I researched this a little and came to the same conclusion: PS Audio or McIntosh. Since I’m already in the McIntosh camp with a C55 (which also has the MCT connection), that’s the way I’m leaning. I’m very curious to see what others have to say.
SACD Player/Transport Choices
I am planning to acquire a McIntosh MCT500 to go with my C53 (proprietary MCT connection). But I am wondering if there are other good SACD transport choices that will send a true DSD stream to an external DAC on a non-proprietary basis, either through USB or I2S. I’m trying to research this, but it’s difficult to find definitive answers regarding the actual digital stream from SACD - often I discover that the stream is converted to PCM. I do know PSAudio has a scheme similar to McIntosh.
I realize simply purchasing DSD and streaming from an SSD is probably more practical these days. But I am sort of fixated on a physical disc player. Budget-wise, most interested in transports around or below that of the MCT500 (~$5K). Thanks for your thoughts and advice.
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Shingling has recently released Onix Zenith XST20 SACD transport for $2299. I believe, it does the following:
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I ordered the Onix that @milpai referenced earlier this week primarily due to the I2S output and the fact that it is a top loader. I have a large SACD collection and liked the idea of being able to use an external DAC rather than whatever chipset is included in a player.
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I recently picked up one of these and used it to send the audio HDMI out signal from my Oppo UDP-203 to my Rockna DAC's i2s input. The Rockna is showing that it's a DSD signal. Sound quality is fantastic. |
I have a 3 box DCS Scarlatti - transport, Dac and Clock which I am very satisfied with The TEAC disc drive is still one of the best available and can still be serviced by DCS. DSD is available on Dual AES.The way the disc tray slides in and out is so impressive. A different option perhaps but one of the best. It is one of the most analogue sounding CD/SACD transports and there is a reasonable availabilty on the ued mrket |
I have a very different perspective, not being based in North America! First, when I play SACD I use more than 2 channels. The European way of sending digital audio uses purpose designed HDMI technology which supports a huge array of formats and channels. HDMI includes Ethernet, almost as an afterthought! On the other hand, I2S was designed in 1957 to allow two integrated circuits on a board to communicate 2-channel 16-bit PCM encoded audio. To communicate between boards, I2S developers have borrowed the HDMI connectors and cable, but not the rest of the technology. Why anyone would throw away most of the channels recorded on a SACD is beyond me. I have a couple of universal disk transports which play SACD along with 4k Blu-Ray, DVD and CDs. These transports output via two HDMI cables, one exclusively for audio. In this mode, they obviously rely on an external DAC. One of my transports is an ultracheap Sony - about $250 - and it is only a transport. My other unit is a Reavon for about 10 times the price. Amazingly, it contains two Burr-Brown DACs but they are a complete waste for SACD. SACD is down converted to CD quality - something I found immediately noticeable. As a transport outputting HDMI, the Reavon is fine. Some of the Dolby Atmos multi-channel recordings, delivered on Blu-Ray Audio-only disks, are absolutely stunning. I am mainly referencing the Norwegian www.2L.no label. These disks play natively on each of my transports. |
THe Onix can also be ordered direct from the US distributor: Forte Distribution for USD 2399. plus your state sales tax... and free shipping. However, even though Onix is partnered with Shangling, the Forte first time Shanglin buyer 10% discount will not work for this product. I need to wait more until summer before I can pop for this. I hope the price isnt jacked to 4K or more by then... |
There is a new CDT from Metronome called the DST that can resample 16/44.1 to DSD256 but not SACD. Srajan at 6moons has a preview of it on his site while he waits for the unit to arrive. It's a slot loader who's drive is made by StreamsUnlimited €4950. All the best, |
@mahler123 I'm sure it can decode DSD internally and output it through the analog outs but it can't output it natively. |
@richardbrand Yeah, it only took a couple minutes of checking to verify that like the Oppo previously mentioned they are players and all of the processing is done internally. The resulting output may be passed via HDMI but it is definitely analog. |
