SACD Owners Beware

I realize that earlier this year a thread related to the future of SACD players was closed because fellow members posted inappropriately in that thread. I am begging the members who chose to participate in this thread to please remain respectful of one another. As many of you know I was an early adopter of the SACD format, own several SACD players (including a now retired due to player problems SCD-1) and have a rock/blue SACD collection of of 500 - 600 discs.

I was surprised when I learned that dCS had introduced its latest single box disc player with on CD capability instead of SACD/CD capability. In the most recent issue or HiFi+ (November 2015 Issue 129) I just read that the reason for this is that Esoteric has stopped OEM sales of SACD transport because Sony had stopped supply of the chip required to read the DSD data stream from the SACD disc. Based on what I read in HiFi+ the companies that make SACD players using the Esoteric transport have bought sufficient supplies to produce and repair existing models that they make, however, with no future supply dCS did not want to introduce new models requiring SACD transports from Esoteric. Having worked in the semiconductor industry this behavior indicates to me that Sony went to its customer for the chip and told them it was planning to stop manufacture of the chip and that their customers needed to place what is called a "last time buy" of the chips and that this trickled down from Esoteric to the customers who buy the transports for their players.

Obviously. this is not good news for people who have invested in the SACD format. I have several questions in my mind about this:

1. Does anyone know for a fact that this is true about the Sony chips?

2. If it is true are there any other sources of the chips?

3. If Sony is the only source of these chip that can read the DSD data stream taken from and SACD, does this mean every SACD player ever made is now impacted by the supply of these chips stopping?

Again, please be polite and professional in your post. There is no need to get nasty in this discussion. I am just trying to understand what is really going on and how serious it is.

 

Tony,

As a collector of SACDs I'd be very curious as to the impact of the supply of specific chips to read SACDs. If I get a chance I'll send Oppo an email to see what their take on this is and if Sony is their supplier of these chip sets. I totally agree that this thread should be kept to the subject on hand and not other off topic subjects.

Bill

 

Please let us know Bill if Oppo responds. I'd hate to think that we couldn't replace them.

 

Hopefully if this is true we can get an open source solution to rip these SACD's freely to DSD files.

 

I'm sure, no matter what, there will be a workaround. I'm also sure that higher bit/sampling rates are already in the offing so as regards a future proofing hi-rez there's no real concern. Reality is, with an abundance of audio standards from lo-rez mp3 to way out past double DSD, there will be a future format [or non-format] that will outstrip the capabilities of the best SACD quality of sound. Doubtless the OPPOs of the world will come up with a device on which to play SACDs and stream DSD.

 

Robin, You are probably correct about future sound capabilities. My question is will my SACD library become unplayable because of a chip not being available. While I am an old man you may not outlive his audio gear, there are younger people out there who have SACD's who want to keep being able to play them. I hope you are right about Oppo, but a work around to a modern chip is not trivial. It might be possible to use an FPGA to replace the dedicated chip from Sony, but that is just a hope on my part. This why I am hoping to better understand this issue.

 

Or someone will make a device for ripping those SACD's to hard drive (other than a PS3). Such as
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f...tween-computers-and-electronic-devices-22124/

 

Perhaps Black Elk will comment, his knowledge of SACD and DSD seems to be extensive.

 

Hopefully this isn't a prerequisite to the permanent halting of its production. I only have a little more than a dozen SACDs but I just recently began a buying spree of these because seem to have an excellent ROI due to lack of piracy, but if Sony ditches chip production this format will veer itself onto an uncharted tangent. What are the odds Sony would pass their patent and manufacturing rights to another semiconductor company? Every obsolete format Sony has had they seem to just kill their format themselves.

 

The fact that this whole thing could be in the hands of Sony does worry me. Having said that I am hopeful that dCS can find a solution, they were a major player in developing DoP, so it is clear they understand what the DSD data stream looks like.

 

Do you expect your SACD player to fail soon? Buy another one as a spare. Any (or most) Bluray players play SACD.
I have 3 players capable to play SACDs, and they will outlive me. Just make sure to put price tugs on your SACD collection before you go, so your family would know the value.
Of course Sony attitude is not good, but what can we do. We can't fight corporations, just work around their BS.

 

I'm a little stunned to read this - coming from the dCs company.

For Sony to monopolize and then end the production of the chip is preposterous.

 

IMHO SACD will slowly wither away like HDCD. I hated to see HDCD go away, as some groups (one name that comes to mind is The Grateful Dead, but there were others) released many of their CD's in the HDCD format for a few short years: I have many Grateful Dead HDCD's and IMHO they sound considerably when played through my HDCD-equipped DAC when I turn on HDCD decoding. When HDCD is disabled, these discs are handled like any standard Redbook CD and I did not think they sound quite as good.

Again, IMHO, for SACD to stick around, the music manufacturers will need to release dual layer discs, one layer for SACD and the other layer for Redbook CD. Since this adds to the production cost of the disc (and a licensing fee has to paid to Sony), I seriously doubt this will happen.

Another nail in the proverbial SACD/HDCD coffin is that the music companies, equipment manufacturers, and most retailers did a piss-poor of telling customers about these superior sounding formats. The "blue shirts" in Best Buy, and the former "red shirts" in the former Circuit City are/were clueless about SACD, and I never met one who had heard of HDCD. And I've been in four different Magnolia stores within Best Buy and I've only encountered one salesperson who had heard about SACD, but they could not explain what it was other than it was better sounding CD and you needed an SACD player to play the SACD discs.

I think the only people that know about SACD {and maybe HDCD) are the audio cognoscenti who read (and sometimes participate) in forums like this and Audio Karma. The number of posts in the Audio Asylum forum have declined over the past few years and I rarely read it now.

And FWIW, I am one of the moderators in the FM Tuner Group (accessible at www.fmtunerinfo.com) and we have seen a decline in both the number and the quality of the posts in this forum.

As always, YMMV.

 

with the rise of cheap memory CD/SACD has had its day really. if the music is on a hard drive you eliminate all transport problems and you also have effectively unlimited space which makes for a potential future of some very HQ music - if the producers can be bothered to release it as such.

 

I understand your concern, Tony, being so heavily invested in the format. While my collection numbers a fifth of yours, I also find this quite disconcerting.
I posted so that I can keep tabs on any further info from other member's reliable sources.

 

If true, I may have to get that Oppo sooner than I thought.

 

I received this reply from Oppo regarding my question about the availability of chipsets to support DSD playback. I sent the email at around 12:00 pm and received the response about 7:00 pm. On a Sunday no less ! Hopefully there will still be production of chipsets from Sony long into the future.

Bill,

Our SACD implementation is done in chip in the decoder. So as long as the decoder hardware is still capable of support DSD, then we will continue to support DSD playback.

Best Regards,

Customer Service
OPPO Digital, Inc.

 

Interesting, I think we need to understand this better. I recently had to have the transport in my super old Oppo BDP-83SE replaced (which plays SACD's). They did it for free and said it was a $30 part. Obviously the transport in an Oppo is not the equivalent of the Esoteric transport (mechanically is what I am saying) but if the was a chip in the transport Oppo sure did not seemed concern.

 

Yes, but at $25 a throw for each SACD that I own I have spent at least $12.5K on SACD's. I do want to spend that much again just to replace the same music as a DSD download that fits on a memory stick!

 

I don't think that's a very accurate statement. Are you referring specifically to Sony players?

 

http://www.quadraphonicquad.com/for...ed-to-Stop-SACD-Players-Production-quot-Rumor

I wonder if that is true?

 

I'll just finally figure out how to rip them and if DSD DACs go away I'll just convert the files to PCM. Really it would probably just be easier if I went all PCM anyway.

 

Forum member Brian Moura covered the situation in the link provided by journeyman. Sony stopped decoder chip manufacture several years ago, and MediaTek, for one, has been producing decoders under license. The problem faced by dCS is that they were using a specific Esoteric transport based on a chip that was no longer in production. When their stock of decoder chips ran out, they stopped making the drive, and did not re-design it for a new decoder, and I presume dCS felt that no other transport was up to the job.

 

3 years later, and still the best $500.00 I ever slapped down for an audio component.
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