DSD........still unclear how you can play and stream this

Well you can just put a CD or SACD in your player and press play, as that is the intended purpose for the player in the first place.

Your player will either convert the signal to analog, which would be directed to your RCA analog inputs, or it would stream DSD as a digital data stream, directly to your receiver or processor that has an internal DAC, that would convert the digital DSD stream to analog.

It is not a mystery, you do need the correct equipment that is purposed to handle a DSD stream and that can convert it to analog, at some point along the way.

Set everything up correctly and you can plop the disk into the player and press "play".

 

It is the selection process that is different. With a large collection, things can get forgotten and/or misplaced. Browsing through my collection can be done in many ways so that finding one thing often turns up items I had forgotten and the granularity of the search can be at many levels. Also, I am not a reliable housekeeper and physical discs are not always returned to the right place or, even, the right box!

 

Hello,

how do you rip a SACD to iso?
Can you also extract DSD into PCM?
I would like to buy some surround sound albums which are released on SACD, but I don't want to buy a new AV receiver.
My current AV/R can play analog M/C inputs, but without room correction only. There are a number of new players that don't have M/C outputs anymore.?
Or, it can take dts or Dolby Digital via S/PDIF, decode the suround music and play with room correction, which is perfect for me. But there are no
players which convert DSD suround into dts or Dolby Digital.?
So, if I'd rip the SACD into PCM, I ould convert it into dts, and that's it.

 

I rip all my sacds to dsd and save on my NAS, playback through my Sonica DAC using my iPhone as a controller. No need for physical media and all done over wireless. Not sure what player folks were listening to who think 16 bit and dsd sound the same but guessing it was ten year old technology at best. I think DSD sounds fantastic...haters gonna hate. Oh and you can torrent most sacd isos too...

 

Tim, SACD isn't the only game left in town anymore as far as stereo DSD is concerned. You can purchase DSD encoded tracks or albums from download sites so the question asked by the OP is legitimate since these files can't be sent to an AVR through the HDMI output of a SACD player.

What can be done with these files is:

1. Burn them into a DVD and use a DSD player such as the TEAC I mentioned previously.
2. Copy them to a USB DOK and use a player/streamer that accepts DSD files
3. Use a PC with a software that can stream DSD without conversion to a network steamer/DAC that can accept unconverted DSD files either through the USB/SPDIF or through the network or access them from storage through DNLA. I know I can do that and No 2 with my NT-503 streamer at home so it's obviously something that can be done.
4. Use a PC software such as JRiver that can pack the DSD into PCM frames (DoP) or convert it to PCM.

I never tried any of these solutions as PCM packed in FLAC is widely available and accepted by any digital player/streamer while the audio advantages of DSD are debatable. However, using JRiver would be the sensible thing to do in my case if I end up with a collection of DSD files ant that's for the same reasons mentioned previously by Kal Rubinson.

As to multi channel audio on SACD disks, well I know you can rip them with a PS/3 but that's the extent of my knowledge. I may be tempted to try the DTS solution if you manage to do it and publish an easy to follow A-Z guide. But isn't this something that was already done with the 4 channels SACD version of The Dark Side of The Moon?

 

There are much better options for ripping SACDs these days than finding one of the rare PS3 units that can handle ripping them.

SACD Ripping using an Oppo or Pioneer? Yes, it's true!

 

Everything that applies to stereo DSD/SACD discs/downloads also applies to the multichannel versions.

 

On of the attractions of ripping, for me, is the ability to back up music against disc damage / theft. While my CDs and SACDs have, so far, survived with only maybe 1-2 unexplained CD failures, I have had a couple of early DVDs rot and one Blu Ray fail, despite careful storage and light use. That, combined with the ease of being able to have all of my music on tap, justifies ripping for me. Yes, I can just put the disc in my Oppo and press play, but as I have a small hard drive attached to the same Oppo, I can pick any album within a few key presses with the remote or the Oppo app, and also press play. I also have the same music on my PC, so can do the same using either my headphones or computer speakers when I am working in my study.

Edit: the only issue I am having is that neither the Oppo BD player or Yamaha amp will play a DSD file gapless. I can play gapless DSD on my DAC / headphone amp via Foobar or Onkyo HF Player on an iPhone. For gapless on the big system I do have to reach for the SACD.

 

So, I have to have an Oppo for ripping?
That's quite sad for me.
With CDs, it's much easier.

