The new Sony UHP-H1 plays everything - Blu-ray, SACD, CD, even DVD-Audio

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by back2vinyl, May 20, 2016.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Kyhl

    Kyhl On break

    Location:
    Savage
    Why do you want to convert the DSD to PCM just to get it to your preamp? Are you using room correction?
     
  2. Tartifless

    Tartifless Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    My amp has only 2 RCA inputs already taken by the tuner and turntable, so the only remaining inputs i have are a coax and an optical...
     
  3. RocketUSA

    RocketUSA Forum Resident

    Thanks very much. I guess my major question is will it default to SACD when I'm playing a dual layer disc, without having to go through an on-screen setup menu? I wouldn't be connecting this to a TV via HDMI, so would be flying blind, so to speak.

    Does anyone know if Sony has a smartphone app that can control/perform setup on the UHP-H1?
     
  4. Tartifless

    Tartifless Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    It will read by default the multichannel sacd layer.
    Don't know it Sony has an app.
     
  5. wwaldmanfan

    wwaldmanfan Born In The 50's

    Location:
    NJ

    S/PDIF seems to be the bottleneck. I don't know how a HDMI de-embedder works.
    The SACD layer plays through HDMI as 2.6MHz DSD or 24/176.4 PCM, although there aren't many DAC's that support DSD-over-HDMI.
    My NAD M51 doesn't do DSD, but it has HDMI connectivity. It plays SACD's as 24/176.4 PCM.
     
  6. back2vinyl

    back2vinyl Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    London, UK

    That's a good idea for a test but it's not possible that the UHP-H1 is sending the redbook layer of the SACD to the S/PDIF output, for two reasons. The most obvious is that the S/PDIF output is 24/48 which is beyond redbook specification. The second reason is because I don't believe the UHP-H1 or any other player is capable of reading and streaming two different layers in different formats at the same time. Therefore, the 24/48 output that wwaldmanfan was getting through the S/PDIF output can only be a downsampled stream from the SACD layer.

    That leaves the mystery of why you hear no sound when you hook up a TV to the UHP-H1. My guess would be that it's an incorrect setting for SACD playback in the menu. The instructions are not very clear but I suggest you check the SACD settings in the audio menu against the instructions given in the manual. I will try it myself tomorrow and let you know what happens.
     
  7. wwaldmanfan

    wwaldmanfan Born In The 50's

    Location:
    NJ
    I didn't say that the SACD was playing through the S/PDIF output at 24/48. What I said was the maximum you can get out of the S/PDIF from any source is 24/48.
    When I played my Alison Krauss "New Favorite" dual-layer SACD today, this is what happened. That particular SACD has two very different masterings. The DSD mastering has good SQ with an extended dynamic range. The redbook layer is compressed and brickwalled, with a lot of distorted sibilance on her vocals. I am very familiar with this recording, and I can tell the difference easily. When I played the SACD, the TV monitor said 2.6Mhz DSD (source), the display on my DAC on HDMI said 176.4 (PCM), and the SQ was good. When I switched the external DAC to coax on the fly, the DAC display read 44.1, and the sound quality took a nosedive. So, either the unit is processing both layers at once, or the SACD layer is being downsampled 4x all the way to 44.1, not 48kHz. You only get 24/48 through S/PDIF when you play a regular DVD (native audio), or DVD-A (24/96).
     
  8. BIGGER Dave

    BIGGER Dave Forum Resident

  9. PNeski@aol.com

    [email protected] Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    it makes sense to buy a region free BR player UK titles are often cheaper even with post ,it will pay for itself
     
  10. BMWCCA

    BMWCCA Forum Resident

    Location:
    Central Virginia
    Anyone tried an iPod through the USB port yet? :-popcorn:
     
  11. bluemooze

    bluemooze Senior Member

    Location:
    Frenchtown NJ USA
    :edthumbs:
     
  12. back2vinyl

    back2vinyl Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    London, UK

    Sorry, I misinterpreted what you said. But it doesn't really change anything. As I said, I don't have technical knowledge but it's just common sense that a player can't process two different layers in different formats through the same processor at the same time. So the answer is simply that the UHP-H1 is downsampling the 176.4 kHz PCM stream from the SACD layer to 44.1 kHz for the S/PDIF output, rather than 48 kHz.

    I confirmed this using the following simple test. I inserted a single-layer SACD - that is, an SACD disc that does not have any CD layer. I played it through my NAD M32 direct digital amp, connected to the UHP-H1 by HDMI and also by optical S/PDIF. (The UHP-H1 was also hooked up to the TV display by HDMI.) The amp played the SACD without any problems using either input. When set to the HDMI input, the amp display showed that it was receiving an input of 176.4 kHz. When set to the Optical S/PDIF input, the amp display showed that it was receiving an input of 44.1 kHz.

    To sum up for Tartfless who raised this question in the first place - yes, the UHP-H1 DOES play the SACD layer of SACD discs through the S/PDIF outputs but it downsamples the 176.4 kHz stream to 44.1 kHz, for copy protection reasons. I don't know what bit depth it employs - if you really need to know, I'd have to think if there was a way to test for that.

    If you want higher resolution, you can use an HDMI de-embedder which will give you 176.4 kHz at 24 bits if the rest of your optical chain can take it. But some optical inputs will only take up to 96 kHz - coax S/PDIF inputs are more reliable in this respect.
     
    wwaldmanfan likes this.
  13. wwaldmanfan

    wwaldmanfan Born In The 50's

    Location:
    NJ
    Thank you for this nformation. That makes perfect sense. What I glean from this is that the DAC in the Sony is not that good, because the 4x downsampled file played through S/PDIF coax sounds noticeably worse than the full resolution version, in my opinion.
    I can't usually discern this sort of thing on my equipment. I was fooled, because, usually, if the DSD version and the redbook vesion are from the same mastering, I don't readily hear the difference. On that particular disc, the masterings are different, so my assumptions were wrong.

