DirectStream is the only way to go. I guess you missed the 20% off plus big trade INS a few years back. I traded in a buncha junk and got it new for about $3.3K.
Stay far away from PCs.
Upsampling PCM or DSD in 2022
The purpose of this post is to ask the collective about the best options for upsampling today, and whether it’s worth doing. I stumbled into this topic after recently considering Paul McGowan’s take on DSD, and after reflecting on the upsampling in my home theater system.
Paul believes that DSD is world’s better than PCM. That caught my attention, because, until now, I have been operating under John Darko’s view that high res (i.e. 24-bit and above) is nice but not worth chasing--CD quality is good enough. But audio does seem analogous video. And 1080p isn't good enough for my video streams. So, I now want to give DSD and upsampling a shot.
In my home theater system, I use an Nvidia Shield TV streamer for its AI upsampling, driven by its graphics processor. Plenty of video content is still being released or only available at 1080p. Although upsampled 1080p isn’t as good as 4k, it’s better than basic 1080p. That upsampling makes a big difference for me. I strongly dislike watching 1080p content on my 4k TV. As far as I’m aware, the Nvidia Shield streamer offers the best video upsampling on the market, and it only costs >$200. It occurred to me that I might get similar gratification by upsampling audio too.
Upsampling can be performed at the DAC, streamer, server, or somewhere in between. Here are the major options I’ve considered so far:
Because the retail price of the components in my stereo system came out to about 5k (when new), HQ Player is where I’m looking for now. Please comment if: