SACD Owners Beware

Thanks for the suggestions. Hot Spot interests me and I don't have anything by Kebangsaan MO so that's worth a look.

Been wanting to get the SRV set on 45 rpm vinyl but $400 is a lot.

Wish they would eventually release those albums individually.

 

The Texas Hurricane SACD box set is available at popmarket for $209.99.

Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble- Texas Hurricane (200g LP Box or SACD set) »

Bill

 

I've been looking for updates on the Sony UHP-H1 (mentioned earlier in this thread) and it's now available for pre-order on Best Buy's website. $349.98 is the price at this time, with no set release date.

Sony - UHP-H1 - Streaming 4K Upscaling 3D Wi-Fi Built-In Blu-ray Player - Black »

 

The Sony looks like a cheap player when compared to players from Cambridge Audio, Denon, Marantz, Oppo and Yamaha. I'd think twice about buying the Sony.

Bill

 

Not sure if I've already posted this but I know a dCS dealer and he's being saying for years that CD on the dCs surpasses SACD. Wonder if that was part of the equation?

 

There's a lot of truth to this, and my dealer has made the same observation. It is not surprising, because when using my dCS player (I have a Vivaldi stack and can't speak for all dCS rigs) redbook sounds best IMO if you elect to have the dCS Upsampler upsample/upconvert the 16/44.1 PCM content to DSD. Therefore, if I am comparing the sound of a redbook CD and an SACD of the same album, the Vivaldi may well be doing a better job of getting the file into DSD format than however the music company did it on the SACD (very few, if any of my SACDs, were native DSD recordings). And, of course, you may have more options to obtain a well-mastered CD of any particular album, while you probably have just one mastering available in SACD format.

 

The Junior Wells 1996 release "Come On In This House" on Telarc sounds pretty nice to me on SACD. It's only $15.99 at Amazon or it sounds like you might be able to buy it from Newbury Comics directly:

Junior Wells - Come on in This House - Amazon.com Music »

Ok, I check and for some reason Newbury doesn't list it on their own website, so I guess Amazon it is.

 

What's dCS?

 

What We Do | dCS »

 

OK, it seems clear from the last few posts that very few people understand what dCS (date conversion systems) players do. As some people here know I have a technical background in digitization and on a couple of occasions have spoken with the engineers at dCS about their players. Everything that is played on any dCS player does all of the digital to analog conversion using the "ring DAC". I will now try to explain what the ring DAC does.

If you have one bit then the allowed values are 0 and 1. If you have two bits the allowed values are 0,1,2, and 3 (which are 00, 01, 10 and 11). If you have three bits the allowed values are 0 through 7. If you have four bits the allowed values are 0 through 15. If you have five bits the allowed values are 0 through 31. From this one can deduce that the largest number that can be represented in a binary system is given by the formula 2 raised to the Nth power (N is the number of bits) minus 1 (e.g. 2 to the third power is 2 x 2 x 2 = 8 minus 1 = 7). The ring DAC has values 0 to 24 (if there is interest I will explain in greater detail how the ring DAC is built to give values 0 to 24). Thus the ring DAC is equivalent to 2 raised to the power ~4.65 minus 1. To make thing simple for those who are not mathematically inclined think of the ring DAC as a five bit DAC. The sampling rate for the ring DAC is 2,822,400 samples per second (S.p.s.) which is usually written as 2.8224 MS.p.s. and is 64 times the redbook sampling rate of 44.1 KS.p.s. Thus, just like CD's are 16 bits at 44.1KS.p.s. and hi-rez starts at 24 bits at 88.2 KS.p.s. the ring DAC is ~4.65 bits at 2.8224 MS.p.s.

Now, 2.8224 MS.p.s. is exactly the same sampling rate as is used in DSD (which is what is the digital format of SACD's). HOWEVER, the ring DAC is NOT DSD! It is PCM just like CD's are and 24 bits at 88.3 KS.p.s. are, etc. DSD is an entirely different digital format that is pulse density modulation (PDM). PCM is pulse code modulation. If there is interest I can try to explain how both PCM and PDM work, however, it will be a much longer post.

If one listens very carefully and compares a dCS player to a true SACD player you can hear the difference between DSD and ring DAC PCM.

 

Mono and Stereo High-End Audio Magazine: Exclusive interview with dCS »

 

No doubt, because the dCS is a Ring DAC, which is a PCM decoding mechanism. PCM DACs never do justice to SACDs or DSD because they must first convert the DSD to PCM.

 

Works fine. Absolutely fine. If anything, better than DSD.

So much written about the supposed deficiencies of PCM, yet day in, day out, performance with SACD is terrific, assuming the underlying SACD is well mastered. And I've used and compared directly with native DSD; my current players and amp have the capability.

 

BE, Very interesting interview. I based my understanding of the ring DAC on the Vivaldi review in HFN&RR (February 2013) as well as discussions with the dCS engineers at the NY premier of the Vivaldi (they actually brought specimens of several of the PCB's including the ring DAC board). As I understand it they now use 48 discrete resistors of which the Xlinx FPGA then randomly maps (sends) each individual data sample to the resistors choosing up to 24 of them to convert the data sample to analog. The mapping programs are firmware programed into the FPGA and can be updated or changed by dCS.

As I said before I find it interesting that Tim Smith also uses a Xlinx FPGA in the true DSD DAC he designed that converts all digital data (PCM or DSD) to 10 x DSD samples per second before converting it to analog (this is the Direct Stream DAC that TS designed for PS Audio). I wonder if Ed Meitner is also using a Xlinx FPGA in his latest DSD DAC that coverts do 16 x DSD before converting to analog?

 

I remember that dCS used to make SACD/CD players, but they have dropped them from their product lines. Why did they decide to ditch SACD in favor of upsampled CD? Do they think their ring DAC technology sounds better even if the source is originally lower resolution, i.e. 44.1/16? I heard a demo of their relatively new single box Rossini model a few months ago. IIRC, you could also feed it high-res files via network connection. So if you wanted to play back your SACD music on this equipment you would need to rip them to computer-stored files with a hacked Sony Playstation. The dCS rep had done precisely that for at least one demo track he used, maybe more.

 

You really do need to go back and read the thread from the beginning. It will explain why dCS dropped SACD from the Rossini.

 

Since the dCS decision has to do with the availability of suitable SACD drives provided by third parties (see post #24), it's worth noting that Marantz is shortly releasing their new top of the range SACD player (and DAC) SA-10, which includes a newly developed SACD drive (SACD-M3) that they will use exclusively.

SPECIAL: Die High End 2016 – Impressionen von Dali, Denon, Elac, Marantz und Panasonic »

So I'm not worried about the future availability of high end SACD players.

 

dCS claimed they made a decision based on chip and drive availability. I was just wondering if they have acknowledged that they have had to go forward with a sonic compromise. Their 4-box system for CD playback seems extremely elaborate and expensive in light of the lower resolution.

 

Claude, This is very interesting and good news. A beautiful looking player.

 

Apparently the main impact of the Sony chip going away is to the Esoteric transports. To date the only dCS product impacted by this is Rossini, the single box player. All of dSC's 4 box systems have transport boxes that support SACD.

 

OK, good. Thanks, Tony.

 

I am glad Marantz have developed a new SACD drive. I have the Marantz SA8005 SACD player I bought new last year and I am dissatisfied with the transport. I have owned players by Rotel, Onkyo, and TEAC and the Marantz has the noisiest and most finicky transport I have ever used. I listen to a lot of classical SACDs and in the quiet parts which there are many I can hear the transport/disc-spinning noise from across the room on my couch. Just in the past month I have bought a couple used CDs with very minor scratches that skip on the Marantz but play fine on my TEAC. I would not buy another Marantz player unless I knew it had an improved transport. Oh well at least it sounds pretty good.

 

You can hear the drives on some of the Esoterics as well, including models well up in the hierarchy. Try before you buy although that is often easier said than done.

D.D.

 

I have owned a Pioneer PD-10 SACD player for a couple of years and have found the transport very noisy and fussy. It has been in for a check up at a Pioneer service centre and apparently this noise is normal ! It is not acceptable in my opinion. You can hear it spinning and making all sorts of strange noises the other side of the room when a quiet passage of music is playing.
Does anyone know why SACD transports seem to be so noisy? I have an old technics CD player which makes no noise at all.
I know this isn't strictly the subject of this post.

 

The Esoterics I've had experience with that had drive noise issues were clearly audible playing both Redbook and SACD, the difference being the whine during SACD playback was higher-pitched due to the higher RPM developed by the drive as it spun & read the SACD. As playback progressed in either format, the pitch of the whining got progressively lower and eventually stopped being audible once the RPM reached a certain threshold. Extremely irritating in a quiet room during quiet passages and, as bruce2 mentioned, it made classical music difficult to enjoy.

D.D.