What's the difference between an SACD and DSD? 

Very few don’t have a CD layer, which I don’t listen to anyways.

@@csabakereszturi945 plenty of them don't have a CD layer. I have several hundreds of SACDs. About 25% of my SACDs don't have a CD layer.

@@csabakereszturi945 Pretty much no Japanese SACD has a CD layer, and there’s a good reason for this. Putting a CD layer on the disc would require them to use DTS64 instead of DSD64, or in other words losslessly-compressed DSD. The reason this is an issue is that the Japanese audiophiles hold the belief that uncompressed audio is inherently superior to losslessly compressed audio. All of the Japanese SHM-SACD releases are single layer DSD. Queen, Elton John, Black Sabbath, you name it, they’re all 2.0 single-layer DSD.

@@csabakereszturi945 I have quite a number of single layer SACDs and excellent they are

@@Gavynnnnn Maybe most Japanese SACDs don't have CD layers, because only audiophiles are buying them anyway (and they don't care for the CD layer). Having a CD layer does not at all mean that compression is used, they are on separate layers! DSD data is in its layer while CD data has its own. Don't spread misinformation.

You got it, also DSD discs supports Multichannel Audio, so people buy Multichannel DSD and then play in 2 channel SACD player which defeats the purpose, look at Marantz N30 for example, atleast give HDMI out so full transport layer for all channels can be used. Oppo UDP 203 does that just like that .. because it has HDMI out which has no bandwidth issue ..

In fact I think it Is not the case. SACD Is the physical format, DSD Is the technology used to get the digital file and dsf, diff and others the real formats. Dsd Is not a format. For instance, dsd Is to PCM, dsf to wav and SACD to CD. The CD Is the physical format, .wav Is the file type and PCM the technology to digitalise the music. So are SACD, dsf AND DSD respectively

@@leonardopapantoniou4227 Spot on!

I agree with this. DSD is the technology behind the SACD format. Standard CDs and every other digital format uses Pulse Code Modulation. DSD is how the data is being stored then transferred to the conversion device. PCM is about constant sampling rate of multi-bit data and DSD is more about streaming single bit data with variable sampling rates. I'm by no means an expert on this stuff, but my understanding is the PCM is always carrying data that is being unused in the processing because it's a bit size. If we look at 1s and 0s, there a lot of zeros added fill up the and complete the bit. As an example, consider converting a standard wave file from a 16 bit CD to let's say 24 bit. This would theoretically just add 8 0s to the end of the bit. Where DSD differs is that all the data is being used then variably modulated to build the conversion to analog output. So DSD isn't handling data that could potentially cause noise during the conversion processing.

at that time unfortunately the shark was MP3

@Fernando Martinez recorded in DSD, or PCM to DSD converted?

The DRM turned most consumers off.

I have many blu ray/sacd combos. To me the sacd always sounds better

EMM LABS, Meitner was involved in developing DSD with Philips sony. All others followed.

@@cengeb Thanks for your post. You are correct. They made the SACD format and then made sure no one else could use it. dCS understood the big advantage DSD had over pcm and pushed the industry forward. Phillips and Sony¨s thinking led to the end of SACD. dCS is the only reason why you now have DSD upsampling on your dacs.

@@stephens2r338 emm labs..meitner was involved in the devopment of dsd...

Yes, SD cards are even more compact than CDs, and they carry the superior DSD format, so you can listen to them in your phone or in a fancy receiver. We should keep this format alive !!

@behexen250 My first SACD et al. player was a Sony DVP-NS500V (about $300) which is what sold me on the format. About 10 years ago I bought the Arcam DV135 not quite universal player (stereo only, no blu-ray; originally $1500, purchased at a factory close out for $800). About 2-1/2 years ago, the transport need replacing (a Sanyo drive I believe) and was repaired by the service contractor for brick-and-mortar (support your locals) specialist stereo dealer where it was purchased. I wanted to make sure that the replacement drive, shipped over from Arcam in the U. K., would indeed handle my unicorns and brought along an HDCD, a DVD-A, and an SACD (Mozart Symphonies 38-41, Sir Charles Mackerras conducting the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Linn CKD 308, most highly recommended for both superb musical performance and sound quality). The dealer indulged an old customer and hooked it up in one of their listening rooms to a system frankly much better than what I have home. All three discs played just fine and the staff, including the owner, were all suitably impressed by this relatively modest player that they had not heard in years. And these guys are used to listening to dCS gear. Anyway, my point is that from my experience well recorded and mastered SACDs represent the best of digital discs, But, like everything else, not all discs occupy the same rare air and there are some very good red book CDs that nip at the heels of many less than stellar SACDs. As for the analog vs. digital debate, further affiant sayeth not.

Stephen Smith For out of this world playback, I use the PS Audio Directstream and Memory Player stack. I agree that there are recordings that rival SACD’s. Much of the ECM catalogue, for example, rivals SACD. Keith Jarrett’s output is particularly enjoyable. Discs from Channel Classics are also noteworthy. Mind you, SACD’s from the latter company are just sublime.

@@clothyardshafts Yes, Keith Jarrett is one of the grand masters. Definitely in the same class as Horowitz and Rubinstein.

Nice way to understand it. If one knows PWM I'm sure they'd be able to visualize PFM.

Most of your public could not tell the superior nuances and the layered sounds of an SACD. For them, a song is just something in the background that they hear while they work or exercise. Most of my friends could not tell SACD and CD apart when I played them in my expensive HiFi set. That's why SACD never caught on. It wasn't "that much better" for most folks. They couldn't justify paying more for.... what ?

COOOL!!! I friggin love drawing connections between seemingly unrelated topics! Also, I truly believe that humans, without realizing it, are unraveling the mysteries of biology thru development of digital systems. And I mean “believe,” because I have zero examples at the ready lol. But maybe this is one?

"Airy" is the best way to describe DSD. There is an effortless clarity to the audio, and given the context, it can be shocking how much better it sounds than PCM. Especially regarding female vocals.

Very, very few recordings are recorded and mastered in DSD, most are converted to DXD(PCM) and back to DSD before authored to SACD. Old analogue (tape) recordings certainly benefit from a DSD transfer (no messing required) so it makes sense to do this.

@@angelwars3176 That's correct, and it's a shame.

5.1 surround on SACD

Sacd is just a disc. Dsd goes onto the disc.

I think pauk is all in on dsd. I cant see there being any new products feom ps audio not capable of sacd when they are currently investing in a complete dsd studio.

Great question… and sorry to see no one answered…but you may have likely found your answer by now. But for others who just come across this as i have - the answer lays in the playback system. One cannot play back DSD on a regular CD player. If you put a CD with DSD encoding into a regular CD player, the player will only play the red-book/regular CD layer. So, in this case, you will not hear a difference because you are only hearing the NON_DSD portion of that disc. Likewise, some SACD players do not automatically default to playing the SACD /DSD layer - the user must go into the set up and tell the player to select that layer. (Otherwise, it will default to the regular CD layer.) Lastly, (but definitely not least), many SACD players have an internal DAC of entry level quality. It’s just there to covert the DSD to PCM…and then it outputs the same thing from its digital/RCA/SPDIF outputs…just regular CD quality. To hear DSD played back correctly, you would need to use either an output specifically designed to allow the full DSD file to be output and converted by an external DAC (usually made by the same manufacturer as the SACD player due to licensing issues), or the player must covert it and output it through analog outputs (not digital outputs.) In case of the latter, of course your preamp or receiver then needs to have analogue inputs to receive the high quality signal. So, in most all cases, if the user wasn’t aware of this, then, they are either simply listening to the CD layer on the disc, or far lower than DSD quality converted PCM. And, for sure, in these cases, it will be quite hard to tell a regular CD from a CD w/ DSD as a seperate layer on the disc… :) Hope that makes sense. M

there are actually ways to rip SACDs, the oldest PlayStation 3 got a hack for this exact purpose. Also most Oppo based multi-disc players (mainly Oppos and Cambridge Audios, there are some others too) can be flashed with a custom Linux and are then able to rip the SACDs DSD files to a harddrive. Google will give you a ton of further info on this topic.

Even DACS from PS Audio have HDMI input.

HDMI licensing it's a plus not every company is willing to pay for their DACs, as you would find that on AVRs already which are the main target for driving the audio from commercial media players. This is my understanding of it, although there could be more/different reasons applied to HDMI

Marvin Gaye's "Midnight Love" is the only SACD album I got and the only one available that I care enough about to buy. Kinda slim pickings.

