I play my CDs through pcm to dsd512 software on the fly. The sound is definitely better than when played as a straight CD through the same dac. I attribute this in part to the filter the dac uses in dsd mode.

Thanks for the explainer. I tried upsampling PCM to DSD on the fly on my old DAC but it didn't make much difference but I got a new higher end DAC and upsampling on the fly definitely makes it sound better, maybe it's that analogue sound you mention. My new DAC is from Matrix Audio. I'm very impressed with it even though it's a few years old now.

PCM to DSD sounds so much better in the high frequencies and energy is there and is less fatiguing on the ears. This is because I'm using a high quality DAC but on a low quality DAC there is no difference between pcm and DSD.

Isn't the vast majority of SACD titles simply a conversion of the PCM recording to DSD? Very few were actually recorded in DSD...

Two European classical record labels of which I tend to buy a lot list their recording formats on either the rear cover or in the rear of the booklet and in both instances they seem to be invariably 24-bit 96 kHz for their SACDs. Whether they convert to analogue before converting to DSD I cannot say. I also seem to recall that one of the companies recorded in DSD early on then changed to PCM. Maybe it found the later procedure more convenient and easier to manage.

Epson should be cool, spent a day at the races a while back, great venue

Hello everyone

With audirvana my dac absolutely sounds better upsampled to dsd512 from 44/16

hey thanks for reading my question Paul, makes a lot of sense and also made my morning coffee even better! :D For those who are interested, here is the link to a short session interview with the remastering engineer Kevin Gray. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bLhgd7Z-lqqwm6c.html

I would suspect that Blade Runner was recorded in analog. If they remastered from the original tapes there could definitely be a difference.

The answer is NO. Not "no, not much."