IS DSD BETTER? CenGrand DSDAC 1.0SC Review

It's interesting that they went with two different FPGA vendors with the need for two different sets of software tools. I can only assume that they couldn't get exactly what they needed for both functions from Xilinx or Altera. I am guessing that the FPGAs are not of a high enough gate count to require them to move to the paid tools but I could be wrong. I'd love to talk to the engineers to find out what their selection process was. (I've sold Xilinx and Altera FPGA's over the years)

Thank you, Tarun for another excellent review. Entertaining and informative. Especially, thank you for mentioning the hum you heard.
Your reviews remind me of the heyday of Stereophile, in that they contain both technical information and comparisons to other products.
If I'm honest, streaming and therefore hi-res audio just aren't my cup of tea.

The DAC merry-go-round is certainly a very dizzying ride that I try to stay away from. I will soon, when the manufacturing backlog is cleared, be getting a Geshelli J2S AKM, with Sparcos op amps to end my ride on the DAC train. I hope to one day hear your review of this Geshelli equipment. Apparently a linear power supply further improves this DAC performance. Thank you very much for this valuable review of this DAC, your time and effort to share it with us all. Take care and all the very best, Sir.

Surgical+Mystical

Audible hum? Certainly a deal breaker for me. No excuse for that in 2023. Especially considering the price.
Thank you for your honesty!

Great review Tarun. I'm a bit of a hi-res sceptic tbh, I think most of it is clever marketing by the industry and manufacturers to get us to keep buying the latest tech. If something has been well recorded, and well mastered, then CD 16/44.1 quality is more than good enough. I think when people compare digital formats, what they are hearing is slight mastering differences rather than an inherent better sound.

Clock Blocker 😂

I noticed you still have ATC SCM19s, some reviewers say they have a noisy cabinet because there isn't enough padding inside, is this true or noticeable?

RE Value of Hi-Rez files- If an Audio Note poo-poos it and uses old chips like the AD1865 which max out at 44/96 then I take note. Do some blind tests and show us the results.

Thank you for a valuable review

Sony UBP-X800M2 SACD Queen Night at the opera Drums track 5 DSD confirms one improvement.The other is recording. Sounds like reinventing the wheel all over again. Again.

Wait, what???....did he say "cLock" blocking?? I had trouble hearing the "L" in there..

Everything I listen to is upsampled and converted to DSD by the amazing Magic Box.. PS Audio's Ted Smith designed Directstream DAC. The playback hardware operates at such a high frequency, there is no need for phase corrupting filtering on the output. The only filtering is done by Jensen transformers. Glorious!

The CenGrand looks beautifully laid out!

Spending a lot on a dac is a waste of money frankly, you can easily get dacs that can perfectly (to human ears at least) perform the conversion for well under 500. Features, looks and build quality are really the only things that distinguish them and on those fronts I think this dac fails.

The differences you describe, bigger sound and weight vs detail and control sounds like the A/B test wasn't level matched precisely (which is basically impossible to do in a home set up anyway).

Chi-fi... Chord Quetest is way better.

I have this DAC from Iain @ Willow Tree. love it to bits. My display is much brighter and I have no hum on my unit. I got excited when I seen your review. Been waiting a while for someone I watch often to cover it.

Great review. Many of your reviewers have commented on your question with regards to hi res audio vs cd and the comments made are absolutely on point. Let me add to it by saying what contributes most to the quality of sound dished out from a dac is not how many dac chips are used, how modern the dac chips are or how many times it can upsample...but its largely due to 2 key things - the quality of the power supplies in the dac and how its been designed to handle power supply noise and more importantly the quality of the analog output section. These 2 things add loads of cost into the making of a dac. If you have a chance do listen to a well recorded standard CD or non hi-res/mqa encoded music streamed from tidal/roon into a wadia or mark levinson dac from the 2000s.- They may surprise you just how good they sound.

Awesome, this video came at a great time, Tarun. I’ve been hunting for one, video was quite educational for me

I have the deluxe version, and yes, it does have a bit of transformer hum too.