 

Ripping SACDs is well covered elsewhere in the forum. To rip DSD from an SACD, in summary, you either need an early “fat” PS3 with the correct firmware, or one of a select range of Oppo / Pioneer BD players with a particular Mediatek chipset. The current Oppo machines (BD203/205) are NOT suitable for this purpose.

 

No doubt that CDs are way easier.

But as to using an Oppo to rip being an unhappy thing: I don't see why you would say that. Not very many years ago it was completely impossible to rip an SACD with anything less than a $20K Sonoma workstation. Then about 7 years ago it became possible to hack and a very hard to find specific model and firmware version of PS3s to rips SACDs. Then a little over a year ago there was the Oppo breakthrough which has made it far easier to obtain hardware which is compatible with ripping SACDs. So being able to do so today with a common model of Oppo was actually a huge breakthrough for people who wanted to backup their collections of SACDs.

 

Because I wanted to avoid the need to purchase yet another piece of metall and silicon to stuff it in my living room.

 

When using a program such as iso2dsd to extract the DSD from the ISO file , one can choose a single output file (say a .dff) for the entire album instead of one file (say .dsf) per track. You can also create a Cue file at the same time. Then, if using the Oppo UI directly or any other program that doesn't support gapless for DSD files, you just select the Cue file and then the starting track (or select the DSD file if no Cue file), and you get gapless playback, because it's all one file. If you make playlists that include a subset of tracks from a given SACD that also benefits from gapless playback, then do both (to separate folders). If you previously ripped from such an SACD disc and still have the ISO file, then there's no need to re-rip from the disc.

I have single dff files for both Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here (along with associated Cue file for each; also different dff file for 2 channel vs 5.1 channel, of course), as I use my Oppo unit's UI for all my file playing on my main system.

Doug

 

Excellent, thanks. I'm glad both that I am a member of this forum and that I kept a backup of the ISOs of my SACDs. I have just extracted a DFF from DSOTM and am gap free once more on Foobar, my Oppo (which I also use for my file playing) and the USB in on my Yamaha amp.

 

Hi. It is interesting, but I can't get my Oppo 103 to play dff files. DSF no problem. Any ideas? I am playing from a hard drive.

 

I’m new to DFF files myself, but one issue I encountered when trying to play some DFFs extracted from the ISOs of my SACDs was that some didn’t play /played static like noise only via the Oppo. I hadn’t realised that many SACDs are encoded with DST compression, which remains in place when you extract to DFF. DSF files do not support this compression, so when you extract to DSF it isn’t an issue.

Even though the Oppo players can decode DST compression if one is playing an actual SACD, they don’t seem able to decode it from a DFF file. If you play a DFF file in Foobar, it will show which ones are compressed with DST.

Solution: when extracting DFF files from an SACD / ISO, using ISO2DSD, check the box marked “convert DST to DSD” (or similar, can’t remember exact wording). You will end up with a much bigger file size. Having done this, my 30 or so SACDs, ripped to DFF, now play without gaps from a USB hard drive on my Oppo BD103D.

 

Perfect. Thank you. I think that what it is. Will try.

 

A better solution is to do this and also extract them as DSF. There's no good reason to use DFF.

 

I've done this and have had everything already in DSF format for a while. The specific issue I have was that DSF files as separate tracks won't play on my Oppo BD103D without gaps off a hard drive (or my Yamaha amp via a USB flash drive), whereas DFF files plus a CUE file do.

 

That is the point. DSF don't play gapless. Reason good enough to make DFF for some albums.

 

Ah. Understood. It is the major reason why, imho, the 103/5 is not a good solution for file playback.

 

The 103D is okay for file playback with PCM, though you do seem to have to select gapless each time. For my budget and purposes it is like a Swiss Army Knife in that I get SACD ripping and the ability to play pretty much every CD sized disc I possess (with the honourable exception of the one CDV single of The Big Money by Rush, which probably doesn't justify my buying a machine capable of playing Laserdiscs to be able to access the video portion).

 

And can you skip tracks as you would with an original/physical SACD playing?

 

Yes, on the Oppo. You open the CUE file and you can skip tracks just like the SACD. In most cases, the track names and numbers get properly ripped into the CUE file. My Yamaha amp, which can also play files via USB, behaves completely differently, but as its USB port won’t power my WD 2.5” HDD I am using the Oppo for music playback.

 

Which amp is that?