Sacd

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It's an interesting format however one which the cost of new media has rather killed it for all but the most dedicated.
you could seek out a second hand Marantz SACD player or even an old Sony Bluray player with SACD comparability should you wish to dip your toe in the water....
 

aversaurus

Well-known member
The idea was to give it a go down the second hand market not the first time I've had this idea with SACD .
But really the if I can't tell the difference or if I can it's in the remix of the disc with the cost of the player and the cost of the discs what's the point.
Was a fun idea while it lasted
 

nads

Well-known member
The idea was to give it a go down the second hand market not the first time I've had this idea with SACD .
But really the if I can't tell the difference or if I can it's in the remix of the disc with the cost of the player and the cost of the discs what's the point.
Was a fun idea while it lasted
Often you might not even know a disc is SACD untill you put it in the player. I have many I did not know they were. A bit like the HDCDs I have.
 
But when i put it in the SACD player and it said it was. But the box has no mention of it and I bought it new as a CD.
Lucky you the American issue of this disc came as a CD and Hydrid SACD, which was basically a CD remastered for 5.1 channel sound.
Discs like this are rare, not all are recorded to SACD spec and not all SACD discs are 5.1 channel.
Most of mine are true stereo SACD as they seem to be mastered for playback on a proper SACD player and not a home cinema Universal player.
And take no notice of @Gray , he clearly has no taste. :)
 
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nads

Well-known member
Lucky you the American issue of this disc came as a CD and Hydrid SACD, which was basically a CD remastered for 5.1 channel sound.
Discs like this are rare, not all are recorded to SACD spec and not all SACD discs are 5.1 channel.
Most of mine are true stereo SACD as they seem to be mastered for playback on a proper SACD player and not a home cinema Universal player.
And take no notice of @Gray , he clearly has no taste. :)
And then there are these
 

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And then there are these
I have no idea what a DMCD disc is it why it should display on whatever player that is as SACD.
Without any reference as to resolution of how that data is stored on disc it is doubtful if these are true SACD discs.
As they are all Depeche Mode I would suggest they are all CDs remastered for multichannel which is why t he player shows them as SACD
On reflection DMCD simply stands for Depeche Mode CD, I will wager that are not 1bit DSD discs...
 

Tinman1952

Well-known member
No. The copy protection on SACD was designed specifically to prevent this. You can only output via the analogue connections or via HDMI (and that's a whole can of worms.)
I've posted this before on another thread but some might still be interested...
I use one of these little HDMI to I2S/SPDIF converter boxes to take the HDMI output from my Sony player and send it via I2S (over HDMI) to my SMSL M400 DAC. It gives me two channel DSD from an SACD disc. 🙂 Works fine....


Unfortunately there is no 'standard' pin layout for I2S over HDMI but the SMSL DAC had a couple of pin options available and the second one I tried worked. Might not be the case with other DACs...
I thought it was worth a try...
 
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I've posted this before on another thread but some might still be interested...
I use one of these little HDMI to I2S/SPDIF converter boxes to take the HDMI output from my Sony player and send it via I2S (over HDMI) to my SMSL M400 DAC. It gives me two channel DSD from an SACD disc. 🙂 Works fine....


Unfortunately there is no 'standard' pin layout for I2S over HDMI but the SMSL DAC had a couple of pin options available and the second one I tried worked. Might not be the case with other DACs...
I thought it was worth a try...
a good work around but note that 'proper' SACD players do not have HDMI ports so might mean reinvesting in some new equipment to do this.
 

Tinman1952

Well-known member
😛 Not that he cares what I think, but I actually don't mind Depeche Mode, they formed just up the road from me in 1980.
Could be the best thing that's come out of Basildon 😆
I remember buying 'Speak and Spell' on vinyl in 1982 with the excellent Vince Clarke....🙂 before Yazoo and Erasure. Quite an influential LP I think......
 
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manicm

Well-known member
The I2S connection I mentioned is,in effect a glorified HDMI or so I am led to believe

In the bigger picture it's more than just a glorified HDMI port, as it sends out a pure DSD stream, meant to be received by a similar component which preserves the stream until the analogue output.

And I maintained the majority of universal Blu Ray players do internal PCM conversion.
 
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Tinman1952

Well-known member
In the bigger picture it's more than just a glorified HDMI port, as it sends out a pure DSD stream, meant to be received by a similar component which preserves the stream until the analogue output.

And I maintained the majority of universal Blu Ray players do internal PCM conversion.
Let's be clear though. DOP does not 'convert' the DSD stream....it merely puts it in a PCM 'wrapper' so the receiving DAC thinks it is PCM. The internal DSD stream is still DSD......
 

manicm

Well-known member
Let's be clear though. DOP does not 'convert' the DSD stream....it merely puts it in a PCM 'wrapper' so the receiving DAC thinks it is PCM. The internal DSD stream is still DSD......

DoP is mostly used over USB, in universal players DSD is almost always converted to PCM, unless it can output the DSD stream from HDMI, which was the case of the earliest universal premium or high end players.
 

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