[taipan254]

Every time Zaphod says “nothing wrong with it” I get a sense there is something wrong with it!!

Nice interview. Enjoyed his points and perspective on dsd.

One thing I didn’t understand was the discussion of allocation of taps to the time domain. Does anyone else understand this?

I just thought that the more taps allowed more accurate reconstruction of the analog waveform over both time and frequency (tons of overlayed sinc functions in both time and amplitude added together to reconstruct the waveform).

 

[LucyWu]

It was indeed an interesting podcast. As I was listening I was putting components together for my new i9 13900 PGGB Processing computer. If there are new versions with sonic upgrades I want to speed up the file processing a bit from my aging 9700k platform.

ZB's insights into the translation of theory to practise in terms of sampling and reconstruction were excellent.

 

[llamaluv]

I just ponied up for the PGGB 256 upgrade and have started (once again!) on re-encoding my local music library.

What I'm finding is that the time it takes to upscale a 44k album with pretty "average" track lengths to 352k (and encoded to FLAC) is about 20-25% less than the length of the album itself. So a 60 minute album is taking around 50 minutes to encode.

This is with a Ryzen 7 5800x (8 core) PC with 64GB of memory, with PGGB set to use 12 threads.

This is of course hugely faster than upscaling with the 192 bit setting in the previous version (In hindsight, I'm like, "Man, what was I thinking?!")

Just thought people might find that info useful.

 

[LucyWu]

PGGB256 is definitely faster than previous versions, which is nice!

 

[gregorio]

Nice interview. Enjoyed his points and perspective on dsd.

It was a nice interview, if you’re interested in the history of digital audio technology. Most of what he was talking about referred to digital conversion in the late 1980’s and early/mid 1990’s. The issues of DSD have been known about and documented from the mid/late 1990’s as well, which is why mainstream converters moved on from 1bit DSD well before Sony even released SACD. Note though, that a fair few times, what was stated in the interview wasn’t entirely correct.

One thing I didn’t understand was the discussion of allocation of taps to the time domain. Does anyone else understand this?

The number of taps refers to the upsampling filter taps. The more taps, the narrower the transition band that can be achieved and/or the greater the rejection of frequencies above the Nyquist freq (half the sample rate).

I just thought that the more taps allowed more accurate reconstruction of the analog waveform over both time and frequency (tons of overlayed sinc functions in both time and amplitude added together to reconstruct the waveform).

No, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the accurate reconstruction of the analogue signal. It just reduces the level of “images” which would exist above the Nyquist freq, if they were not filtered out (this is a fundamental tenet of digital audio theory).

I assume you want a factual answer to your question? If so, it would be better to ask in the Sound Science subforum because filters, filter taps, bit depth, sample rates, quantisation noise, noise-shaped dither, etc., are all scientific principles and the discussion of scientific facts, principles or even of science in general is not allowed here.

G

 

[kennyb123]

For those not following the PGGB thread on AS, a new version of PGGB 256 Reference Edition was dropped.
“It uses updated noise shapers, it is 10% - 20% faster and uses less memory during processing.”

 

[Progisus]

After using Squeeze to play my 16fs 24b pggb files for quite awhile I have been frustrated with the gui. With the talk of sound quality changes in roon I decided to switch back to roon. I was very pleasantly surprised. There is a definite uptick in the roon playback quality of my pggb files and with the roon functionality it is a winner. ymmv

 

[taipan254]

After using Squeeze to play my 16fs 24b pggb files for quite awhile I have been frustrated with the gui. With the talk of sound quality changes in roon I decided to switch back to roon. I was very pleasantly surprised. There is a definite uptick in the roon playback quality of my pggb files and with the roon functionality it is a winner. ymmv

Where are you reading about the improvements?

 

[kennyb123]

With the talk of sound quality changes in roon I decided to switch back to roon. I was very pleasantly surprised. There is a definite uptick in the roon playback quality of my pggb files and with the roon functionality it is a winner. ymmv

I recently got HQPlayer licensed again so I could go back to Roon/HQPlayer. This is for playing content that hasn't been scaled by PGGB. I prefer HQPlayer's sinc filters to those built into my DAC.

My reaction to going back to Roon was exactly the opposite of yours. I will try again with my PGGB'd files.

Where are you reading about the improvements?

I was wondering the same thing.

 

[Progisus]

Where are you reading about the improvements?

I didn’t say improvements only changes. The uptick with pggb files was based on previous experience. When coupled with my roon’s superior functionality it tipped me away from LMS/Squeeze.

I recently got HQPlayer licensed again so I could go back to Roon/HQPlayer. This is for playing content that hasn't been scaled by PGGB. I prefer HQPlayer's sinc filters to those built into my DAC

For this I use an mscaler but without would upgrade to HQPLAYER 5.

 

[Progisus]

Has anyone noticed a change in sound using the new HQPlayer5 over 4 (bit perfect mode of course) playing back our pggb files?

 

[LucyWu]

I have only used the trial version of HQP5 but I think there were small improvements over HQP4 playing back PGGB files, but I'd need longer to be sure.

I will probably get around to making the move to "5" in time, but this is my only use case so am not in any hurry.

Experimenting with converting PGGB 16fs files to DSD612 or DSD1024 I did notice considerable improvements in efficiency with the new HQPlayer. My 13900k system was able to deal with the higher rates more consistently, whereas with HQP4 DSD1024 only works with very specific settings.

 

[Progisus]

I have only used the trial version of HQP5 but I think there were small improvements over HQP4 playing back PGGB files, but I'd need longer to be sure.

I will probably get around to making the move to "5" in time, but this is my only use case so am not in any hurry.

Experimenting with converting PGGB 16fs files to DSD612 or DSD1024 I did notice considerable improvements in efficiency with the new HQPlayer. My 13900k system was able to deal with the higher rates more consistently, whereas with HQP4 DSD1024 only works with very specific settings.

I noticed an improvement in details so I updated to 5. It has enabled me to go back to roon/hqplayer to play my pggb files. I am not a fan of squeeze’s interface or need to use plugins. I have not done any dsd conversions as my dac is a chord.

 

[LucyWu]

I noticed an improvement in details so I updated to 5. It has enabled me to go back to roon/hqplayer to play my pggb files. I am not a fan of squeeze’s interface or need to use plugins. I have not done any dsd conversions as my dac is a chord.

I think you're right about the improved detail retrieval. I never got on with Roon, just load files directly into HQP.

I sold my Chord Dave a few months ago, and would agree it never excelled with DSD.

 

[Progisus]

I think you're right about the improved detail retrieval. I never got on with Roon, just load files directly into HQP.

I sold my Chord Dave a few months ago, and would agree it never excelled with DSD.

I haven’t tried the direct load into hqplayer for quite awhile. I will give it a try later. Thanks for the reminder.