SACD Player/Transport Choices

@mattsca 

I bought an Esoteric K-05X on the used market over a year ago and have been very happy. I don't plan on upgrading and this unit has many features, 4 dacs onboard, one of the best transport mechanism out there.

@henryeng I’ve learned that if sitting from 10ft away or more, you have to be mindful of where you’re pointing the remote. The unit is quite small and the IR window looks small as a result. If you are more accurate with the pointing, it should be fine. Have you noticed other issues?

I have not spent a much time with gapless content, but I’ll let you know what I find when I do. 

Japan is one of the largest music markets in the world, and cds are still more popular than streaming.  

As a result of the enduring popularity of physical media, Japanese hifi companies such as Accuphase, Luxman and Esoteric continue to make very high end CD/SACD players.

@stereo5, if I read correctly, your MCD350 is not outputting a true DSD stream, limited to the onboard DAC, or a toslink connection to an external DAC. 

I have a McIntosh MCD350 SACD player on one of my Mac system and an Esoteric SACD player on my other Mac system.  The Esoteric player is night and day better than the Mac.  The Mac sounds a bit veiled compared to the Esoteric. 

I just got an Onix XSR20 SACD transport.  It (mostly) works well.  I'm using the DoP output (AES/XLR) into a Bricasti M3 DAC.  But I notice two issues...

1. Remote control of the unit is unreliable.

2. Gapless playback does not always transition seamlessly from the end of one track to the beginning of the next track.  Very noticeable with classical music SACDs.

Has anyone else experienced these issues?

@bergenma I just received the display unit of the ONIX XST20 for my store. It is an exceptional performer for the price! I’m currently pairing it with the Grimm MU2, which is quite appealing both visually and sonically. Even the menus of both units share similar color schemes (yellow and white). It allows for DSD playback into the MU2 (or any DAC of your choice) over DoP when connected by AES, and Coax. I have verified that it also delivers native DSD to the Ferrum WANDLA, which has a true i2S input. It plays seamlessly, reacts quickly, and sounds excellent. It has a small form factor and is exceptionally heavy, built like a tank for its tiny size.

Humble brag for also being a BACCH-SP dealer, with the BACCH-SP adio to the left of the photo. I say this because as I have been listening, I am currently not hooked up to the BACCH, in case it raises anyone’s suspicions. That said, I have also successfully hooked it up to the BACCH-SP where the unit can successfully deliver DoP (the BACCH-SP does not accept true native DSD)!

 

@gimmer 

@hifipassion

@armyslowdr

Please keep those impressions on Onix performance coming!
Very interested to see how you find it to be.
Thx.

 

@hifipassion definitely agree on it being a great value.  It is heartening to know the mechanical noise at start up is normal.  Yeah, even what they term as the owner's manual in the shipped product is just nothing more than the printed quick start guide.

@armyslowrdr  I do hear a few seconds of mechanical noise at spin up which is typical sound heard from most transports as the disc loads.  I think this is normal.  As far as I2S pinout code settings my Onix was plug-n-play into my Terminator.  I am using the default settings and it works fine.  I just looked at the Audiophonics web page and the manual they link to is the Quick Start Guide that came with the Onix.  What I was looking for is a comprehensive owners manual with more information.  Regarding sound quality I noticed improvements after several days of break-in.  There may be better sounding transports available but at this price point I think the Onix offers a good cost/performance ratio. 

@hifipassion I too received the ONIX transport several days ago, buying from Forte at the 10% off.  Do not have extensive time with it yet.  But you mentioned it is quiet.  At spin up, and lasting for a few seconds, do you not hear a mechanical noise (not just whirring)?  Mine does, but it only lasts several seconds.

I am running it into a Venus II-12th and found the optimal I2S pinout code to be mode 3 on the ONIX and mode 7 on the Denafrips (although modes 3 and 5 were, by the manuals, the matching ones--I got right channel background popping or static using those).

The "manual" by the way is on the French website "Audiophonics".

I like that this is a top loader and looks attractive.  I am not sure the sound is LEAPS above a higher end TEAC SACD player I have in a different system, or even the Yamaha in this system.

@richardbrand 

Thank you ever so much for your extra fulsomeness. That really helps inform my path forward. My gut check is pointing in the direction of the Onix (in focusing on getting a music transport sans DAC) based on your keystrokes. As it stands I think my UDP will soldier on for some time yet as I rip my CD collection / continue using streaming services and consequently draw down on spinning discs with the exception of SACDs & movies. So with that projected use case I don’t think I need a Swiss army knife, I need a scalpel. And if I ever need the toothpick attachment down the road (a replacement Blu-ray player) that will most likely still be easily found. 

