Quick question about listening modes

Q1. Whether you send DSD or PCM is configured by you in the player, not by the receiver. The receiver does not tell the player to send DSD. If it says DSD then it is receiving DSD, but there is no advantage in doing that, and possible some disadvantages.

Q2. That's what 'direct mode' is for, not extracting bass from the mains. If it does what 'stereo mode' does, then there is no difference between the two modes and no need for two different modes.

+1. the receiver does not produce bass. It might or might not redirect bass that is already present in the program material from the left and right channels to the sub. If it does not redirect the bass to the sub, then the bass, still fully present in the signal, is reproduecd by the left and right speakers (within their limits.) Generally the "direct" modes are intended to eliminate all processing, like implementing a crossover to the sub, so they don't redirect bass to the sub. FWIW, AFAIK, no receiver can perform bass management on a DSD signal. TH\hey have to convert it to PCM in order to implement bass management, room correction, etc., which a typical "direct" mode will prevent from occuring.

It's down to the speakers limitation, placement and room. Did you have plenty of bass before with another AVR or this is your new pair?

You just have to accept this as a fact that you can't unless you wire the sub to the mains. It's by design. What is your concern about STEREO mode? What processing in the STEREO mode you want to avoid? You can turn off Audyssey so what is left you can't turn off?

not necessarily...

Again, no other settings can be used in direct mode!

Again, use stereo mode!

The manual is bit vague in what is done to DSD in direct mode. In any case I don't know if the DAC in the receiver can do straight DSD-analogue decoding/conversion. I doubt it so I wouldn't assume it can and there's no easy way to find out.

I have the Onkyo 818 and Sony BDP. From the 818 manual it seems direct mode is more restrictive in processing than DSD mode and since DSD mode can do bass management DSD MUST be convert to PCM first. So there is no advantage at all sending DSD.

If the player is configured to send DSD then it will send DSD from the DSD layer: the receiver's mode cannot stop it! Stereo mode does bass management so it must convert DSD to PCM first.

DSD is not better than PCM. DSD-PCM-analogue conversion is not necessarily better than DSD-analogue conversion.

Most SACDs are not direct DSD but actually from PCM recordings. Editing has to be done in PCM. There is nothing 'pure' about DSD. So DSD is not the holy grail of high res. music, just the format of encoding on the disc.

Don't get too hung up on the DSD conversion. If you want a very pure direct DSD-analogue conversion pathway it's not possible by sending DSD to the Onkyo. You have to use analogue from a suitable player to a suitable receiver or 2CH integrated amp.

Having said all that, the Sony players already can convert DSD to PCM at the highest possible sample rate, at 176.4kHz, which is a lot higher than the 96kHz sample rate used in many SACDs. So there is nothing lost in letting the player doing the PCM conversion and send it to the receiver.

We know the Sony converts at 176.4kHz because the receiver tells us what sample rate is coming in. When the receiver receives DSD and converts to PCM, we don't know how it does it, at what sample rate. So you may end up having a lower PCM sample rate when receiver does the DSD conversion.

There are other issues when receiver decodes DSD but I won't go on. The main message is let the player convert it to PCM and get on with the music listening.
Edited by Kilian.ca - 1/29/13 at 2:48am

I just had a look on mine (as I don't use DSD stream as explained above), same, no separate DSD mode. It seems the way it works is if the incoming stream is DSD, then it is DSD implied (it shows DSD when you press display button) plus one of the available modes with the restrictions set out in the manual, which the more restrictive set applied.

There's some inconsistency in the way it works because with PCM in 2CH, there's no PCM mode. With PCM in MCH there is a MULTI mode, same with Dolby and dts etc.

I thought I explained all that in the bottom half of post 7.

To recap briefly,

Sony player decoding: PCM 176.4kHz for sure;
Receiver decoding: no way to tell, could be PCM 176.4kHz, or 88.2kHz, or 44.1kHz (CD resolution).

Plus receiver may do other things to DSD to reduce final sound quality (has happened on other models) ...