podknocker
Well-known member
I agree better PSUs and caps etc. will give you a better sound. A £249 Sony will give you a cracking reproduction, but will a £2499 SACD player be 10 times better?
Al ears
Well-known member
Nothing in HiFi works that way....., Unfortunately.
Aim for somewhere in the middle and you'll have the best of both worlds which is why the Oppo universal disc players did so well
podknocker
Well-known member
I loved Oppo players and remember seeing the 'modded' BDP105D versions, with full warranty, costing £4000 or more. Madness. I have an Oppo phone and I love it.
Revolutions
Well-known member
I've been looking into this, wondering if I could find an old SACD player for a great price to play around with the format at home. Only problem is Blue Ray players require HDMI output & I don't have an AV receiver. That limits me to SACD players only.
Guess the easier option here is get a WiiM pro plus & download DSD files. Didn't take me long, hanging around on here before I've started getting more serious about streaming & downloads... I thought I was fine with Spotify
Guess the easier option here is get a WiiM pro plus & download DSD files. Didn't take me long, hanging around on here before I've started getting more serious about streaming & downloads... I thought I was fine with Spotify
podknocker
Well-known member
SACD won't have the same interest and resurgence as CD has done recently. Getting people to buy the players and the discs, costing at least twice as much as the same music on CD, is going to be a tall order. Blu Ray Audio discs are rare, with only a few random albums in this format. DVD Audio has disappeared and I think SACD has 10 years left, with most titles being classical music, which I listen to, but I won't buy music on optical formats now. I do wish I'd kept my Sony 4k Blu Ray player, just in case I buy a TV at some point. I have 250 CDs, a few DVDs and very few Blu Rays and just 2 titles in 4k Blu Ray. I think streaming is here to stay and will replace most, if not all physical optical media. Saying this, downloading DSD files might become expensive and replacing all the music I own on CD, would be very expensive. Most of the music I listen to on Spotify, or online radio, isn't available on CD anyway. Streaming is the cheapest option, but I want higher quality music from Spotify, but I don't think the HIFI tier is going to happen. I'm surprised Sony haven't dipped their toes into the music streaming and distribution sector. I would love to stream studio master quality files, in DSD format through my Audiolab Omnia. I checked the spec and it's amazing really, with support for any format and at incredible bit depth and sampling rates. I doubt I will ever use my Omnia's true potential. Spotify has a great UI and choice. I tried Amazon and didn't like it, although high quality files. I'm bored with the MQA debacle and it's a lossy format and with the smoke and mirrors we had a while back, I don't think anyone cares now. A solid and reliable streaming service, at top quality would be amazing and I would pay £19.99 a month. It's a lot cheaper than downloading files and buying discs etc.
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record_spot
Well-known member
I had to check this again before replying as I wasn't sure if this was an old post from ten years or more ago!
DSD will remain a niche format - the best I've heard from a physical player, was an Arcam CD37, which absolutely shone with DSD. Unfortunately, it sucked big time with redbook. As a format, it's great if the accompanying recording and mastering are good.
SACD/DSD really had its best chances in the last 25 years. Players aplenty either in two channel or later home cinema, but the public didn't buy into it. Not surprisingly really. I went to a Sony demo in 1998 in one of Edinburgh's hotels, and it was pretty good. I've been using SACD/DSD pretty much since the mid-2000s when I picked up a Samsung DVD player that had the capability, mainly for the then Genesis SACD boxsets (which turned out to be dire, so I pity the mugs handing over £300 for a set I paid £60 for on release). That later swapped out for Marantz SA7001-KI which was a terrific player. These days, it's a Cambridge 752BD universal player and a DACMagic 200M for my SACD / DSD needs. I have several SACDs and a few downloads, but really not enough to justify big investment.
The critical thing out of all this is that format counts for nothing if the mastering isn't up to it. The Genesis sets proved that overnight. As for DSD itself, it'll stay as-is with a small band of users, while the mass market swallows up Spotify and the other streaming services. The numbers aren't even close.
DSD will remain a niche format - the best I've heard from a physical player, was an Arcam CD37, which absolutely shone with DSD. Unfortunately, it sucked big time with redbook. As a format, it's great if the accompanying recording and mastering are good.
SACD/DSD really had its best chances in the last 25 years. Players aplenty either in two channel or later home cinema, but the public didn't buy into it. Not surprisingly really. I went to a Sony demo in 1998 in one of Edinburgh's hotels, and it was pretty good. I've been using SACD/DSD pretty much since the mid-2000s when I picked up a Samsung DVD player that had the capability, mainly for the then Genesis SACD boxsets (which turned out to be dire, so I pity the mugs handing over £300 for a set I paid £60 for on release). That later swapped out for Marantz SA7001-KI which was a terrific player. These days, it's a Cambridge 752BD universal player and a DACMagic 200M for my SACD / DSD needs. I have several SACDs and a few downloads, but really not enough to justify big investment.
The critical thing out of all this is that format counts for nothing if the mastering isn't up to it. The Genesis sets proved that overnight. As for DSD itself, it'll stay as-is with a small band of users, while the mass market swallows up Spotify and the other streaming services. The numbers aren't even close.
record_spot
Well-known member
Oppo, the universal player manufacturer and Oppo the phone company are/were two different companies, albeit within the same wider group.
The modded Oppo players were done by companies like Modwright, who slapped a fat premium on for their efforts. The modded versions invalidated Oppo's warranty from memory and I'm not sure if the modding companies would touch the Oppo circuitry or hardware - so a bit of a problem if you ran into a problem.
I'm not massively convinced they were worth that amount, while our American cousins went doolally over the multichannel analogue outputs that let them remain within the analogue domain (I think they viewed HDMI with the same distaste as the fabled Luddites did to the new technology of their day). These days, you see Oppo 205s for five times, or more, their asking price. Again, not so sure a 205 is worth £8,000!
record_spot
Well-known member
I've been looking into this, wondering if I could find an old SACD player for a great price to play around with the format at home. Only problem is Blue Ray players require HDMI output & I don't have an AV receiver. That limits me to SACD players only.
Guess the easier option here is get a WiiM pro plus & download DSD files. Didn't take me long, hanging around on here before I've started getting more serious about streaming & downloads... I thought I was fine with Spotify
You can still get older SACD players, though you do run the usual risks with older gear. Buy from a trustworthy source for a degree of peace of mind. Companies like Arcam, Cambridge, Denon, NAD, Pioneer, Marantz, etc, all made them and you'll see a good few on Ebay right now.
I think anything Genesis is dire... I can feel it in the air tonight... Oh lord.. I can.. 😂
jjbomber
Well-known member
Dom
Well-known member
My previous DAC the Roksan K3 could decode DSD because of the Texas Instruments DSD1794A DAC chip, however actually using the format with a computer proved challenging.
I did setup a DSD64 from PCM using JRiver software but my experience was a bit underwhelming. It seemed to cut the volume a bit and generally felt a bit cold.
Interesting format but I don't know if its any better than regular PCM from my experience which was louder.
I did setup a DSD64 from PCM using JRiver software but my experience was a bit underwhelming. It seemed to cut the volume a bit and generally felt a bit cold.
Interesting format but I don't know if its any better than regular PCM from my experience which was louder.
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daveh75
Well-known member
JDL
Well-known member
I'm sorry to say I had to Google it to find out what DSD is. I haven't got a computer and I never even worked out how to use an MP3 Player. I'm stuck on CDs with my relatively technophobic characteristics as a person.
I can fix machines, cars, do simple wiring fixes, do most building tasks properly but when it comes to all the latest ways of listening to music I'm completely stumped. With a CD player I know how to press the "Open" button, put in a CD and press "Play".
abacus
Well-known member
DSD is also what SACDs use. (Which were the first to use it for the consumer market)
Bill
Bill
I had a similar experience switching from Topping E50 to Eversolo Z8.
The Topping ASIO drivers allowed me to play on my PC pure DSD up to 1bit x 22 million oversampling (DSD512) not DOP (DSD converted to PCM).
Using the EverSolo. I was restricted to the XMOS drivers, this only allowed DOP upto 11 million oversampling. The first thing I noticed the sound had dulled and the gain was much reduced and it was necessary to turn up the volume.
Couple months later, Eversolo introduced its proprietary DSD software, which worked better than the XMOS but it was still restricted to DOP, highest oversampling was DSD256 but the sound greatly improved.
The PC isn't the perfect platform that is why I am using the JF MX Pro digital transport.
I hear pure DSD512, less noise interference and sound quality is way beyond anything the PC can muster. 😊
Merry Christmas everyone! 🎄🎄🎄🎄
twinkletoes
Well-known member
Most dac’s including mine are more than capable of playing most bit rates and sample rates far beyond what’s available, in all honesty if you’re buying a dac today and it lasts the long haul it should last to the day I’m/we’re in the ground in regards to playing formats.
In answer to your basic question, no I don’t listen to the format, pretty much dead on arrival for me 20 years back nothing on it interested me then and the same now.
Spacial audio is probably where it’s at now and with the likes of Apple pushing the format it will probably succeed, though I haven’t heard much about it lately so what do I know
Al ears
Well-known member
I very much doubt any new format is likely to take off these days.
DSD downloads and SACD discs are still very much around if you want to pay for these things.
record_spot
Well-known member
And you were doing so well until you quoted a Phil Collins lyric to one of his solo songs...
In fairness, my post wasn't asking what anyone thought of Genesis' music, which is neither here nor there really, but a comment on the sound quality of the remixed sets and their SACD/DSD performance. Water a long way under the bridge now.
nopiano
Well-known member
Just curious, but it doesn’t seem to have analogue outputs. So how does it play SACDs, because I thought they had in effect a copy protection, so you cannot ‘output’ a SACD digital stream. 🫤
Sony UBPX800M2 (Black)
Shop for Sony UBPX800M2 Black UHD Blu-ray Player with Richer Sounds for expert advice and lowest prices guaranteedwww.richersounds.com
This is all you need. It will play any audio and video format and codec, on any disc. It will handle anything you can think of.
By contrast my old Oppo 95 does output SACD as an analogue signal, just like a regular hifi CD player.
Dom
Well-known member
twinkletoes
Well-known member
Exactly my point so why the need for 1billion hz sample rate dacs that include dsd for decoding a fomate with a very niche music and applications of which is most dubiously recorded ie not really dsd at all. Sacd is an odd duck, mini disc was a way more useful format but you don’t see that kicking around 20 years on.
It’s like dac manufacturers are waiting for something, something that could come in the future. Seems like a lot of wasted manufacturing time to me. But that’s my little conspiracy theory for the year.
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