SACD, bass. and the Stones

I've got a relatively cheap Phillips SACD player I'm trying, and the new Stones discs are my only SACD test material. I have it hooked up to my receiver via the 5.1 analog inputs. For reasons unknown, these discs seem to send no information to my subwoofer.

At first, I thought this occurred because I screwed up the SACD speaker settings. I'd put the front channels to "large", which apparently deactivates the sub. However, when I changed them to "small", it made no difference; I still heard nothing from the sub.

I know the connection works, for I can get a test tone from the SACD player. Is there some logical reason why the Stones SACDs send no information to the sub? Am I missing some simple solution here?

 

Would the fact that they are not 5.1, but stereo, have anything to do with it?

 

You took the words right out of my mouth!!!

 

Many SACD players lack stereo bass management even if they include multi-channel bass management. Philips has avoided bass managmement till now because it wanted to preserve the processing in full DSD mode and not mere PCM or analog mode.

Richard.

 

Right; but. If you have full range speakers (my Dahlquist DQ-10's for example), and a sub to handle the lower bass, below let's say 50 Hz, my 12 inch Dahlquist sealed sub, for example, you can't take advantage of the expensive sub if you lack stereo bass management. Sad but true. If you don't have large mains you are in deep do do.

Richard.

 

Okay, I recognize my post might make me look like an idiot in this regard, so I'll clarify. Yes, I know they're stereo, no 5.1. Yes, I know I could use the stereo analog connection to listen to them, and I'd probably get better use of the sub from that. So why am I here whining about it?

Because I remain a neophyte in the world of SACD and based on other information I've read here, I'd heard that for some magical reason, SACD audio connected via the 5.1 inputs sounds substantially better than SACD audio connected via the standard stereo inputs. Perhaps that's a crock, but that's the impression I received: to take full advantage of the improved SOUND - not just the extra channels - I needed to use the 5.1 inputs.

So I did that, and I've not been impressed with the results. My main speakers are decent, but the sub does add to the sound, so obviously I wanted to use it for these albums. I guess I'm not going to get what I want with the SACD player and the 5.1 connection - not sure if I'll get what I need, either...

 

New chip sets by Sony and Philips will provide full bass management in 5.1 and stereo (even mono) SACD and also provide full timing alignment adjustments in 5.1 mode. Up until now Philips has provided neither essential function because they wanted to do it right (according to Philips). Most 5.1 SACD players from Sony offer some bass management, some even in stereo mode. Some do it in analog mode and others with DSD streams. There are even some that convert to PCM. I don't know of a comprehensive list anywhere where you can sort this out. Likely the new line from Sony and Philips will offer more features with pure DSD decoding and management. But even my lowly 500V offers basic 5.1 SACD bass management.

Richard.

 

I was a bit alarmed by this information, too, but upon further reading, here and elsewhere, I found that most people (including people who've actually looked inside the machines, and at the schematics too) say the stereo feed at the stereo outs is exactly the same as the stereo feed at the 5.1 outs.

Bliss returns!

Gardo

 

For these discs, your receiver is only getting input from the front ('main') Left/Right outputs of the player -- they're stereo discs. If you plug them into the receiver's 5.1 L/R main inputs, the receiver doesn't do bass routing on the signal; it's expecting a separate bass input for the subwoofer. Try plugging the 5.1 'main' L/R SACD player outputs into the receiver's CD or DVD player (stereo analog)
inputs instead. Then your receiver's bass routing should send the
low frequencies to the sub (this presumes you have the 'speaker size' set correctly in the receiver, i.e., main set to 'small', low freq output set to 'subwoofer')

Alternately, don't use the 5.1 outputs, use the stereo analog outputs, and plug them into the CD or DVD stereo analog inputs.

Alternately, buy yourself a pair of full-range speakers ;>

 

What receiver do you own?

Most receivers will digitize the incoming analog signal in order to route bass to the sub which will downrez the signal to the efficiency of the ADC and DAC(IOW the receiver converts the analog signal to digital then back to analog once more) of your receiver so if you want to enjoy unadulterated SACD, you will have to do without the sub for now.

You could purchase the Outlaw ICBM and that would solve the problem or connect the sub via speaker level connection. Happy listening!