I'v finally had a chance to listen to quite a few hours of native DSD playback. By native DSD playback I mean pure DSD files played back with a DSD capable dac to produce all DSD digital to analog conversion. That means no PCM conversion or playback, which is what many dacs claiming to be DSD capable actually do- they convert the DSD stream to 352Khz PCM files which some dacs can play, or software is used to downsample to 192KHz which virtually all modern dacs can do these days.
There are only a handful of dacs which can do native, pure DSD digital to analog conversion, and that is a real shame because the DSD to PCM conversion results in a sound that sounds like PCM. Its still very good sound, but native DSD sound is a quite a big step above PCM. It has better ambience, the total recording of the musicians and the room, the equipment used , the skill of the recording engineers is just more obvious with native DSD.
The conversion to PCM installs a veil across this sound, it sounds like what we are used to, but native DSD is something new, something better.
I think it has to be acknowledged that the people using DSD to produce recordings are passionate about good sound and whether they used PCM or DSD it would still sound very good.
The determining factor of any recording is the quality of the recording and the mastering process's.
A very well recorded and engineered mp3 file will still sound a lot better than a badly recorded and engineered DSD file, but when all the care and skill of musicians and recordists is utilised with all DSD technology the result is just sensational.
It can be tricky setting up software and hardware to enable native DSD playback; JRiver and Audirvana Plus support DSD playback and PureMusic does it , but not as well.
Some of the dacs available that can play native DSD do seem to have some teething problems, but this is cutting technology and early days, and will be sorted out soon. The DSD standard is still relatively new.
Whether DSD will become accepted as the definitive recording standard is not clear. Unfortunately for audiophiles high compression, lossy recordings are still considered good enough for the public , mediocrity is todays standard.
