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dobyblue said:
I believe that suggesting the PS3 is somehow inferior to the majority of SACD players out there really shows that the knowledge of the Cell processor has been neglected. The PS3 uses 5 SPE's for SACD!!! 5 SPE's is some mammoth processing power we're talking about - it only uses 3 SPE's for a 40 Mbps AVC 1080p encode for cripes' sakes.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=36188
Though PSX (the DVD recorder) was too weak to decode SACD in software, it was expected that the PS3 would be able to. SCE began the development in a relatively earlier stage. But even at the beginning of this year the SACD decoder was 6 times slower than realtime to convert surround DSD sound into PCM.
The manager of the Software Platform division at SCE who were in charge of software codecs and players estimated it'd be impossible to finish if they kept that pace. A developer from the Sony HQ who developed softwares for VAIO PC came to SCE and they assigned the development of an SACD decoder codec to him.
SACD is stored in the DST format (= compressed DSD). DST changes compression methods and parameters every 1/75 seconds, which eats huge processing load when decoding. In the first 2 months the developer optimized it into realtime processing. Then he threw away the old source code and wrote a faster new codec in 3 weeks with the knowledge he had gained. It uses 5 SPEs - 3 SPEs for DST decompression, and 2 SPEs for DSD to PCM conversion.
After that, he debugged it while consulting the professional audio equipments division of Sony that
developed the DSD format itself. It took 6 months.
Then the audio tuning specialist at the audio division of Sony began to use a PS3 to check the sound of the then unreleased HD receiver TA-DA3200ES. He pointed out where to fix in the PS3's digital audio processing to SCE. It was in the early October, and the dynamic range at that time was 140dB which was the initial goal set by another Sony developer who developed DSD. The PS3 firmware version 1.10 is this version with a few updates. The decimation filter of the SACD decoder outputs at 24bit/88.2kHz.
However, last Friday, Honda went to a place for the interview with Ken Kutaragi for some audio/videophile magazine. They brought there an even newer version with a decimation filter at 24bit/176.4kHz. Also, the 64-bit DP internal data of the decimation filter is rounded down to 30-29-bit instead of 24-bit for the output. The dynamic range is over 170dB and the theoretical number reaches 180dB in 30-bit. Honda says its sound was really good even when compared with the sound of the 1.1 version firmware. The Sony developer attributes the goodness to the fact that the software SACD codec of the PS3 processes all data in 64-bit double precision. This new firmware version will be available when the BD remote is released in December.
As for improving CD sound, upsampling is apparently easy by writing a FIR filter. But it is not yet in the PS3 software player as it takes some time to choose an appropriate upsampling function and noise shaping algorithm.
I've read this and more before. But the proof of the pudding, etc.
And until now I have preferred my SACD/DVD player for CD and 2ch SACD and my PS3 for SACD MC.
Until now.....Type 3 bitmapping has really made a big improvement. Or so it seems.
I'd love to know what they've done.
At least it shoes the dedication the SCE team have to sound fidelity via the PS3.
I heard grunting noises during the intro of a song on Linn Selektions 2 CD that I hadn't heard before. So clear too. Amazing. Just when I thought, how much better can the sound get on my system. In fact, it's frightening how much other stuff I may be missing. Surely can't be anyting much if anything at all.
WOW!!!!!!
Would be TRES interesting to compare the PS3 in PCM mode SACD to a DSD machine to see. Can it get any better than this?
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Post by indelibo December 21, 2007 (182 of 243)
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Is there any article that specifies what type 3 bitmapping does?
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indelibo said:
Is there any article that specifies what type 3 bitmapping does?
Couldn't find one. I tell you what it DOES do - turns the PS3 from a poor CD player and make-do SACD player into one approaching audiophilia. To my humble ears.
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indelibo said:
Is there any article that specifies what type 3 bitmapping does?
The only thing I've found is this: http://www.ps3sacd.com/faq.html#_Toc177216810
Apart from this very little detail appears to have been publicized.
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Post by eesau January 20, 2008 (186 of 243)
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dobyblue said:
I believe that suggesting the PS3 is somehow inferior to the majority of SACD players out there really shows that the knowledge of the Cell processor has been neglected. The PS3 uses 5 SPE's for SACD!!! 5 SPE's is some mammoth processing power we're talking about - it only uses 3 SPE's for a 40 Mbps AVC 1080p encode for cripes' sakes.
Hi,
the fact is that nobody (outside Sony) really knows or understands how the PS3 does SACD processing. Further, all other SACD players have small dedicated chips made by Sony and the interior is not known to anybody because SACD processing is 100% Sony proprietary technology.
Could you, dobyblue, get us some more elaborated technical inside information from Sony? Or is your company still very strict about this?
Why did you drop SACD from the PS3 40BG? How did leaving out some SW processing make it cheaper to produce? Or was this just a product management issue i.e. those who want SACD playback should pay more?
Maybe somebody should start now a petition to Sony for getting the SACD back to PS3???
Esa
http://forums.highdefdigest.com/showthread.php?t=12512
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eesau said:
Could you, dobyblue, get us some more elaborated technical inside information from Sony? Or is your company still very strict about this?
I know dobyblue is a BD guru but what made you conclude he works at Sony? Is it somewhere in that enormous appreciation/bashing thread?
> Why did you drop SACD from the PS3 40BG?
See http://www.ps3sacd.com/faq.html#_Toc180147568
> Maybe somebody should start now a petition to Sony for getting the SACD back to PS3?
Currently it's still in -- in some of the available models, that is.
Reportedly SCE's about to announce a new model shortly. You'd better keep an eye on the above site.
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If SCE were to introduce DSD output in my UK 60GB PS3, it would become my ultimate AV machine.
This piece of kit seriously rocks!
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I have read somewhere that the PS3 plays the HDCD format. If so, what should the samplign and bit-rate info say? In other words, will the PS3 read but down-sample the HDCD layer?
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Post by raveer February 5, 2008 (190 of 243)
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FunkyMonkey said:
I have read somewhere that the PS3 plays the HDCD format. If so, what should the samplign and bit-rate info say? In other words, will the PS3 read but down-sample the HDCD layer?
Hello,
Yes it plays them. You just need to feed the reciever via the HDMI/TOSLINK. Also the reciever must be capable of accepting and decodind those extra 4 bits.
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