@faustuss Not sure if you are referring to the Reavon universal disk transport / players, but the UBR-X110 I mentioned is a pure transport and its outputs are digital only - 2 x HDMI, 1 x coax digital and 1 x optical digital. It transports SACD natively over HDMI. The UBR-X200 on the other hand does add two Burr-Brown DACs, one for two-channel analogue playback and one for multi-channel, including SACDs. These DACs are inferior to the ESS Sabre DACs in the Oppo, in particular because they cannot natively process DSD. They down-convert to CD quality! So in my book, the DACs in the 200 are a waste of money, especially when compared to the DAC-less 110. Both are excellent transports. HDMI is a digital standard, but that does not stop others from trying to push analogue down the cable. The Dometic analogue TV cameras in my motorhome connect to the display head using an HDMI cable and standard connections, which are particularly unsuitable for in-vehicle installations. There is a rugged HDMI connector made specifically for in-vehicle use, but Dometic don't use it. This is an unnatural act, in my opinion, like using HDMI cable for I2S |
Like DAT, CD/SACD player are mechanical devices, sooner or later they will fail requiring service. I refer to SACD and Cd equally here. Whether broken or worn o-rings, belts, laser rot, or the usual caps drying out, they won't last. I have many SACD and CDs, all of them are ripped to hard drive and streamed as preference, far more convenient to search. The SQ is pretty much up there compared with CD playback, however streaming from Qobuz, Tidal, Apple etc. meh, a bit of a way to go. I do like to play CDs, however for the long term, like my remaining 20-30 years, I will outlive a SACD player which means one day it will fail and two I own are already 'jittery', one takes 3-5 shots to load and recognise a disc, the other just stops playing about 15minutes into a disc and won't play in the summer due to humidity. Such unreliability I can do without, the whole enjoyment tanks. There's uncertainty with file playback, however with management and judicious backups, there's a plan to get around known shortcomings. Streamers are a plenty, even more DACs, CD players not so much. A CD Player will start rotting, even if kept as a spare. Of spares, ever tried to buy a Sony CD player spare part, unobtanium. Going to have to come to terms that CD playback is for nostalgia. |
I’ve excerpt this from Onix’s literature easily obtainable with a simple search or https://onixhiend.co.uk/introducing-onix-zenith-xst20/ I have underlined statements here you should take note of... "FPGA-Assisted I2S Output While many audiophiles are looking for a reliable I2S transport for their High-End DACs, the lack of standardization in this part of market would previously cause many compatibility issues. However, our Zenith XST20 features special hardware that allows switching between 10 I2S pinout modes, significantly expanding its compatibility to virtually all I2S DACs on the market." Seems to imply with the use of their Field Programable Gate Array are able in some cases configure the output to circumvent Sony’s copyright protection and scheme and possibly make the XST20 compatible with other DAC’s. There may be some wrinkle in copyright law that lets them attempt that but we’ll see if Sony tries to intervene or not. |
I use my Esoteric X-05 as transport to my external dac except when playing sacd. When playing sacd the Esoteric uses its own dac. Esoteric has both single end and balanced outputs so its easy to switch source. Used a Krell KPS 30i as transport before Esoteric but the advantages of beeing able to play sacds without another "box" in the main setup won. The Krell serves as transport in my second setup now and does it very well (recapped and serviced 1 and 1/2 year ago). Conclusion: I can recommend both Esoteric and Krell as transports. Neither of them will play sacds when used "only" as transports. |
@mahler123 Just because you want to believe something doesn't make it so! |
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I have the McIntosh MA7900 and 2 years ago purchased the Denon 110th year anniversary SACD player.DCD-A110 retail $3,500 but I got a deal on it. It is 2 channel audiophile and weighs 37 lbs. I recently was able to hear the new McIntosh SACD player that costs 8 grand and maybe it's because of my JBL speakers but I like the Denon equally if not better. There is no need for an external DAC in my opinion. I have collected about 85 SACD discs and in my opinion the original single layer ones had the best sound although the hybrids are good too. My 2 cents. |
Sony XA-5400ES used a system called HATS only compatible with matching Sony AVR to send the DSD layer, like PS Audio does. I switched to Marantz SA-10 when PS discontinued their transport. You could use this as a transport via coax but it plays sacd and upconverts everything including pcm to DSD 11.2. The "dac" tech is proprietary. Not a chip, not a ladder, not a ring dac. New model SACD-10 just released, way more expensive, making lightly used or open box or even new old stock SA-10 very affordable if you can find one. Listed for $7k, which was way less than new Luxman or Esoteric. Has not been reviewed yet and I'm hoping it will. SA-10 predecessor never had a really thorough review I could find. |
I have an MCT 500 and love it. I am not aware of any other SACD transports, just players. It’s the proprietary nature of SACD that make a transport difficult to make without some sort of special connection like McIntosh provides. If I were looking for an SACD player of the highest quality I would shortlist both McIntosh and Esoteric. |
There's also the Playback Designs MPT-8 Dream Transport. The perfect name for something that starts at €23,990.
