Audirvana not playing DSD correctly on Cambridge Audio EDGE A

Connection with external Audio Devices USB DAC
1

Hi there
My setup is MacBook Pro connected via USB to a Cambridge Audio EDGE A amplifier.
This amplifier is able to play DSD: it has a DAC with that ability. Audirvana 3.5.30 (3560) says, that DSD is not handeled. Playing DSD over PCM 1.0 works. Playing .dsf files directly (without over PCM 1.0) leads to heavy distortion in loud passages.
Is there anybody having the same troubles? Any ideas on how to solve that problem? Thank you.

2

It is a MacOS “constrain”, you can only play DSD over PCM, and at half of nominal rate, in your case up to 128 DoP as you nominal rate is 256
On Windows with ASIO drivers you can play native DSD at full rate

3

Select DoP 1.1 and check again. Some have reported issues with DSD256, even though it should work. For DSD512 you need NativeDSD using ASIO driver.

4

and if you have a native DSD but audirvana doesn’t want to recognize it, you can’t either

5

Thanks @stefano_mbp: can you please specify the"constrain" of MacOS? Are there solutions, you know?

6

As far as I know there is no solution with macOS , you can only play DoP. This is not a big loss as the difference between native DSD and DoP is totally inaudible and it is absolutely bit-perfect. You are only limited to the half of the nominal rate as DSD packed as it were PCM (DoP) needs the double of the band then if the top PCM rate of your dac is 384 (your Edge A dac has this spec.) the max DoP rate playable is 128 (DSD128 rate is equivalent to PCM 176.4 then 176.4x2=352.8)

7

With DoP 1.1 you should be able to play DSD256. I’m using conditional as some users have reported issues with DSD256. Not sure if it’s Audirvana or a specific DAC they’re using.

Otherwise DoP is a bit perfect way of transmitting DSD. You shouldn’t hear any difference when compared to “Native DSD”. It requires more bandwidth due to the packaging overhead.

8

In between I had contact to the support of Audirvana:
“macOS is not able to send raw DSD streams. That’s why the DSD over PCM standard has been developed: to send raw DSD in a fake PCM stream.
To identify it as such, there are 8 bit markers in it.
And the presence of these markers doubles the need of bandwidth, thus explaining why on a mac only half of the max DSD rate is available.”

9

Audirvana support one more time: “PCM 1.1 has been made for some manufacturer like Mytek in order to use DSD properly. In your case you can use Audirvana 1.0 since your using a Cambridge Audio DAC.”