The whole SACD thing was developed mostly for 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound with HDMI equipped multi channel AV receivers. The designers never even thought about 2 channel HiFi....The audiophile community realized that there was huge potential for more "bits" than a standard Red Book CD....But unless you are willing to spend thousands, there is no way to really appreciate SACD....An Oppo CD player with an OppoMod board installed to extract i2s data and then a $5000 DAC to use the i2s stream......Easy Peasy!
SACD is VERY confusing
Seems there are thousands of folks out there buying and playing SACDs using coax or optical from a player to a DAC and thinking they are listening to the SACD layer and they are listening to the CD layer. I was assured the Denon DVD-2910,3910,5910 would play SACD through the digital outputs but on the back of the units they clearly state PMC from the digital outputs.....Seems the ONLY way to truly play a SACD is HDMI to HDMI.....Even stripping the audio off the HDMI signal returns it to PMC ..... And everything I've read states the analog outputs, stereo and 5.1 are PMC...
Oppo’s User Manual states: “Due to copyright restrictions, SACD audio cannot be sent through the coaxial or optical digital audio output. To listen to SACDs, please use the HDMI or analog audio connections.) IOW, with a DAC that is connected via coax or TOSLINK, you might be limited to playing the CD layer of a hybrid SACD.
I can't believe they would allow DSD files through analog outputs....Wouldn't this violate the whole copyright issue?
.....There are thousands of people out there buying SACDs and listening to them on their OPPO, Marantz or Denon ..."SACD" players, either through digital or analog and they are listening to the CD/44.1 layer.....This is nuts!
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I have the following device that takes the SACD DSD signal from my cheap OPPO player and decodes the DSD. GeerFab Audio D.BOB Digital BreakOut Box – Upscale Audio This DSD is them sent to my Schitt Yggi+ Less is More DAC via SPDIF. I think that part is DSD over PCM (or something similar). The sound is pretty spectacular. My frame of reference for SACD is my recently departed modded Sony SCD-1. In some ways the D.BOB setup is better (more detail) and in others the SCD-1 was better. I was considering adding a SACD/CD option for a DAC I am about to get ($6k option) but after the D.BOB I have no interest.
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+1 @daveyf and @tony1954 It’s really like a Betamax redux. What’s the definition of insanity? |
@OP The point of the restriction was to stop people making bit perfect copies of recordings from SACD that could subsequently be pirated. We have to remember that SACD was around at the time that the controversy over illegal file sharing was at its height and before legal streaming was in existence. |
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