Comments on Profile Post by Vtory

Texture, flowness, density all to die for! Very lovely sounding.

You’re just excited about your new toy ;)

Didn't disagree at all!
I'm just saying I chose the right toy for me. Haha.

Do ESS dac chips have a dsd direct mode? I thought most of the dacs I’d seen with dsd direct modes were akm

@SoupRKnowva 9038 pro can take up to dsd1024 native. And my gustard dac supports up to dsd512 directly (although I'm using dsd256).

So I guess there's not really any way to be absolutely sure, since ESS is very cagey, but from the pdfs and block diagrams Ive seen, ESS dacs have no DSD direct mode. They will be converted to some sort of n-bit representation at the very least and maybe even back to pcm first.

AKM dac chips have the option of using a DSD direct path to bypass any modulation/volume control. This is separate from whether or not the dac supports DSD inputs at those rates.

I'm not sure if I understood your points well. But in the dsd mode, the chip takes 8 pins for 8ch dsd input:DATA 1-8. In the pcm mode, they use DATA2-5 pins for serialized pcm. And I am really skeptical if there's any point for d/s chip to convert dsd to pcm in any case (directly using is less costly in almost every aspect).

I'm thinking AKM is rather weird for their default? process. But whatever, I'm content with what the dac is doing!

yeah as long as it sounds good that's all that matters! the only time id say my points are anything more than academic is if you were doing high end DSD oversampling with HQP, it'd be a waste of processing power on those advanced modulators if its getting remodulated anyways by the ESS chip

Just have read the akm doc and compared it to ess one. Now I see your concern. I may later try out different digital volumes and observe how the device reacts. Also need to try out bypassing feature (Gustard offers it).