SACD Players

Thank you for responding. I will go over to PS Audio forum and post this.  

Esoteric is out of my budget :)

Shanling won't send the DSD layer to the DAC

Thank you for all the feedback, ideas and suggestions. I will stick with the McIntosh ecosystem and go with a preowned MCT500. It's the quickest and easiest was for me to extract raw DSD layer from SACD to my Amp. I plan on keeping my MA5300 and in the future even upgrading to another McIntosh integrated amp.

Thank you everyone for your feedback and advice. Since I already own and love the MA5300 integrated amp, I have opted to stay within the Mcintosh ecosystem.  I ended up purchasing a preowned MCT500. This is the easiest and the most straight forward way for me to send raw DSD layer from SACD using the DIN cable.

I should be receiving it over the weekend and report back. 

@curiousjim 

Agreed and It's the same with MCT500 transport. They key here is that both the transport and DAC needs to be from the same manufacturer. 

@richardbrand 

I am with you. I also have a Sony Blue-ray player connected to my home theater system that supports DSD multilayer. With the HDMI out from the Blue-ray player I am able to enjoy multichannel music. However, my home theater system fairly basic and is not my reference audio system. 

@richardbrand 

:) It's all good. My surround system is a very basic Dolby Atmos Yamaha receiver. Thank you for the suggestions. I will definitely check them out. 

@upstateaudiophile 

I am really happy to know, I am also glad that I went with the MCT500. It simplifies things with my setup and leaves some extra money on my account. I am super excited to hook it up and spend some time with it over the weekend. 

@mahler123 

Hi,

The proprietary connection is called MCT. The McIntosh MCT500 CD/SACD player comes with the DIN cable which you plug into the MCT port on both ends. 

It looks something like this:

https://mww.serial-cable.com/din-cable/8-pin-din-cable/8-pin-mini-din-plug-to-8-pin-mini-din-plug.html

@wturkey 

Hi.. I received MCT500 yesterday and I spent some time listening to my old CD's and newly acquired SACDs and all I can cay is that I am beyond impressed. Even the old CDS sound so much better than FLAC and Streaming. The integration between the MCT500 and MA5300 was as simple as it gets with the DIN cable. I am super happy with my purchase and I can truly say that I have never heard my CDs sound this good. 

I also wanted to reiterate one point here. There are so many great CD/SACD players in the market, however my use case was simply sending the raw DSD layer from SACD to my Amp and not PCM (to get the best possible sound). PS Audio SACD transport and a PS Audio DAC via I2S connection or McIntosh SACD transport and McIntosh DAC via MCT/DIN connection are the only way to accomplish this.

I was able to accomplish this with the least amount of $ spent since I already own a McIntosh MA5300 with DA1 module. Oh, and the MCT500 I purchased was preowned and it looks virtually new.