Antipodes had to jump through a number of hoops to ensure Squeeze would play PCM of up to 16FS (768k) without a plugin. I had been advocating for that as I upscaled over 500 of my albums to that sample rate using PGGB. I was immensely delighted to find that AMS 5.0 would make that possible without the use of the C-3PO plugin. To my surprise, another capability came along with it: the ability to play up to DSD512. Not being a fan of DSD because of how it seemed to smooth out transients, I figured that I wouldn’t personally benefit from this though.
It wasn’t long after learning this about Squeeze on Antipodes that PGGB gained the ability to output DSD. To my surprise, the PGGB-DSD512 retained all of the goodness of PGGB-16FS while also bringing greater naturalness and, in some cases, a reduction of harshness. And Squeeze plays these files flawlessly on a K50!
The following album had been one of the rare cases where I missed being able to play my vinyl copy. The CD, played natively paled in comparison. PGGB-16FS helped to bring richer colors and the liveliness of my recollection of the vinyl, but also had a tendency to play a little hot. While PGGB-16FS removed some of that tendency, I was still choosing to back off on the volume a tad bit, which was never the case with the vinyl. (This is a fun one to play loud. First time I heard it was at an audio show in a room hosted by Manley and Coincident. It sounded so lifelike that a bunch of us could help but applaud at the end of a track). Earlier I cranked up the PGGB-DSD512 version to around 82 dB on average and there wasn’t the slightest hint of harshness. It was wonderful!
Huge thanks to Antipodes for giving me a capability that I previously never imagined I would ever need - and timing its release perfectly.
I have a favor to ask of any Roon users who are either presently upscaling or thinking of some day doing so. Please register your vote for Roon to support DSD in 48K rates using the link that follows. The first post in the following explains it well, but with PGGB, it would result in tracks that began life in a multiple of 48k being invisible to Roon if upscaled to DSD. Odd that Roon omitted this as some less feature-packed apps (like Squeeze on Antipodes) can play these files.
i wanted to ask you, since you have the same server and dac than me if you have been able to get hqplayer to sound similar to Squeeze with the Antipodes k50. I have been trying all kinds of combinations of modulators and filters upsampling to dsd256 with an external computer and using the Antipodes as a naa player. At first, with the recommended settings for the dac200, I was missing the top-end and the sound was too polite, then I was able to get to a combination that recovered the sparkle but there was something missing in the bottom-end to round up the presentation. Using Squeeze with the dac upsampling PCM with the bezier2 filter sounds fantastic and so does PGGB upsampling but i would like to keep roon for music discovery, getting as close as possible to what i hear with Squeeze. Is that a lost battle?
My goal had been more to get Roon/HQPlayer to the point where I could sit for hours enjoying it without getting annoyed. When I use Squeeze, I am only playing PGGB files (DSD512) and that has been a level of sound quality no other software option can match.
I do think I got close to my goal with Roon/HQPlayer but am still wishing over a year hadn’t passed since we last got an update to HQPlayer. The improved modulators show some good promise. I think once we get an update, we may even be able to scale to DSD512 on the K50.
I will share my current HQP settings later as I can’t access them now.
I should also mention that I also have a positive impression of the bezier2 filter but think that the DAC 200 is even more transparent when fed DSD512 - especially when it’s been scaled by PGGB.
Version 8 of PGGB was just publicly released today. I’ve been a beta tester and have been amazed by the improvements the additional DSD modulators have brought.
Thank you for the information. I was not aware of the new PGGB. I am going to install an Isotek Sigmas 5 power conditioner in my system and then I will listen to this new version and comprare it with what I have.
To my surprise, I am now playing DSD1024 using Squeeze. The track was scaled by the newest version of PGGB. The track is “Some People’s Lives” off of Breaking Silence from Janis Ian, which is one of my reference tracks. The sound quality is blowing my mind. I mistakenly processed it at one level below the best quality so I will need to process it again and compare to DSD512.
