[theaudiologist1]

Hi. I configured my A+ SoX settings using people's settings from across the internet. But there's one thing none of them mentioned: The delta-sigma DSD filter type (the one with letters and order (eg. A (5th order))).

1) What is the best delta-sigma filter setting? Does it do anything drastic with sound quality? What does it do? Right now I set it at B (5th order).
2) What do the replaygain settings do? Is best to just turn it off? I set it to "preserve album dynamics" but then my songs became a bit more quiet with no improvement. I also heard it degrades the sound. True?
3) Is DSD in general more quiet than PCM? I have a DAC that outputs 28mW into 300Ohms and my headphones are 470 Ohms at 98dB sensitivity, but surprisingly, it gets very loud even with classical on the PCM side. It still does loud enough on DSD on non-classical music, but with classical, it gets a bit more quiet and I sometimes had to put my DAC on max gain and volume for the quiet parts and it becomes harder to separate the instruments. This problem mostly got fixed by turning off replaygain like I said in question 2. But I'm just asking is it natural for DSD to sound more quiet and "flat" than PCM? Even the PCM files I upsample to DSD get more quiet. Is it also because I'm using -6dB gain in the PCM to DSD settings?

Offtopic: How did this website get so cluttered in recent years? I remember being able to come to the questions and discussions from just the tabs. Now it's just products and I came here from clicking on the forum link from posts using random searches.

 

[Bernard23]

Hi. I configured my A+ SoX settings using people's settings from across the internet. But there's one thing none of them mentioned: The delta-sigma DSD filter type (the one with letters and order (eg. A (5th order))).

1) What is the best delta-sigma filter setting? Does it do anything drastic with sound quality? What does it do? Right now I set it at B (5th order).
2) What do the replaygain settings do? Is best to just turn it off? I set it to "preserve album dynamics" but then my songs became a bit more quiet with no improvement. I also heard it degrades the sound. True?
3) Is DSD in general more quiet than PCM? I have a DAC that outputs 28mW into 300Ohms and my headphones are 470 Ohms at 98dB sensitivity, but surprisingly, it gets very loud even with classical on the PCM side. It still does loud enough on DSD on non-classical music, but with classical, it gets a bit more quiet and I sometimes had to put my DAC on max gain and volume for the quiet parts and it becomes harder to separate the instruments. This problem mostly got fixed by turning off replaygain like I said in question 2. But I'm just asking is it natural for DSD to sound more quiet and "flat" than PCM? Even the PCM files I upsample to DSD get more quiet. Is it also because I'm using -6dB gain in the PCM to DSD settings?

Offtopic: How did this website get so cluttered in recent years? I remember being able to come to the questions and discussions from just the tabs. Now it's just products and I came here from clicking on the forum link from posts using random searches.

I've been searching without much luck for answers to the same questions. I've simply been experimenting with the SoX settings, which I am assuming are going to be external DAC specific. So far I have tried different upsampling frequencies (I'm still trying to confirm the upsampling rate of my DAC), and altered some of the filter settings etc. I've also tried converting to DSD in both resolutions, but if I'm being honest, I can't really hear much of a difference. Overall, compared to Tidal direct into my DAC, I can't really justify the extra cost for Audirvana, the differences are so small, it's most likely expectation bias effects.

To answer you specific questions:
1 - only tried a couple of different filter settings, no detectable difference
2 - I leave it as native, no levelling whatsoever
3 - No detectable difference between PCM and DSD upsampling.

If you find anything, would be grateful if you would share here, I'll do likewise!