Very easy to find out... none ;) It is the other way round. These days, even expensive CD players often don't have SACD capability because the manufacturer would have to pay the license fee, while basically nobody needs it anyway. I had a Denon in the 90s, they had so many cool features, which are really naff in hindsight, like arranging the tracks of a CD so to best fit them on a cassette tape, fade in/out, pitch control, a million direct access track buttons :)

@@thegrimyeaper I have a few, Dire Staits, Super Tramp and others, there is some good music if you look. You pay for them though.

@@Baerchenization one of the main reasons they dont have it is it would require a DVD laser to read the dsd data.

@@thegrimyeaper oh brother

That’s true.

What John describes is exactly how I hear the difference in sound comparing formats. I also agree that the best cds sound superior to some of my SACDs.

SACD is a disc format that ONLY uses DSD 64. DSD itself is an audio signal recording format, specifically 1 bit Pulse Density Modulation and used in varying bit rates - commonly now DSD256. It works very differently to PCM, Pulse Code Modulation and is arguably because of the way it works, closer to the original analogue signal.

Yeah, I have a few XRCDs. They do tend to sound very good. Tina Turner's Private Dancer is particularly great sounding on XRCD. Have you ever heard of SHM-CD? It's marketed as if the extra clear plastic it's made of makes a difference, which I doubt, but many of them are carefully remastered much like the XRCDs were, so I have found that they typically sound fantastic. You should check them out if you get a chance.

Gus Skinnas upgraded the Sonoma system to 128 but he doesn't like Pyramix!

@@angelwars3176 any particular reason? thank you!

@@meanpeoplerule Ask Gus! :)

I tried to search this in Google, but came up empty. Could you please provide a link?

Yamaha also 😊😍😍😍

dsd is better than dvd audio.

Dvd audio is pcm. Blu-ray audio is pcm. Audio CD is pcm. SACD audio is DSD which is pdm, which is superior.

Anyone?

Be careful. Most SACD's are sourced from PCM (maybe that's why you think sacd's sound similar to red book). They upsample pcm to dsd. If you want dsd in its purest form then buy from native dsd or mobile fidelity.

TASCAM DV1000 is true DSD recording playback, not SACD...DSD is the recording to make SACD, ya can't get DSD data off a SACD

@@cengeb who told you that?

@@Victor_31_ it's in the specs, one of the reason SACD was developed, so you can't have a perfect digital copy. Once it's in an SACD, you can't get the DSD

@@cengeb you may be surprised if you read on HDMI extraction of DSD :)

@@Victor_31_ TASCAM DV-RA1000 true DSD recorder and playback, like a few other Tascam units...and a Korg mr-2 portable DSD recorder

An sacd is a disc that has dsd music files on it.

SACD closing in on its 17,000th release.

yes I cant tell much difference a true all DSD recording and playback system should sound better

I have a Sony xa9000es which is the later model of xa777es and it plays SACD layer as good as some players a few times more expensive but it doesn't play CD as good. I think it uses 6 dacs in parallel for each channel to reduce noises. I also has a XA5400ES which is better both in SACD and CD playback although it is not built as solid as the XA9000ES. SONY is the developer of SACD and thus should have built decent equipments to demonstrate it. I think they have a SACD player sold in Japan for over US 10K.

Not always, it is optional.

Billy Grinstead the pioneer lx BDP 800/500 play SACD.

Sony UHD players play SACD Sony X800 - UHD - 2D/3D - SACD - Wi-Fi - Dual HDMI - 2K/4K - Region Free Blu Ray Disc DVD Player - PAL/NTSC - USB - 100-240V 50/60Hz for World-Wide Use & 6 Feet Multi System 4K HDMI Cable www.amazon.com/dp/B075VDQD4Q/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_GxPBEbQWPJEMW

Bestbuy has a Sony Blu-Ray DVD player (BDP-S6700) with SACD playback for under $80. The player and remote are bare minimum, but it plays SACD beautifully via digital coaxial cable. It has become my dedicated SACD player. I have others DVD and Bluray players for just movies.

BIS, Chandos, Pentatone, Channel Classics etc

Yeah Exasound and Merging technologies but very expensive kit. The exasound will handle DSD256 in 5.1, not sure about the Merging...

@@albiepalbie5040 Think they mean DAC's not MC DSD recordings - plenty of those around.

Angelwars Sorry/ Missread

DSD (specifically 1 bit Pulse Density Modulation) is actually an ANALOGUE capture system it is NOT DIGITAL as the incoming audio signal is captured in a varying density of 1's and 0's bits analogous to the incoming signal. It does not capture the signal as definite value DIGITAL words. For this reason it offers the best in terms of both detail capture and robustness (it doesn't deteriorate like tape) for audio signals at present, with the added advantage of being storable, downloadable and streamable through a 'digital' network - what's not to like?

Hey yo..grow up....yo

@@joebloggs8636 1x12v linear psu + 5v Linear psu - Plextor cd drive - through custom, or fancy usb cables on black bottomed or mam-a disc running from a laptop on battery, burnt at 7am. If I cannot get an idea of one of Paul's favourite music CD so that I can rip a version, burn it and send to him via post from UK (not before light treatment, of course), ill be left with no alternative than to make a copy of Platinum All-Time Favorites from Sesame Street. I think it's1995 - still music.

Yep

Sony never stopped producing SACDs.

Some find solace in tiny grooves crudely impressed onto fine grained plastic, which the poor tip covered in dust and surrounded by motor and sound pressure related vibration is supposed to follow precisely down to the nanometer, suspended above the wobbly surface at a varying angle, filing the surface a little each time it does so, before it's output is amplified and equalized to match approximated RIAA curve, before finally reaching the amplifier. It's actually amazing ... it works at all.

i understand it as yes, if a SACD is multichannel it would have been formatted in DSD. normal DSF SACDs can only be Stereo.

Yes it is. When you rip an SACD with a 5 channel layer it rips to a 5ch dsd file. How to play that file back is pretty difficult as you would need a surround sound dsd capable dac.

Yes, SACD works at DSD64 you can download DSD 5.1 at DSD256!

If you want to stay under $1k US then a Sony Blu Ray player sending via HDMI to a receiver capable (licensed) for SACD decoding (mine is Yamaha) delivers a fine sound at mid-fi prices. But the sound quality depends more on the sound engineering teams than on the SACD format. It’s hard to A-B compare CD to SACD on a hybrid disc but as best I can tell using a Schiit Asgard class A headphone amp and Oppo PM3 headphones, the SACD gives a better sense of space (treble and soundstage) and maybe better bass articulation. The differences are NOT as dramatic as typical MP3 streaming quality to CD quality. However Sony tended to put their best-sounding recordings on SACD so buying one has never disappointed me.

@@pdcragin33 thanks😉

Tim Brickham Happy Thanksgiving!

DSD is streamed in Japan - matter of time :)

Angelwars We don’t have the bandwidth here. Yet. Population centers, maybe. Everyone else, doubtful.

I use discs, streaming, vinyl, downloaded DSD- you name it, I play it. The only format that is sitting in a drawer, unused, is cassette tape. Why be limited by formats?

MQA is horrible and a rip off. A sucker is born every second.

FLAC is just a file format not a recording format. PCM and PDM (DSD) are recording formats and they work in different ways. DSD I would strongly argue is not digital :)

Angelwars if thats the case then i like dsd even more.

I doubt anyone can hear over 20kHz, at least adults, so what's the point?

. @@westelaudio943 I've read a bit of info, just casual google so maybe not correct - is high resol. audio standard on 'BluRay ' players ? , seems so. actually seems like some / many standard DVD's can play high Resol. audio as well. thus with a modern 'bluRay there is no 'need' for a separate costly DAC - If someone wants a separate high end stereo system or some such that is a different subject. ? the digital format is not just frequency : ' it stops at 20,000 hz. > more important I gather is the ' frequency steps' in digital systems - higher resol. audio has much smaller steps and thus closer to natural sound > is this somewhat correct ?

dxd is pcm,

​@@junkang7872 a lot of my files is DXD, and sounding better than Dsd. Read this..blog.nativedsd.com/sell-albums-multiple-dsd-bit-rates-dxd/

Most but not all DSD recordings are mixed in DXD. Even if they have been it makes more sense to convert back and PLAY the finished recording in DSD.

​@@planet9379 DXD cannot sound better than DSD, and vice-versa. :)

Technically, plain old CDs still outsell vinyl more than 2 to 1. The thing is that each individual vinyl record averages about twice the price of a CD, that's the reason their gross sales are similar in dollars, but not nearly in units sold. There's a lot of music out there that will never be available on vinyl, so I wouldn't throw away the CD player.

@British Naturalist yes CD can contain and hold a wider dynamic range. But that don't matter if AND when the songs and material have lower dynamic range than a LP can contain. I have Lady gaga the album joanne that is also recorded digitally that has LESS dynamic range on CD and digital download than on the LP version of the same album. So if a format has one trillion dB in dynamic range and you put a song on that format that has 50dB in dynamic rang do not mean that it will have more than 50 dB just because it CAN contain a trillion dB.. That is something we need to understand! Nobody will take a LP and convert it back to digital and think that they got back the quality of the vinyl master. Because vinyl is LOSSY format and with that said the record label knows that it is a kind of copy protection. It is one reason that some record labels release LPs with higher dynamic range. Another is that it is easier to add loudness (that contains also compressions) on a digital format like the CD and digital download (good to consume in noisier envirioment). And it is those that will be played in in competition with other record labels (on radio stations/streamed). But that is certainly a exception. (It is like that most of the cars that is produced today can go in 220 km/h but the majority of those cars will never utilize that capability in their whole life span, and are they so much better than the cars that only can only do 200 km/h.)

@@brianmoore581 Good point Brian, I hadn't considered it that way previously. Likely because the RIAA, talks in dollar terms & claims that at the midway point of this year vinyl equalled or bettered the sales of cd's. Whilst the US is the biggest individual market, that doesn't give a worldwide picture. Classic rock albums apparently are the biggest sellers on vinyl, which tends to indicate it's the older generation getting back into vinyl the most. Although, reports make mention that if the younger generation buys physical media it is almost always vinyl. Therefore, that tells me, that it is those who collected cd's in the past continue to do so today at ever dwindling rates. Otherwise, consumers nowadays are not getting into cd's. Of course all of this pales into insignificance, considering that digital takes up the bulk of sales by a long margin, mostly in the form of streaming and not downloads. Young people today barely download, they just stream. If they bother to have physical music, including downloads for the sake of discussion here, it's mainly vinyl. All food for thought.... Cheers!

@@nostro1001 yeah music as something to be purchased is dying. Today with a little software you can download any music video you can find on RU-vid, extract the audio, and have your music absolutely free. You don't have to pay for downloads. That's where we're at now. The only reason to purchase music -- aside from your own sense of honor -- is if you are getting something better than what you can get for free. That means vinyl or SACD or higher resolution downloads. CD isn't perceived as necessarily better than what is easily available absolutely free. That's why sales are dropping (in my opinion). Also, the music market is much more fragmented than it was in the past. There are many good artists who remain pretty obscure because they aren't mainstream. It seems that there are a few genres that get most of the attention but rarely produce anything of merit. But there is an abundance of really good music still being made today, it's just getting harder to find it, and the people who make that music aren't rewarded for their work like they were in the past. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

@@brianmoore581 Interesting discussion Brian & interesting take! Just to touch on your final thoughts regarding artists, obscurity & the mainstream. I view that almost as a polar opposite. There's always been great music by obscure artists. Mainstream typically requires solid backing from large commercial companies and of course genre of music in line with whatever is popular at a given time. It's far a few between when artists outside of this 'formula' gain really big commercial acceptance. Without thinking too hard, I guess a band like Nirvana broke that mould in the early 90's (spawned the grunge scene etc). Prior, some of the punk bands in the UK hit the charts and broke the commercial 'formula' of their time. I'm sure there are plenty more examples those were just quickly off the top of my head. Notwithstanding commercial success, I believe that non-commercial music is readily accessible like never before. I have said this for many years now. As a huge collector of music, the Internet has given 'easier' access, whereas days gone by it was really hard to find out about different types of music. And I don't mean genre specific like jazz, blues or classical, even though they aren't they don't comprise huge slice of the commercial market. People into 'long-standing' genres of music have always known where to find out about the latest releases, up and coming artists, new classical recording and so on. It's the genuinely non-commerical music that is so much easier to seek out. Anybody can now go to specific sites and listen, buy and download music. Of course as there's RU-vid, which enables anybody to stumble on non commercial music. A few simple searches and anybody can find music they are interested in. Then there's a multitude of free music mags for those that like reading. In days gone by you'd have to buy a magazine. Even the well known mags are free to view online. And let's not forget social media (which I don't use), but think about how fast information flows with it. What is perhaps harder is that there is so much more music available at our fingertips (literally). So, wading through so much of what you don't like to find a few gems is rather awkward. I've got an extremely broad, likely eclectic taste in music & wading through music is a pleasure for me, rather than a chore for others. I think we are in crazy good times with the selection of non-commercial music we can all hear with ease. Cheers!