    Sounds like the HDMI converter is the way to go here.
     
    back2vinyl likes this.
  14. back2vinyl

    back2vinyl Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    London, UK
    I was about to ask how you could plug an HDMI into a DAC and then I realised you had a NAD 51 Direct Digital DAC. I have a NAD M32 Direct Digital amp so I guess we're among the very few people in the world who can plug an HDMI cable into a DAC or a stereo hi-fi amp!

    I can't say I noticed a difference between the 44.1 kHz and the 176.4 kHz stream, not that I listened for more than a moment or two. My intuition tells me there'd be no difference in the tonal quality since all you're doing is resampling, not putting the signal through the DAC or any other processing. But I didn't really listen and you did so I'm happy just to leave it at that.
     
  15. RocketUSA

    RocketUSA Forum Resident

    On hybrid SACDs, does the UHP-H1 play the SACD layer by default?
     
  16. dbsea

    dbsea Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brooklyn, NY
    Yes, that is the default setting for this player.
     
    RocketUSA likes this.
  17. darkmass

    darkmass Forum Resident

    Of course some HDMI de-embedders also offer coax output. :)

    Naturally that means the amp used by @Tartifless would have to also offer coax input (and Tartifless said the amp had coax in). Tartifless, should you be reading this, an HDMI de-embedder with coax out (as in: here) could be exactly the right solution for you.


    Back to you, back2vinyl: in the bit depth test, if the S/PDIF output can be recorded as 44.1k/24, playing the recording back while using the Bitter plug-in could reveal the active bit depth.
     
  18. Tartifless

    Tartifless Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    Hello, i received a german-made hdmi de-embedder today with coax output that can manage up to 24/192.

    I will try and plug it today between the hdmi 2 output and the coax input of my cambridge cxa60 and listen to the result.

    I tried a bit further yesterday with my tv optical out but could not get any sound to my amp, whatever the settings in the uhp h1 ... It works for cd, bluray, netflix, etc... But for sacd i could only get sound through the rca outputs of my tv (i changed the settings and set default to stereo layer, the lowest frequency of output and of course pcm format, still did not work...).
    This is particularly strange as 24/48 files played from my nuc work perfectly through hdmi / optical to the very same amp...

    Anyway, i'd rather go for de-embedder / coax as i already have the 2 optical cables reserved for my squeezebox and the tv...
     
    darkmass likes this.
  19. sparkydog

    sparkydog Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kentucky
    This Sony is a pretty darned nice player! I'm using an HDMI to my TV and an optical out to an old Yamaha RX-V995 5.1 Receiver and all seems fine surround-wise (DTS-CD, DVD-Video, BD movies and audio, SACD) except I get an error message and no sound on the receiver when trying the Chicago V DVD-Audio. Luckily I still have 2 other players to handle such events. :p
     
  20. darkmass

    darkmass Forum Resident

    If you run into problems using the de-embedder, I recommend reading through this thread: Ripping SACDs.

    Pay particular attention to back2vinyl's posts and matters relating to his posts. Back2vinyl may have run into some unforeseen complications, but he got de-embedding to work...and at this point he could well be the SH forum member with the most HDMI de-embedder experience.
     
    Sevoflurane likes this.
  21. back2vinyl

    back2vinyl Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    London, UK
    Darkmass, good to hear from you again! I did wonder about the Bitter plugin for checking bit depth, and I do have it, but my memory is that if the signal goes through any kind of processing, then Bitter can only show the reprocessed bit depth and not the original bit depth. So I would have to be sure the signal was completely clean.

    No matter - Tartifless has a de-embedder now. That was good advice you gave him.

    Tartifless, there is one problem you could run up against with the de-embedder. The HDMI output of the de-embedder needs to carry out a handshake with the HDMI input of the NAD DAC, otherwise it does not know what sample rate or bit depth to send. If we're lucky, your NAD DAC will be capable of sending this handshake and will tell the de-embedder it wants 176 kHz at 24 bits. (You may have to set the sample rate on the DAC first.) However, if the NAD is not capable of sending an HDMI-compliant handshake, the de-embedder will not know what sample rate is required and will almost certainly default to 44 kHz and 16 bits. However, without knowing the make and model of your de-embedder, I don't know if this will be a problem or not. There are ways around this if it is.

    It's strange that you can't get the downsampled signal from the optical out but I guess it doesn't matter now you have de-embedder. I'll try to replicate that next time I use the UHP-H1.
     
  22. Tartifless

    Tartifless Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    Hello, my de-embedder works fine, i don't use the hdmi output but the coax output straight to my amp (cambridge not nad).

    I hooked it up to the audio hdmi output of the uhp h1.
     
    darkmass likes this.
  23. BMWCCA

    BMWCCA Forum Resident

    Location:
    Central Virginia
    Nobody with an iPod to try? Just curious.
    My Classic V7 with all lossless files is very handy going room-to-room.
     
  24. darkmass

    darkmass Forum Resident

    I'm around, though mostly cruising at periscope depth. If I see a post of yours I always read it, and if there is a thread you've initiated, I tend to keep looking in to see how it's coming along.

    You are correct about the complication of using the Bitter plugin to gain absolute insight where there could be multiple elements making up the signal chain. Bitter is not without merit, and there are questions it may answer better than many other tools. But like any tool Bitter is best used thoughtfully.

    And you are correct that all that is entirely moot now that Tartifless has a functioning HDMI/coax de-embedder.
     
    back2vinyl likes this.
  25. raq0915

    raq0915 Forum Resident

    Location:
    \New Jersey
    Im thinking about buying this. I cant make up my mind.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine