Re: sacd

I am grateful for your well-thoughtout response. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but a clear non-vague negative answer is better than a vague one that leaves you in doubt and gives you false hope. My premise may have been faulty, but I had the impression that a sacd was a dsd record. Therefore if I could play a sacd(dsd) record on my pc through my mojo dac,and make a copy for my pc, I would be creating a dsd for my music library.BTW, I’m 72yrs old A low degree of technical background. You probably already guessed that! Thanks.

From: mailto:[email protected] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2017 5:18 AM
To: [email protected] 
Subject: Re: [EAC] sacd

  
Mark, your post is insightful as usual, though I’m not completely in agreement. 


I ignored the ability to rip the Red Book CD layer of hybrid SACDs (almost all are hybrid now, though early ones were released as single layer with no Red Book CD layer).  I was too lazy to provide an explanation like you did — and Red Book CD layer ripping is not what most people want when they say they want to rip SACD.

Most SACDs contain multichannel (meaning more than two channels) audio in addition to a stereo mix.  Some contain only multichannel in the SACD layer.  That multichannel content cannot, of course, be encoded on the Red Book CD layer and that content is sometimes the most appealing on the disc.  There are also examples where the Red Book CD layer contains a different mix than the stereo SACD layer (maybe to address the point you brought up about the need to make content better suited to car audio and portable music players?).

Nyquist’s theorem convinces me that the Red Book CD sampling rate of 44.1KHz is probably adequate for the vast majority of adults (when I was a kid, I could hear to 22,500Hz in my better ear, so that argues for a slightly faster sampling rate).  But I’m less convinced that 16 bits, with its inherent limit of 96.33 dB signal-to-noise ratio and dynamic range, is up to par.  Do we need 24 bits?  No.  At least a couple of them are buried down in the noise when playing back content on even the best equipment.  I’m pretty sure that 48KHz sampling rate and 20 bit audio would be “perfect” insofar as the human ear was concerned, but storage is cheap and fast, high-quality DACs are sold in chip form for astonishingly small dollar figures, so 96KHz/24 bit seems a harmless indulgence.

Regards,
  Fred Maxwell
  Moderator, Exact Audio Copy Yahoogroup 

  On Feb 14, 2017, at 7:36 AM, 'Mark P. Fishman' [email protected] [EAC] <[email protected]> wrote:

  While one cannot rip the DSD information from an SACD, and most (all?) SACD players don't provide a digital output of the DSD stream, most (if not all) SACD discs are multi-format discs and contain an ordinary Red Book CD layer, which can be ripped.

  Even if you have an SACD-compatible drive in your computer, and figure out how to hack it so it provides a DSD stream, I'm pretty sure that EAC wouldn't know what to do with the DSD layer. The formatting and encoding is completely different from audio CD.

  It is a pity that both of the high-resolution audio formats -- DVD-Audio and SACD -- have failed as mass-market formats. DVD-Audio releases are completely dead; SACDs are still being made and sold, but it is a niche market. I would suggest that the Digital Restrictions Management is only part of the problem: the real issue seems to me to be that, high-end audiophile fantasies apart, there really is no audible need in a release (not mixing) format for anything with higher sample rate or greater bit depth than Red Book CD. All the audible differences seem to be in the mastering, not the mathematics.

  Because SACD is a niche market, there's no commercial pressure to make the SACD master playable for car-radio or portable listening, so the dynamics are more natural instead of being squashed and clipped into 3dB at the top of the loudness range. Pop CDs sound terrible, like most radio (even classical radio), all of which use pop-designed compressor/limiters nowadays.

  So while you can't rip an SACD's DSD stream, you might still prefer the mastering and mixing, and you can get almost all of that by putting the analog audio output through a decent analog to digital converter and capturing that PCM stream on a computer.

  On 02/14/2017 05:32 AM, Fred Maxwell [email protected] [EAC] wrote:



    EAC cannot make a copy of an SACD because of the digital rights
    management (DRM) of the SACD format.

    Sony’s decision to so tightly lock down the SACD format is a big part of
    why it failed commercially.  The people who would be most enthusiastic
    about SACD are often the same ones who want to be able to rip audio from
    the discs they buy so that they can put them on home music servers,
    portable music players, and USB thumb drives for use in their cars.  I
    know that I don’t want to spend money on a disc that I can’t rip, can’t
    backup, and that only plays on one device in my home.

    Regards,
    Fred Maxwell
    Moderator, Exact Audio Copy Yahoogroup


      On Feb 14, 2017, at 2:12 AM, [email protected]


      can an sacd be played by a wndows 7 pc? can an exact audio copy of an
      sacd be made by EAC in a windows 7 pc?