Anyone Into SACD?

jbreezy5

Thinking about getting into this.

Would appreciate album recommendations to start off on the right foot.

TroyD

Yes. Done right and it's REALLY good....but, like anything else, what you get out of it reflects what you put in to it.

On the software side......depends on what you like to listen to. Diana Krall has a lot of albums on SACD that are stellar....

treitz3

You need an SACD player to play them. They will not play on a CDP. Even the hybrid SACD's. Yes, the hybrid CD's will play but what you are listening to is the CD layer, not the SACD layer. If you already knew this, my apologies as I am not familiar with your audio background.

DSOTM is a solid choice as well as DK (mentioned above). James Taylor's Hourglass, Godsmack's The Other Side and World's Greatest Audiophile Vocal Recordings are all great SACD's to start you out. The last one is what led me to SACD to begin with.

Tom

F1nut

Been into it from the start. Like most formats there are stellar and not so good. What you play them on also matters, a lot.

Emlyn

Here's a source...but they aren't cheap:

https://store.acousticsounds.com/c/4/SACD

As you'll see, a lot of SACDs are jazz, classical, or classic rock. The first Dire Straits album is good on SACD to my ears, but I ordered straight from Japan and paid less than half the import price...

https://store.acousticsounds.com/d/71077/Dire_Straits-Dire_Straits-SHM_Single_Layer_SACDs

dromunds

A couple great SQ SACD’s for starters: Norah Jones Come Away With Me. Mark Knopfler Shangri-La. As Jesse said, get a top-shelf SACD player. It can sound heavenly.

pitdogg2

Elton John's are very reasonable, and very good.
Peter Gabriel is another

Emlyn

Agree the player is critical. When SACD first came out I tried using a sub $200 Sony carousel changer because I already had it and the SACD of Dave Brubeck’s Time Out sounded substantially worse than the CD version when I played it back on an expensive ($2K MSRP) Toshiba DVD player that decoded the HDCD encoded content on some CDs, which the Time Out CD was even though the printed materials didn’t say so. When I finally got a good quality universal Denon DVD player I found out what SACD was really supposed to sound like. I haven’t gone too far with SACD player upgrades since then but did stop upgrading when I got a Marantz SA8002 several years ago. That’s a good one.

verb

I got bit by the SACD bug after joining CP. Thanks fellow Polkies!

3 Players later, I finally landed on a McIntosh MCD301 and loving it!

My struggle is finding SACD's in the genre I like mostly (70s/80s rock), as most of em are OOP. So you pay a lot for the remaining stock. Example: Boston's debut album in SACD is selling today for well over a hundred bucks!

Still, well worth the effort if you dive in!

jbreezy5

TroyD wrote: »

Yes. Done right and it's REALLY good....but, like anything else, what you get out of it reflects what you put in to it.

On the software side......depends on what you like to listen to. Diana Krall has a lot of albums on SACD that are stellar....

Can you elaborate (in the positive) how you define “done right” for SACD?

I’m good at following orders. 😁

Thanks for the recommendation also!

jbreezy5

treitz3 wrote: »

You need an SACD player to play them. They will not play on a CDP. Even the hybrid SACD's. Yes, the hybrid CD's will play but what you are listening to is the CD layer, not the SACD layer. If you already knew this, my apologies as I am not familiar with your audio background.

DSOTM is a solid choice as well as DK (mentioned above). James Taylor's Hourglass, Godsmack's The Other Side and World's Greatest Audiophile Vocal Recordings are all great SACD's to start you out. The last one is what led me to SACD to begin with.

Tom

I currently have two Sony Blu-ray players (BDP-BX58 and BDP-S380), both of which I think require HDMI for SACD output of DSD. They look like the same player, tbh.

Also currently have a Denon DVD-1940CI. Should be able to use typical rca connections on this one.

Very entry-level spinners.

Nice variety of suggestions!

jbreezy5

F1nut wrote: »

Been into it from the start. Like most formats there are stellar and not so good. What you play them on also matters, a lot.

What are some that you would suggest?

Emlyn

Another option is to look for digital downloads available in DSD format directly and play those back through a DSD capable DAC. For example, the Boston album is available in DSD 64 format through HDTracks:

https://www.hdtracks.com/#/album/5e16f29695ad4845eaed43ec

192/24 or 96/24 WAV or FLAC download files can also sound excellent, especially when played back through a player with a DAC that samples everything to DSD before outputting analog.

Given the pricing of physical SACD media these days, I'd suggest seriously thinking about going the digital download route for price and selection. And this is coming from someone with a few hundred SACDs. The thing is I never paid more than around $20 or less for one. I stopped buying them when the prices hit $30 and up.

BlueFox

I should sell/karma my Sony 5400ES SACD player since I rarely use it anymore. I don’t think I have turned it on in over a year.

jbreezy5

It seems like I remember hearing about some players keeping the signal in native DSD vs. switching to PCM.

How can one tell if this is happening or not?

HzTweaker

Ok I recently dove down this "rabbit hole" when I purchased several SACDs from Dave. My disk spinner is a Pioneer DV-563A, and it's hooked up to the pre via the optical out.

My first impressions while the player was in CD mode was that those were the BEST sounding CDs I've ever listened to. I've had the unit for over a decade and only used it's optical out so I'm very familiar with its sound. The background was dead silent and the headroom I had to play with was unkanning. I don't remember a CD that I could turn up as loud and it not distort!

Then I was pumped. Couldn't wait to have a listen in SACD mode... Big moment here. I pushed play and silence. The number counters were changing but there wasn't any sound. SMH. So I hooked up a small TV so that I could go through the menus and couldn't find anything like SACD on/off. So I searched the far ends of the interwebs and found a pdf manual for the spinner. and found this!!



So I'm like W T H? Now I'm thinking I'ma have to listen to a whole lot of familiar CDs with the player hooked up the analog way to RE-familiarize myself with it's sound before evaluating the SACDs?

What would you guys and gals do?

BlueFox

Just listen to the SACD.

HzTweaker

BlueFox wrote: »

Just listen to the SACD.

I will tomorrow morning after I hook up the player the analog way just to see if it works the way it should. Then probably head to bed. I'll give it a proper listen this weekend when I'm off.

My question is: If hooked up the analog way would I not be taking advantage of being able to notice the different sample rates from disk to disk?

audioluvr

So whichever device sends an analog signal out is the DAC being used but like others have said (and your SACD players manual) to take advantage of full SACD quality you MUST use THAT devices DAC. Otherwise you are not playing a SACD just a CD.

HzTweaker

audioluvr wrote: »

So whichever device sends an analog signal out is the DAC being used but like others have said (and your SACD players manual) to take advantage of full SACD quality you MUST use THAT devices DAC. Otherwise you are not playing a SACD just a CD.

Okay so let the Pioneer do the digital conversion (witch craft ) while sending the signal out as analog and trust that I'm hear the highest quality the gear can preform?

F1nut

Optical sucks. Analog is king.

HzTweaker

F1nut wrote: »

Optical sucks. Analog is king.

But what if I want the little light next to DSD be on while I'm listing to SACDs? LOL JKING. I don't have anything like that currently in my system.

Clipdat

HzTweaker wrote: »

Ok I recently dove down this "rabbit hole" when I purchased several SACDs from Dave. My disk spinner is a Pioneer DV-563A, and it's hooked up to the pre via the optical out.

My first impressions while the player was in CD mode was that those were the BEST sounding CDs I've ever listened to. I've had the unit for over a decade and only used it's optical out so I'm very familiar with its sound. The background was dead silent and the headroom I had to play with was unkanning. I don't remember a CD that I could turn up as loud and it not distort!

Then I was pumped. Couldn't wait to have a listen in SACD mode... Big moment here. I pushed play and silence. The number counters were changing but there wasn't any sound. SMH. So I hooked up a small TV so that I could go through the menus and couldn't find anything like SACD on/off. So I searched the far ends of the interwebs and found a pdf manual for the spinner. and found this!!



So I'm like W T H? Now I'm thinking I'ma have to listen to a whole lot of familiar CDs with the player hooked up the analog way to RE-familiarize myself with it's sound before evaluating the SACDs?

What would you guys and gals do?

Sounds like you were listening to the Redbook layer of the SACDs, not the DSD layer.

HzTweaker

Clipdat wrote: »

Sounds like you were listening to the Redbook layer of the SACDs, not the DSD layer.

Redbook?! Now I have something else to google. Just messing. I already did on my lunch break. Now I'm wondering if the Redbook while hooked up with the optical will sound better than the DSD through the analog? I guess there's no way of knowing till I try.

jbreezy5

DSD is the hi-res format, so Redbook CD should not sound better than DSD.

That will come down to the quality of the production/mixing in either format.

Emlyn

DSD tracks will transmit from a Blu Ray player over HDMI to relatively recent receivers or home theater processors. I think Marantz calls their version DSD Direct. Sounds pretty good even with generic HDMI cables. But, analog straight out still rules with dedicated SACD players. And with older gear it's really the only option because DSD is not supported across Toslink or Digital Coaxial connections.

invalid

I think DSD 64 will only work in DOP over a SPDIF

pitdogg2

invalid wrote: »

I think DSD 64 will only work in DOP over a SPDIF

I may be way wrong as I do not stream ANYTHING, I was under the impression bitstream or whatever size was too big for sony philip digital interface (SPDIF). My thought process is that you cannot send newer dolby, DTS codac's over fiber it must be HDMI ...

invalid

pitdogg2 wrote: »

invalid wrote: »

I think DSD 64 will only work in DOP over a SPDIF

I may be way wrong as I do not stream ANYTHING, I was under the impression bitstream or whatever size was too big for sony philip digital interface (SPDIF). My thought process is that you cannot send newer dolby, DTS codac's over fiber it must be HDMI ...

If your sacd player has HDMI output you can send the DSD signal out to a converter like the D-bob and use a SPDIF input on your dac, your dac should see DSD.

jbreezy5

invalid wrote: »

pitdogg2 wrote: »

invalid wrote: »

I think DSD 64 will only work in DOP over a SPDIF

I may be way wrong as I do not stream ANYTHING, I was under the impression bitstream or whatever size was too big for sony philip digital interface (SPDIF). My thought process is that you cannot send newer dolby, DTS codac's over fiber it must be HDMI ...

If your sacd player has HDMI output you can send the DSD signal out to a converter like the D-bob and use a SPDIF input on your dac, your dac should see DSD.

^^^^^^^^
Thanks!

HzTweaker

I'm going to try very hard to NOT look up new players tonight!