Thank you for your reviews, We would like you please to review the Musetec Audio (LKS Audio) MH-DA005 .
Thank you,

Watching this guy's review is like watching paint dry. He gives a really informative review, you just have to be able to stay awake.

I’ve got to ask what the point of this product is? Taking an existing PCM file and converting it to DSD will not make it better. Yes , it can tidy up the timing for presentation to the amp, but that’s all I can see

Dsd upsampling really works wonders even with software hqplayer windows it kicks the snot off any flagship dacs.

Recently bought an Audio Music DAC/1, which is never reviewed but was at the Cranage hifi show. £13k full price. Absolutely stunning DAC, reputed to be a giant killer of £40k DACs. Has to be in the conversation of best DAC made imo. It’s that good. Doesn’t sound digital. Sweet and detailed.

Hello, which is better, this or pontus ?

I really like your thorough reviews and look forward to more of them. I would like to see you review the Lab12 dac 1 reference which is an r2r dac with tubes, it is supposed to be a very musical piece of equipment.🙂

I have the same DSDAC and I don’t hear any nosies. Only one time when the voltage were more then 235w.

Great review as Always ! I use audirvana soft on my computer to stream and play my files. The software can also upsample in dsd. The sound is more ''liquid'' and smooth then. But my final thoughts is that the most important things is the recording, not the format. Have a nice day.

Even when I watch this review for the second time, I learn something new. Still, I'm very curious to know what you think of the latest firmware for the Denafrips DACs.

I’m waiting with excitement to receive my new Cen.Grand dsdac 1.0 Superclock. I heard it in my system before ordering one, and it absolutely crushed the Pontus 2 in every aspect. Also working better than Terminator 2 in my system.

The sound is so big, effortless, relaxed and dynamic at the same time. Very organic and definately not boring. Its in my country, but sadly i didnt get it today. Have to wait till monday 😉 I sold my Pontus the other day, so i cant wait for it to get here.

To answer to your question about hires:
I love DSD.
It produce the best sound to my ears: more natural, spacy, with details that i love too.
I think this is the future in the sound domain.

Is this "superclock" version the better version, or is the less expensive "basis" model not bringing 99% of the sound ?

⁠@abritishaudiophile7314 Great review 👌 I do have one of these myself and I just love it. It replaced my Terminator DAC. I now going to move on and upgrading to the Deluxe version 😅 And to all the guys who mentioned a terrible dimmed display. This your demo unit has a dimming foil attachment to the screen so thats the reason behind it. You peel this off and is completely different screen. I like it dimmed myself so I have the same film attached to my DAC

Great review, thank you. Would you write here for me little more detailed compare Gustard R26 between Cengrand Dsdac?

I am totally sold on DSD, in terms of tonality and natural smooth sound. I don't care about the science, I just love what I'm hearing. In the same way people enjoy listening to vinyl. You can argue there's a lot of wow and flutter on vinyl, all that distortion, lack of pitch, timing and instability and yet, there's something about vinyl that lures us in. Same with DSD, I can only conclude the sound is more natural, even though the noise level is excessive and this necessitates special filtering to remove this.

I listen mostly DSD512 format and God bless NativeDSD, where I am spoilt for choice. I think streaming needs to catch on, where at best you can find Flac at high resolution but it's still PCM. Most of the Chinese orientated DACs are laden with a wide variety of digital formats both DSD and PCM. Once we hit a point of saturation, streaming companies will start to exploit this, why won't they, it's profit! Imagine premium DSD512 download from Tidal £29.99 or MP3 £3.99.

I believe SACD failed because it came too late in the game and Sony's policy of closed shop probably deterred universal acceptance of the format but it's child DSD; is the cat that jumped out of the bag. I hope SACDs will have the same revival as vinyl and this promotes the longevity of the format. Still, retrospectively, SACD has a big catalogue of albums and I suspect it'll be here for a while longer.
My personal opinion, DSD can't fail, MSQ is neigh on dead and PCM is the de'facto for anything digital. I think in 10 years time, DSD will become ubiquitous as PCM.

dear tarun, you are ome of my favourites. i have a r2r dac that i own. would you be happy to review it? i'm more than happy to cover shiping costs both ways, yes really.

