly improved
results. After substantial testing we came to the conclusion that our
results are audibly superior to all of the the alternatives currently on
the market. We have now reached the point where we know of no way in
which to significantly improve upon these results. These advances are
now available to you as DSD Master.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">[<i>Note: It is
interesting that the opposite is not the case. Converting PCM to DSD is
a technical challenge which is exponentially more complicated both to
understand and to execute. We have a lot more work ahead of us before
we can hope to launch a PCM-to-DSD converter for which we can make
similar claims.</i>]</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">So what kind of
technologies lie behind </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">DSD Master</span></span>? DSD-to-PCM conversion is at its
core a two-step process. First, the DSD datastream is passed through a
low-pass filter. Second, the output of the filter is passed through a
sample rate converter. Optimizing these processes is, at least in part,
a matter of trading off several factors: (i) the time taken to perform
the calculations; (ii) the amount of memory needed to store the
intermediate calculation results; and (iii) the minimum CPU
specification demanded; against the performance of the filter and
converter. The design of filter is crucial here as the filter's
characteristics will impact - among other things - the frequency and
phase responses </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">of the converter </span></span>(and
also the impulse response, which is a convolution of the frequency and
phase responses). Each of these characteristics is very important, and
you cannot achieve ideal behavior from all three simultaneously. A
critical aspect of filter design comes from your choice of which
compromises are acceptable and which are not. Additionally, if you
expect a lot from your filter, you must be aware of the numerical
precision with which both the hardware and software will execute the
calculations, and assure yourself that it will be able to deliver the
accuracy you require at the output. Finally, you can easily throw away
all the benefits of a well-executed filter by adopting a sample rate
converter of less than comparable quality. Where compromise is called
for, DSD Master has chosen wherever possible to sacrifice process speed
for performance.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As we developed this
product, we were thinking that a significant motivation for BitPerfect
users was to enable them to make the best possible versions of their DSD
tracks so they could load them into iTunes and play them through
BitPerfect. But this was not too persuasive an argument, since if
customers had gone to the trouble and expense of purchasing DSD music,
then they wanted to play it natively, and would probably instead use a
different player to play them. This was a doubly frustrating
realization for us, since BitPerfect internally has long been able to
play DSD. The problem has always been that you cannot load DSD files
into iTunes. We realized, however, that we could use </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">DSD Master</span></span> as the
basis for a very elegant solution to this problem - we call this
solution our "Hybrid-DSD" file. You can read more about that <a href="http://dsdperfect.blogspot.ca/p/bitperfect-introduces-hybrid-dsd-file_19.html" target="_blank">here</a>.
These "Hybrid-DSD" files can be loaded into iTunes, will automatically
play PCM music if iTunes is used without BitPerfect, and, if BitPerfect
is in use, will play DSD if the DAC supports it and PCM otherwise.
This, finally, is the solution we have been looking for for some time.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>Richard @ BitPerfecthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06494815939640960187noreply@blogger.com