 

No, it does not! Please note the following from my previous post, do with it what you will -

"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
"The definition of native DSD playback is somewhat a matter of philosophy. Generally speaking, it avoids the conversion of DSD data into multibit PCM anywhere along the reproduction chain. Many commercially available DACs now support native DSD."

"Now that you have educated yourself, you may be able to appreciate that when we say that a transport delivers Direct Stream Digital (DSD) natively over High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), we really mean it!"

@faustuss

Now that you have educated yourself, you may be able to appreciate that when we say that a transport delivers Direct Stream Digital (DSD) natively over High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), we really mean it!

DSD

To be absolutely clear, DSD is a brilliantly simple way of encoding sound waves.  Each successive bit indicates whether to notch the digital sound pressure level up or down by one quantum, when compared to the real analogue sound pressure level, Silence is represented by an endless series of (up, down) at Megahertz rates.  Rising sound pressure will have more ups than downs, while falling has more downs than ups.  The analogue to digital conversion should not be more than half a quantum out. 

Moreover the quantisation noise can be removed by passing the bit stream through a gentle low-pass filter rolling off in the MHz region.  In principle the output can be played as an analogue signal without further processing except for a volume control!

Conventionally geeks refer to ups as 1 and downs as 0 in the digital domain.

PCM

By contrast, Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) samples the sound pressure level about 44,000 times per second (using CDs as an example).  At each sample, it measures the sound pressure level on a linear scale from about -32,000 to +32,000.  This range can be encoded into 16 binary bits (0 or 1) where each bit represents twice the level of the previous bit.

PCM cannot encode frequencies higher than half the sampling rate, and the low pass filters needed to remove digital noise must operate close to audible high frequencies.

Binary

You can see how this works by counting in binary using your fingers.  Using only the four fingers on your left hand, you can count from decimal 0 to 15.  The first finger represents 0 or 1, the next 0 or 2, then 0 or 4 etc.  You add up all the fingers to get the decimal equivalent. Keep going with the four fingers on your right hand and you get anywhere from decimal 0 to 255.  (This is the range of one computer byte, and looks like part of a four byte Internet Protocol version 4 address, eg 192.255.1.201)

Add in four toes from each foot, giving you 16 bits, and you can count from 0 to 65535.  Or -32767 to +32768 if one finger represents the - sign, which is handy because sound waves go both up and down from silence (0).  Why didn’t our Neanderthal relatives invent counting this way?

PCM linearity

So what is the issue with PCM?  Well, the most significant bit represents a value 16384 times bigger than the least significant bit.  At some point, when the sound pressure rises by 1, all fifteen lower bits switch off and the biggest one switches on.  It is almost impossible to manufacture any analogue device, like a resistor, to this degree of accuracy.

Imagine feeding every number between -32767 and +32768 in sequence to a Digital to Analogue Converter (DAC). Ideally the output would increase with every sample – known as a monotonic increase.  But resistors cannot be made accurate enough.

Philips knew this from the get-go, and just used the top 14 bits in their early CD players.  It gets even more ridiculous with high resolution at 24 bits, which needs 256 times more accuracy still, or 32 bits which needs 65,536 times the accuracy in order to resolve every bit.

Sigma-Delta

Enter the sigma-delta technique.  If you take the difference between consecutive PCM  levels, you can in theory add or subtract that many quanta to get from one sample to the next. So in effect, you convert the differences between consecutive sample to a local DSD stream.  It is easier to add a number of near-identical charges than to accurately trim a resistor.

It is similarly easy to create a PCM sequence from a DSD stream – just count the net number of ups and downs over 64 bits (for DSD64) and add or subtract from the previous sample.  But you cannot go the other way without guessing where each up or down should fit in time.  You lose information.  This is why a DAC that handles a DSD stream natively is better than a DAC chip that needs DSD to be externally converted to PCM.

Transporting digital formats

Any digital format can be chunked up into packets.  The packets can be any size.

If you want to send say a DSD stream over I2S, just chunk it up into 16-bit chunks and push each chunk into the pipeline.  The receiving end has to know what format is being delivered so it can unpack the chunks into a new stream identical to the original DSD stream.  It is not really over but inside and nothing is lost. 

The network technology can be anything that supports chunks (known as packets).  Internet Protocol, Ethernet, Universal Serial Bus (USB); anything will do if it is error free and fast enough.

On the other hand, if the DSD stream has to be converted to the two-channel 16-bit PCM samples I2S expects, then the timing detail gets lost and most likely the conversion will not be monotonic.

@bergenma 

but given the guts of the X110 are inferior to the model you have

To be fair to Raevon, most of the internals of the X110 and X200 are identical.  The X200 has the addition of analogue audio outputs and it looks to me that the power supply has been upgraded to suit analogue, with a well shielded toroidal transformer.