You can edit it without conversion and you can mix and master it in analogue then recapture back to DSD.

Converting to analog requires Analog (source) -> DSD (recording)-> Analog (mixing) -> DSD (distributed format)... The double conversion compromises the sound with high frequency noise as the source signal is hit with a second analogue delta-sigma modulator. PCM mixing is by far the most common route, but then it sounds like PCM.

I'll have to step in and correct what you said. DSD is not PCM with a higher sample rate. Sorry. DSD is PDM (Pulse Density Modulation) which is fundamentally different than PCM (Pulse Code Modulation). DSD is a 1-bit system of greater or lesser density. One of the distinguishing factors of DSD is the ability to convert it directly to analog with a converter. The PDM stream needs only a low pass filter to create analog, where PCM requires a decoder.

@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio Is it true that DVD-Audio is uncompressed PCM through a decoder and my understanding is the big advantage to SACD is the ease of conversion?

@@thekittencult DVD Audio isn't really a standard (like CDs are). DVD Audio is typically of a higher sample and bit rate than CD, and thus better sounding, but it's not required by the format. So this means it CAN be better, and probably IS better, but that's not a guarantee. SACD is easier to decode and much closer to analog.

DSD doesn't add anything - it's a different recording format to PCM!

Angelwars Not really. Which music digital master do you think was in fact genuinely mastered in DSD in the studio? Rather, in the digital studio gear PCM rules and your digital bit perfect FLAC file is identical with no loss. Thus I prefer FLAC. Studio gear that claim DSD compatibility actually transcode the DSD audio to high‑resolution PCM (24/96 or 24/192, for example), do all the signal processing at that resolution, and then transcode the result back to DSD. Thus, what’s the point? Your DAC might internally run the conversion to analog audio as delta-sigma modulated stream and that’s where people get confused, as DAC companies heavily advertise this approach as more precise in recreating the analog signal.

@@ThinkingBetter I agree very little music is recorded in DSD and most of that is mixed in DXD - however it makes sense to convert back to DSD for playback (speak to the audio engineers). Also it 's interesting the number of people converting PCM to DSD 'on the fly' before it hits their DAC's. The advantage seems to be that most DAC's output stage is Sigma Delta based and so feeding it DSD is more compatible for it. My view is DSD is NOT digital as I've mentioned elsewhere - it captures the signal in a very different way to PCM digital.

Angelwars I’m leading audio engineering and generally in any audio architecture you aim at minimizing or avoiding any lossy transcoding when the goal is best audio fidelity. When all digital recordings are based on PCM as master format or at least used PCM internally in the equipment, DSD becomes a format introducing loss to the signal relative to a bit perfect master file. Thus if you let your DAC take the bit perfect PCM master file data and your DAC uses a bit stream sigma delta approach internally, you have the best compromise. Do you have even one song that was mastered in DSD without actually using PCM for any signal mixing, EQ, effect or other DSP processing in the studio? I don’t think such music exist...thus DSD is always a transcoded format. But, for a given restricted bandwidth (or file size) of data, DSD can do better than PCM in audio fidelity.

@@ThinkingBetter yes i have many albums recorded in DSD and mixed in analogue back to DSD - no PCM conversions (look at nativedsd.com or blue coast records). I take your points but my main viewpoint having spoken to many experienced sound engineers is that DSD is basically a superior way of capturing audio compared to PCM at present.

Its not quite - DSD is simpler and somewhat more sophisticated in that the top end frequency doesn't just stop at 44.1 k or 2x red book at 88.2k - DSD is not defined by this and so if we use DSD 2.8 mhz the frequency response goes beyond 44.05 kHz barrier of PCM - and extends on to about 60 kHz before it fizzles out. So the roll off is very gentle compared to a sudden brick wall halt. Of course when PCM gets crazy high like 192kHz or 384 kHz these issues are irrelevant.