 Richie Roghaz asked why at home PCM audio always sound brittle regardless of sample rate, while it sounds great in the studio. With over 250 videos online, chances are I already covered your question. You might try to end a bakehouse and subject in the search bar of YouTube, where the subject should be replaced by the word or word you want to search for. But finding the right keywords is not always easy so in this video I answer a question by pointing to the right videos. This was the question. I always hear the same brittleness from PCM digital audio no matter what sample rate. The only thing where I hear a significant difference is in albums recorded in DSD digital audio workstations. In the studio I flipped the live analog return from the console to the digital return of the digital audio workstation through the DigiDesign 192 converters and there is a world of difference. End of quote. Let me start by saying I had similar experiences in studios during my 21 years I ran a magazine for the professional audio world. In that time we reviewed quite a number of professional ADDA converters so I experienced how they sound. Let me try to help you further. For that we do need to understand a bit about what can make digital audio sound brittle. There are two factors that play a major role in digital audio reproduction. Jitter and time smearing caused by the reconstruction filters. Digitizing analog audio is done by measuring the amplitude at precise time intervals. Four CD44100 measurements samples in audio speak are taken with a precision of 16 bits. Resolution 16 bits gives 65536 discrete levels offering 96 dB signal to noise. The format is called 44.1 kHz 16 bit. High resolution recordings can be sampled at up to 384 kHz and 24 bit depth. 24 bit offers 16777216 discrete levels in theory offering 144 dB signal to noise. In the real world, 120 dB signal to noise is about the limit for the resulting analog signal. That equals about 20 bit depth. How the analog to digital conversion and the digital to analog conversion functions I have described in my video, digital audio pulses are not real world, sine waves are. DSD is technically a special form of PCM that uses a very high sampling rate, mostly 64 times that of a CD and only one bit resolution. Since one bit resolution only gives us 6 dB signal to noise, a noise shaper is used to move that noise from within the audio band to a spectrum outside the audio band. See my video DSD Explained Part 1 and Part 2 for more details. It is essential that during the analog to digital conversion the time between taking samples is extremely constant. Once digital, the signal is extremely robust and almost impossible to damage in proper functioning equipment. As on playback those samples have to be converted into analog with the same precision in time. This requires not only extremely precise clock oscillators, the device that tells when the next sample has to be converted but also very well designed power supplies, interfacing chips and circuit boards. Watch my video Network Music Players Quality Part 2, JITTA. Be sure the timing is of the essence during analog to digital conversion, digital processing and digital to analog conversion. In these instances even the smallest imperfection in signal quality is audible. This differs from the general computer and network applications in that in audio there is no time for errors. There has to be a set of samples at exactly every 44.100 of a second or less for higher sample rates. The reconstruction filter has to band limit the signal to half the sampling rate or less to prevent distortion that sometimes resembles robot forces as used in sci-fi movies. For 44.1 kHz an extremely sharp filter has to be used and these filters will at least cause time smearing but often also other artifacts. Using a higher sample rate makes it possible to use less steep filters that will have less impact on the sound quality. More on this in my video, the truth about Nyquist and why 192 kHz does make sense. GearBot DigiDesign, nowadays owned by Avid, is very good for the money but a 16 channel Avid HD analog IO costs €4,690. A lot of money but divided by 2 since we only used the DACs, not the ADCs and then divided by 8 since we only used 2 of the channels. And you end up with less than €300 for that stereo DAC, not really the amount of money an audiophile would expect a good sounding DAC for. Some studios use DACs that cost 20 times as much, like those from Meintner. Missalord Studios of Hilversum the Netherlands uses multiple 8 channel prism sound ADDA converters costing over 10 grand each, clocked by an Antelope Trinity clock costing over 4 grand. Studio equipment comes in several qualities and since professional equipment requires some extra features it is often more expensive than home gear at the same audio quality. Next to ruggedness, an external clock input, other interfaces like MADI or SDIV2 and more signaling add to the price of Pro Gear. I really like DSD and PCM equally. I am not saying they sound identical but they are equal in sound quality on my reference set of 1. There will be gear that does PCM better than DSD and vice versa. In the studio world there is another discerning factor, those that record in DSD are usually very critical on sound quality and use the best gear around. That might have been the situation in the studio where you made a comparison. When converting DSD to PCM there might be a problem too. As that is in fact resampling, there again are filters in the audio part and although very good DSD to PCM converter algorithms are available, they might be adjusted wrongly or just poor by design. In your case, comparing the analog control room feed to the return from the DigiDesign 192 DAX means that they have passed the analog to digital converters too. So the quality of the DigiDesign 192 comes into account twice. Now I don't know if the DigiDesign unit was externally clocked. That makes a hell of a difference and if the desk was analog or digital. But that studio gear is not perfect by design. I also don't know what DSD gear was used, probably a pyramid digital workstation that often is combined with top quality DAX like those by merging. I can guarantee you, even without knowing you or your auditory qualities, PCM soundfells can be played back with almost no brittleness to even no brittleness at all. But you won't find that in cheap gear. Just as a 99 euro turntable with USB output is limited in quality. To fight brittleness you have to take care of jitter, so don't connect the DAC directly to your computer but use a streamer or network bridge of decent quality. I have playlist for both on my YouTube channel, see the links in the comments below this video in YouTube. You might need to click more to unfold my comments completely. Then find yourself a digital to analog converter of sufficient quality. Again, my playlist DA Converters might help you to pick the right one for you. The higher the quality of both, the digital source and the DA converter, the smaller the difference between the 44.1 and high res music becomes, as is the case with DSD vs PCM. Then use proper cables to connect things up, make sure the digital equipment is not placed on a surface that resonates and so on. You might watch my series Audio Hygiene. It is my experience that the quality of the digital front end is the most important in a stereo. If you spend money there, the return on investment will be the highest, to a certain degree of course. Brittleness should not occur when proper modern stereo equipment is used. And the emphasis is on modern. Since you use the name digital design it means that it is a rather old unit. We did slowly your terms anyway. And it wasn't top of the line when it was new. Comparing that with top of the line DSD setup is not really fair. Comparing it to the live feed is, so you could establish that there is a clear difference in sound quality which I completely agree with. But as I mentioned there are also studio solutions that provide clearly better sound quality. Or at home even the very affordable Meridian Explorer II can't really be called brittle. Even when connected directly to a laptop. Connected to a 450 euro network bridge driven from Logitech's media service software over the network and you'll be surprised. And that's with a DAC costing less than 200 euros. Which might playlist DA converters for other and higher quality DACs. Do pay attention to the publication date of the videos, since the developments in digital audio technology are enormous. And that brings us to the end of this video. There will be another video next Friday as always at 5pm central european time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you'll be informed when new videos are out. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up. Many thanks to all that support this channel financially, it keeps me independent and thus trustworthy. If you also feel like supporting my work, the links are in the comments below this video in Youtube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. Whatever you do, enjoy the music.