5.1 sacd on a 2 channel system?

Spawndn72

I have not bought any sacd's yet becasue most of the ones I would want say they are mixed in 5.1 surround. What happens if you play those on a 2 channel system?

aaharvel

they play in 2ch. mode as well.

The 5.1 sacds you are buying are most likely "HYBRID" discs. that means there's a 5.1 SACD surround layer, a 2ch. SACD stereo layer, and a 2ch. regular CD layer. The player will automatically configure which version to play on your system depending on how many "jacks" you have hooked up from your player to the receiver- whether it be all 6cables for 5.1 or the Left and Right Cables for 2ch. stereo. The player will sense this when loading the disc- and play it accordingly.


Note- you can only take advantage of the 5.1 and 2ch stereo SACD layers of the disc if you have an SACD/CD player. A regular Cd player will still play the disc if it's a hybrid- but it will only play the inferior 2ch. CD layer.

Good luck!

F1nut

Just to confirm, all SACD's have a 2 channel hi-rez layer.

shack

Originally posted by F1nut
Just to confirm, all SACD's have a 2 channel hi-rez layer.

But not all SACDs have a 5.1 Surround layer nor do all have a redbook layer (hybrid).

shack

Originally posted by aaharvel
The player will automatically configure which version to play on your system depending on how many "jacks" you have hooked up from your player to the receiver- whether it be all 6cables for 5.1 or the Left and Right Cables for 2ch. stereo. The player will sense this when loading the disc- and play it accordingly.

Wrong. You have to tell most SACD players which layer to play. I have the 5.1 and the 2 channel analog both hooked up to the receiver. You have to set both the CDP and receiver to play the layer and format you want.

reeltrouble1

Spawn,

You are in for a treat, just get some SACD from artists you enjoy, put your smokin jacket on, get your ears set, sit back and enjoy high res. 2 ch high res absoulutely kicks.

RT1

aaharvel

yep your right shack.

i meant the player would automatically play the CD or SACD layer depending on the player's capabilities.

other than that, there's usually a button on the face of the player or remote that says "MULTI/2ch" you can toggle with to switch between the multich. layer and the 2ch. layer on a hybrid sacd.

Danny Tse

Dependent on the player, you can set the default to either multi-channel or 2 channel. I have a Sony SCD-CE595 for my headphone system and when loaded with a SACD, the player will default to multi-channel (the factory setting). Since multi-channel does me no good with headphones, I set it on the player so whenever a SACD is loaded, it will search for the 2 channel section of the SACD layer.