Both boxes have a pretty low component count which should enhance reliability of the electronics.  The MediaTek chips are in the highest classification of integrated circuit densities.

The Magnetar UDP800 is essentially a Raevon X200 without the second Burr Brown DAC, which delivers 7.1 and 5.1 channel analogue over RCA interconnects.  Raevon and Magnetar are a bit like Marantz and Denon - sister companies.

According to Reavon’s website

"DSD is natively transported via HDMI as a fully digital signal up to 5.1 multichanel"

But the website also claims

"The best possible picture and sound technologies for an incredible home cinema experience"

Down-converting SACD to CD quality on analogue playback is not the best possible sound technology but full SACD quality is delivered over HDMI to a suitable DAC or pre-amplifier. No disc player should output full volume noise though

@f1a thanks for the confirm. Appreciated.

I can confirm mahler’s assertion. My OPPO UDP-205 sends DSD via HDMI to my ARCAM AVR30 receiver. ARCAM display shows “DSD” at 2.8 MHz, both for stereo and multichannel. Sounds great!😊

@richardbrand 

Thanks for the keystrokes. I mistakenly thot you had the junior Reavon. My bad sir. And yes I am familiar with the Magnetar.

Still waiting for what others have to say, but given the guts of the X110 are inferior to the model you have I might lean more to the Onix (Shanling) as I anticipate Blu-ray players will be manufactured for some time to come.

Honestly, all of this would just be so much simpler if Oppo would just start up transport production again and roll out another audio flagship. Like what's the big deal, it's not like it's soooo much to ask!

@gimmer 

I'm running the Zenith into the original Terminator via i2s.  Also tried the Zenith paired with the Laiv Harmony DAC via i2s.

@hifipassion 

Since you are preferring the sound of your SACD's over I2S I am assuming that is through the Denafrips Terminator and which version do you have?  I picked up my Onix from Shenzhen and got it last week.  I can confirm the build is nice but I have not used it yet.  I was going to get a separate DAC and the Terminator is top of the list, followed by the Holo May.

 

 

 

@bergenma

Great questions that probably bother silver disk fans! 

I bought a Reavon UBR-X200 on a whim after my Marantz Universal Disk Player (UDP) carked it.  Just went to a couple of HiFi shops nearby, The first told me I did not want to play SACDs (I have hundreds) and the second had just taken delivery of their first Reavon, which I had never heard of.  I bought it anyway, because functionally it appeared to do everything I wanted.  

There was also the Reavon UBR-X100 but it did not support SACD at all.  The UBR-X110, which functions as a SACD transport, had not reached the market at that time.

My main left and right channels were played through Quad electrostatic speakers (2905) powered by a Krell class A amplifier (KSA-80) with an 18" Velodyne subwoofer.

My Reavon is connected by one of its HDMI outputs to my Audio Visual (AV) preprocessor, a Marantz AV8802.  The Marantz tells me exactly what is being input including the connector, format and bit rate.  The Reavon absolutely can output DSD 5.1 (Direct Stream Digital) natively over HDMI, as well as PCM from Pure Audio Blu-rays, Dolby Atmos, etc.

I also hooked up the seven analog output pairs to the Marantz using RCA connectors, as well as the two channel analog output using balanced XLR connectors.

The HiFi store promised me that CD playback would be as good as my venerable Sony player over balanced XLR, that Pure Audio would be as good as my old Marantz UDP, and that SACD analog output would be as good or better than the Marantz.

No problems with CD and Pure Audio playback, but when I switched to SACD I got full volume white noise (or pink?).  The manual was wrong!  Once sorted, the multi-channel SACD sound was way below what I was used to.  I checked the specifications of the two-channel and multi-channel Burr Brown DACs.  Neither mentioned DSD which is a good indication they cannot natively process DSD.  I wrote to Reavon and they confirmed multi-channel DSD is down converted to CD quality PCM.

The two-channel Reavon DAC has better specifications, so I thought 2-channel DSD might be down converted to a higher resolution PCM but no, still just CD quality.  No review that I have read mentions this, but to me the poor sound quality was almost instantly apparent.

My Marantz AV8802 on the other hand has 8 AKM 2-channel DACs similar in specification to the ESS Sabres used by Oppo.  They process DSD natively. Using the Reavon as a pure transport works a treat when the Marantz is doing the analog conversion.

By the way, changing the output formats on the Reavon is painful: the machine has to be restarted.  Now I just leave it on HDMI output, no problems.

I don’t know how good the Reavon UBR-X110 is - the power supplies are not as advanced as the X200 for a start.  The addition of a 3-mm thick steel baseplate makes both machines feel like quality though!