Another excellent review Tarun. I really like the measured and sobre tone of your reviews. Adds a very neutral and unbiased perspective to the proceedings. Excitement if any, is only added by the merit of the gear being reviewed, as it should be.

Coming to the DSD debate, I have a small collection of SACD's which I spin on an Esoteric K-01, and they do sound superior to audio CD's on the same machine. Iam a late entrant to streaming, and only recently got a Lumin U1X to stream tidal to my dac. I've dabbled a bit with upsampling tidal streams ( the non Mqa ones ) to 192 khz. And the difference was obvious as an increased ease and musicality. To push things further , I upsampled tidal to DSD 256, and there was more of everything I liked in my previous attempt. I believe HQ player does some SOTA upsampling, which is sadly too much of a faff for a computer illiterate like myself. But considering the benefits I've sampled with very simple DSD conversion on the Lumin format, Iam sold on upsampling DAC's like the Cen grand. And as a potential next purchase, Iam very happy with this review. Thanks again for your assuringly neutral and unbiased reviews.

İs it chip Dac?

Great review! How would the DSDDac 1.0 compare to the Audio GD R7/R8HEMK3?

Great review, as always. So did the manufacturer get back to you on the hum? Was it your particular unit or something inherent? If latter, what do they plan to do about it? Thanks

With regards to the hum mentioned, I have the DSDAC 1.0 Standard and cannot say that I hear any hum via my loudspeakers. I did have an issue with the RCA outs on the first item that I received, with one channel not working, but this was very quickly remedied by the distributor without fuss and I am pleased to say that my current DAC works perfectly. I haven't heard the Denafrips Venus however, I also own a very expensive £4900 tube DAC and the Cen.grand DSDAC 1.0 at HALF the price equals it and in some areas BETTERS it. An amazing achievement from Cen.grand for the cost. Oh, I will say as I am not sure if you mentioned it in your video, the Cen.grand requires at least a couple hundred hours burn-in to sound its best. I never believed in burn-in before, but I do now.

A device that coverts PCM to DSD.... when all DSD recordings of music have already been converted, then mixed and mastered in DXD... a format which is guess what, good old PCM...
Complete waste of time, I'd say it's useless, but it is actually worse than useless as doing these totally unnecessary digital conversion steps adds nothing of value and is no doubt more detrimental than anything else.

Hi I just bought a CenGrand DSDAC 1.0 standard version and definitely the hum / hiss was there especially after a few hours of playing it. It got much louder and constant so had to switch it off. I have tried different digital cables, power cables with QSA fuses and filters. Still problem persists.
The dealer is excellent and offered to return it. He recommended the super clock version but this is the one you have just reviewed and still hiss/hum. So given I am a Brit that lives far away abroad I can’t afford this back and forth in shipping fees, so likely will opt for Denafrips Venus ii 12th Ed on offer from same dealer.

On this basis wanted to ask you whether on balance, given build quality of denafrips (reliability) would I be missing out much by going for the Venus ii ? Like you I have sensitive speakers ie graham audio ls8/1 speakers so this may be the issue but I just can’t take the chance. Would appreciate your view on balance Venus or CenGrand , for you of course? Thanks and much appreciated.

Niiiiiiiice...

I own one of these babies
It is magnificent, in all respects
I’ve had no problems with a audio hum, or any problems
Highly recommended

I know that this sounds too good to be true but you should try a Shanling ET3 cd transport through the Denefrips venus II across the I2s connection with the output of the ET3 set to DSD512 - the DSD light on the denefrips will come on and you might be surprised how natural the sound is

Hi Tarun, I'm new for DSD Audio format.
I have receiver Marantz SR5015, it stated on manual no DSD Audio Capabilty over HDMI, but in other hand It can stream DSD audio via Network.
I don't understand what is no DSD audio capabilty over HDMI? is that supposed to mean I can't play DSD files format or SACD discs even use proper SACD dedicated player or Bluray/DVD SACD capable player that connected to this receiver via HDMI port?
Thanks a lot...

Thank you!
Question: Do you know its signal-to-noise ratio?

Nothing can compete HQPlayer in this regard.