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Beware of SACD Transports -- they probably will not work with your favorite DAC

Hello, I just learned a painful lesson. I'm guessing that not many people will know this so I'm going to put it in here.

The audio on a SACD is encrypted.
If I were to purchase a SACD / CD player I have nothing to worry about. The Audio is un-encrypted inside the player.
However if I were to purchase a SACD / CD Transport made my brand Z, I would have to purchase a brand Z DAC???
Apparently Sony who owns the SACD format mandated that the audio on the SACD itself is encrypted and
the digital output from a SACD transport is ALSO encrypted. It looks like the actual un-encryption is done in the DAC.
There is no standard for doing the un-encryption so every manufacturer has their own proprietary way of doing this.
So I cant use a Esoteric SACD transport and an Auralic DAC which is what I tried to do?
londontk

Showing 3 responses by cleeds

cleeds
6,142 posts
 
itsjustme
... there is no problem so long as your transport decrypts the SACD.
But that’s the problem - very, very few transports "decrypt" SACD . SACD is a proprietary format, as others have noted here.
cleeds
6,142 posts
 
big_greg
... everything I've read indicates that you can't output SACD via optical (toslink or coax) but can via HDMI, so you'd need something like an Oppo with an HDMI output and a DAC with an HDMI input ...
There are a few players that will allow this through their HDMI output, but they are the rare exception. I do believe that one of the Oppo models permit this. On the other hand, I know that my McIntosh spinner doesn't.
cleeds
6,142 posts
 
I think you are essentially corrrect - a digital out on an SACD player is rarer than hen's teeth. There are a few, though, including - I'm 99 percent sure - some early Sony Playstations.
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