SACD to MP3 = laughter or plausible?

[BabelFish]

I am looking into a sacd player and I know some of the new receivers can play sacds.. now my question is: 'can the sacd be ripped to any format that can be played over the network through the receiver and sound as good or is it even plausible?' thanks

 

[ski2xblack]

I'm not sure what you're asking. I've never seen a receiver than can play discs, aside from all-in-one units (i.e. NAD L53? Wait, that one can't play sacd. Can't think of one that can).

And changing formats would limit you to the fidelity of whatever format you end up with, so no, unless it is an exact replication of sacd it won't sound as good.

Are you saving/sharing music on a server at work or something?

 

[avaserfi]

I don't think SACDs can be ripped from the actual medium itself because of all the copyright mumbo jumbo in them. I think thats one of the reasons proprietary connections were used to transport the signal until copyrighted hdmi was invented.

 

[MDS]

The high resolution tracks of a SACD cannot be ripped and converted to PCM but many are hybrids and also contain a 2 channel PCM track which can be ripped.

You can transport anything over a network connection between computers but the receiving machine has to understand the data to make sense of it.
So even if you could send the DSD format from the SACD over the network, the receiving device would have to know how to decode it.

If you rip the 2 channel PCM tracks they can be sent over the network to practically anything because all devices can deal with PCM. You could also encode those PCM tracks into any other format you want, again as long as the receiving device can recognize the format and decode it.

 

[davidtwotrees]

Actually, this is a very good question! When I was looking at servers, I wrote to the Olive company asking this very question and they replied that they were not considering a machine to copy hirez material.

ReQuest came up as the king of music servers. Perhaps they are thinking about it, or contemplating how to do it as they cater to audiophiles.....

 

[BabelFish]

The reason why I am asking is because I am trying to convince my wife that we need a new CD player (one that can play SACDs) the receiver that we are looking has networking capabilities.. Where it can play music (MP3, etc) from a computer over the network and through the receiver..

She asked if that capability is present then why have a CD player at all. just burn all music and keep it on a computer as a music server and we are all set.

My question is if we went that route, would I lose the SACD material when I rip the CD to some other format (MP3, etc).

From what I am understanding, the answer is yes.. I will lose the SACD format since that format is not recognized except for SACD players and there is no intermediate format for that material except for the raw material which is on the CD itself..

Am i understanding this correctly?

Are their 5 disk DVD players that are also SACD players?? Just curious...

 

[no. 5]

Are their 5 disk DVD players that are also SACD players?? Just curious...

Yep; Sony and Yamaha for sure, Marantz and Denon too... maybe .... can't remember right now.

 

[MDS]

Onkyo has a new 5 disk universal player that would play SACD.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'lose' the SACD tracks. You cannot rip the high resolution tracks (high bit depth/high sample rate, encoded in DSD). You can rip the 2 channel PCM tracks and then leave them uncompressed or transcode them to any format you want.

If you mean will you not have the capability of playing high resolution tracks over the network then the answer is Yes.

 

[davidtwotrees]

Right. There is no server on the market that can rip and store SACD and play it back in it's original hirez format.........

 

[j_garcia]

There is nothing that can even rip SACD that I have seen... Even if you could, the file size would be so large it wouldn't be worth it.

 

[obscbyclouds]

If you really want to rip Hi-res audio, DVD-A is the format to go for. DVD-A's are MLP, which can be ripped to hard drives, burned to other DVD's, etc.

 

[davidtwotrees]

So is there a music server that does dvd audio?

 

[davidtwotrees]

OH, ps. obscbyclouds- I need more hirez music too. It blows my mind it hasn't taken off.

 

[nav]

There is nothing that can even rip SACD that I have seen...

The only thing I've seen that managed to get unencrypted DSD to a computer was with a modified universal player (I don't have the article anymore, I'll try a bit to find it again). Getting the data unencrypted is the difficult part; DSD is fairly easy to convert to PCM once you get it on the computer (whether or not there is any benefit from doing so purely for the post-conversion content is debatable).

If you really want to rip Hi-res audio, DVD-A is the format to go for. DVD-A's are MLP, which can be ripped to hard drives, burned to other DVD's, etc.

Many (not all) DVD-Audio releases use CPPM to scramble the multichannel content. It can be bypassed on a standard PC, but it's not particularly easy for the average person to do.

 

[obscbyclouds]

So is there a music server that does dvd audio?

I'm afraid it's a little more nefarious (read: not legal) than that

 

[obscbyclouds]

Many (not all) DVD-Audio releases use CPPM to scramble the multichannel content. It can be bypassed on a standard PC, but it's not particularly easy for the average person to do.

No one asked if it way easy

 

[skizzerflake]

You CAN rip a SACD if you plug stereo outputs from a player into a PC, but WHY? The downmix from 5.1 to 2 channels sucks (I've done it and I know). You bought a player and searched high and wide for SACDs in order to get hi-res 5.1 sound and then you rip it to lossy mp3 2 channel sound. That's like trying to make your Lexus look like a Saturn. Can be done,, but...

 

[MDS]

You CAN rip a SACD if you plug stereo outputs from a player into a PC, but WHY? The downmix from 5.1 to 2 channels sucks (I've done it and I know).

That's not ripping - it's recording. You could also place a microphone next to the speakers and record it to tape but that would be even worse.

 

[skizzerflake]

That's not ripping - it's recording. You could also place a microphone next to the speakers and record it to tape but that would be even worse.

Since I'm not fond of lossy conversions except for use with a media player in noisy environments, the distinction between ripping and re-recording is pretty minimal. Sometimes, however, I get that perverse urge to put music I purchase were I want it and this will definitely work better than microphones and speakers. The weakness is that stereo mixes of 5.1 rely on a mechanistic algorithm that has nothing to do with the music.

 

[MDS]

Yes, you've stated your aversion to lossy compression many times.

How could a 2 channel downmix not be related to the music in any way? The multi-channel mix was the source from which the downmix was created.

By the same logic, the original 5.1 mix is not related to the music in any way either. All of the instruments and vocals were recorded separately then mixed, mastered, and surround encoded by 'mechanistic' algorithms.