All the best, |
PSAudio have just announced a new SACD transport at AXPONA for I believe $8,500 and limited to 200 units. Personally I use a PSAudio PerfectWave for SACD playback via I2S into a Denafrips Venus 15th DAC for native DSD playback and that works superbly. Maybe a 2nd hand PSAudio is the way to go? The Music Room have 2 for sale right now Mark 1 $1,300 Mark 2 $3,500. |
I just received the new Onix XST20 mentioned in a post by @milpai. I purchased from the North American Distributor Forte Distribution located in Montreal Canada. I ordered online on Tuesday 4/08 and it was shipped the next day 4/09 via FedEx from their Seattle Distribution Warehouse. I received it in two days on 4/11. Their listed price is $2399 for the USA but they applied a 10% discount for a first time Shanling purchase which brought the price down to $2159 shipped. This is an impressive piece of gear. Excellent build quality and aesthetics. The user interface is top notch and very intuitive. I love the touch screen and functionality. Plays SACD, CD & MQA. The top loading transport is smooth and quiet. Sound quality is excellent from all outputs which include i2s, USB, AES/EBU, Coax, BNC & Optical. I'm hearing best sound playing SACD's via i2s which is native DSD. I tried the Onix paired with my Denafrips Terminator, Laiv Harmony & my APL HiFi tube dac. The Onix also performed favorably when compared to my $19K Esoteric Transport. The remote is a bit confusing at first because it has lots of buttons that don't apply to the transport. Onix has several future products coming up in this series that will share the same remote. I would prefer having a simple dedicated uncluttered remote with just the buttons needed to operate the transport. It's nice to have this new purchase option for a high quality reasonably priced SACD/CD transport. The Onix comes with a good quick start guide but no owners manual. I couldn't find an online manual. There's a menu icon on the touch screen that opens a setup menu of user options & settings. This is where an owners manual would be handy as the quick start guide only addresses a few of the many settings. I emailed Forte last night with some menu option questions and they responded today with detailed answers and suggestions. It's reassuring to know there's good support available. |
I earlier gave two examples transports that natively spin SACD disks , one a cheap Sony, the other a Reavon. Both use one of the most widely standards for high speed digital communication, HDMI. Reavon shares its SOC (System On a Chip) with Oppo and newer players |
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My DAC must be lying to me. It is showing DSD 64 when I send SACD audio from HDMI to my DAC using an HDMI to i2s converter. It sure as heck sounds much better than it does coming out of the Oppo. |
Gentlemen, I think what we’ve been arguing has become somewhat of misnomer. I’m in the process of further discovery on this issue, though I’ve drawn no conclusions, the term "native" is where the argument lies. I think we’re trying to differentiate a bit perfect DSD stream received by a compatible DAC as such with no conversion process involved. Whereas in PoD has become the standard protocol for transmitting packeted DSD via alternative connections and conductors and is then reconstructed as "native DSD" and is displayed as such. I don’t believe our disagreement over the correct definition is intentional, just a miss understanding. I’ve been looking at a number of sources around the internet that describe these terms and I intend to quote them and present them here for everyone’s edification and clarification. We all deserve that. For instance... Wikipedia - "Direct Stream Digital (DSD) is a trademark used by Sony and Philips for their system for digitally encoding audio signals for the Super Audio CD (SACD). DSD uses delta-sigma modulation, a form of pulse-density modulation encoding, a technique to represent audio signals in digital format, a sequence of single-bit values at a sampling rate of 2.8224 MHz. This is 64 times the CD audio sampling rate of 44.1 kHz, but with 1-bit samples instead of 16-bit samples. Noise shaping of the 64-times oversampled signal provides low quantization noise and low distortion in the audible bandwidth necessary for high resolution audio. DSD is simply a format for storing a delta-sigma signal without applying a decimation process that converts the signal to a PCM signal." DSD over USB In 2012, representatives from many companies and others developed a standard to represent and detect DSD audio within PCM frames; the standard, commonly known as DSD over PCM (DoP), is suitable for other digital links that use PCM. The 1.1 revision added protocol support for higher DSD sample rates without requiring an increase the underlying PCM sample rate." Native DSD i2s "Inter-Integrated Circuit Sound (I²S, pronounced "eye-squared-ess"[citation needed]) is a serial interface protocol for transmitting two-channel, digital audio as pulse-code modulation (PCM) between integrated circuit (IC) components of an electronic device. An I²S bus separates clock and serial data signals, resulting in simpler receivers than those required for asynchronous communications systems that need to recover the clock from the data stream. Alternatively, I²S is spelled I2S (pronounced eye-two-ess) or IIS (pronounced eye-eye-ess). Despite a similar name, I²S is unrelated to I²C."
I hope everyone finds this helpful and our exchange has been a lot of fun and I hope we’re all the wiser for our efforts. I know I am. Have fun.
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Great discussion, thank you everyone. @faustuss thanks for those excerpts. It seems to me the Oppo and Sony outputs may be DOP. But from @milpai’s early post, it looks like the Onix transport distinguishes between DOP over some outputs and native from I2S. I wish there was a definitive way to know what digital stream is coming from specific digital outs. For now, seems like the McIntosh MCT is the safer, more assured path to native DSD to an outboard, but proprietary, DAC (ie, the McIntosh DAC). |
I posted our exchange in an Oppo Facebook group. Without bruising your feelings, I’ll just summarize by saying that people were in disbelief at your comments. Let me just say that the best experiences I have had in audio appreciation have been with SACDs outputted over HDMI to my Bryston DAC 3. I have some string quartet albums on the BIS label where I felt as though I could reach out and touch the players. If you are at all interested in hearing the best SACD has to offer-at least for under $5K in transport-decoder- I would try it
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