There are other derivatives now on the market including Magnetar which use the same Mediatek System on a Chip (SOC).  I believe Cambridge Audio has one as well.  Pioneer seem still active, as is Panasonic but pride stops them offering rival Sony’s SACD format!  There was also a Chinese-brand but I have forgotten its name.

I have a couple of very cheap Sony UDP transports, but I have not done a direct comparison.  I suspect they are just as good, sonically.

Does I2S support multi-channel DSD?  Until recently I had never heard of I2S which dates back to 1957.

My final thought is that the value-for-money offered by big manufacturers like Sony and Denon/Marantz far exceeds what niche manufacturers can offer, unless they piggback on others R&D, such as the Mediatek SOC.

Boy am I every glad I stumbled across this thread. A lot of knowledgeable members on the very subject I am curious about. 

Currently own both an Oppo BDP-95 and a UDP-205. I love them both but I do wonder how long they are for this world. Right now the 205 is serving as both my Blu-Ray player and my CD/SACD transport. I have had difficulties getting the UDP to talk to my DAC, a Ferrum Wandla, with an eBay HDMI/I2S converter in between (similar kind as @big_greg mentioned) but that is very much a WIP due to an outstanding DAC support issue. So I can’t yet confirm what @mahler123 has reported - that the UPD-205 is definitely sending true DSD info over the HDMI out. (Going PCM via coax to my DAC, np.)

On the future proofing side I am looking at getting a backup SACD/CD transport in the event Oppo will no longer support my spinners. Based on the above I’m on the fence as per the Onix Zenith that @hifipassion has or the Reavon X110 that @richardbrand mentioned. Prima facie it would look simple - the Reavon - given that I plan to play all kinds of discs. It’s also half the price. But two considerations remain...

1) How long will the Reavon company be around to support said product (Shanling I do not believe is going anywhere any time soon - they big.)?
2) So do I purchase the Onix and just find a cheap 4K spinner down the road and own two types of transports?

Now if I had to distill down my shotgun post down to an ask I guess it comes down to which of these two will be the better SACD/CD transport for DSD over I2S and info on this is not easily found out there. This is where I would welcome some input from the thread (And no I am not going to fight 199 other people to buy one of Paul’s $8500 swan song signature machines.)

Look forward to what others have to say here. Hope it’s not a silly ask. Thx in advance.

@mahler123 I don’t know why my feelings would be bruised. I’m not here for a debate. I’m just trying to understand how to get the best out of SACDs. Maybe you are getting native DSD over HDMI. Or maybe it’s DOP, but still sounds sublime. Maybe it doesn’t really matter! Peace, pal!

Here’s a question: Does anyone have a DAC that indicates a difference between DSD native and DOP? Does the Bryston DAC3? Again, maybe it doesn’t really matter, but I’m curious. 

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

  

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).

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
"An alternative to burning DSD files onto disks for eventual playback is to transfer the (non-encrypted) files from a computer to audio hardware over a digital link such as USB. The USB audio 2.0 specification defined several formats for the more common PCM approach to digital audio, but did not define a format for DSD.

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
"The definition of native DSD playback is somewhat a matter of philosophy. Generally speaking, it avoids the conversion of DSD data into multibit PCM anywhere along the reproduction chain. Many commercially available DACs now support 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."

"@faustuss 

@mahler123 I’m sure it can decode DSD internally and output it through the analog outs but it can’t output it natively.

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."

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.

 

 

 

@faustuss 

@mahler123 I'm sure it can decode DSD internally and output it through the analog outs but it can't output it natively.

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.

@dinov 

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

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

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. 

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.

There's also the Playback Designs MPT-8 Dream Transport. The perfect name for something that starts at €23,990. 

All the best,
Nonoise

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.

I have the Luxman - D-07X SACD Player . I use it as my DAC as well at it sounds amazing

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 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.

Look in the mirror 

@mahler123 Just because you want to believe something doesn't make it so!

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.

https://www.oppodigital.com/blu-ray-udp-205/

 

scroll to specifications-output

My Oppo outputs DSD over HDMI to my Bryston DAC 3 which does the decoding.  For the record I have a Sony ES SACD player that also outputs DSD over HDMI into the same DAC.  Not sure what you are reading there.  Readon and Magnetar do the same thing, In my understanding.

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.  

@richardbrand, totally agree with using I2S with HDMI. I2S is really LVDS with so many different pinouts, far better to use an RJ45 instead of the crappy and temperamental HDMI connector, let alone the cable properties with so many cores and cross talk. 

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.

The ONIX will be shown at AXPONA this weekend by the us distributor. I believe DSD over I2s

@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 

@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 

The Reavon 110 and 200 universal disk players can absolutely output native DSD, over one or both of their HDMI outputs