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Beware of SACD Transports -- they probably will not work with your favorite DAC

Hello, I just learned a painful lesson. I'm guessing that not many people will know this so I'm going to put it in here.

The audio on a SACD is encrypted.
If I were to purchase a SACD / CD player I have nothing to worry about. The Audio is un-encrypted inside the player.
However if I were to purchase a SACD / CD Transport made my brand Z, I would have to purchase a brand Z DAC???
Apparently Sony who owns the SACD format mandated that the audio on the SACD itself is encrypted and
the digital output from a SACD transport is ALSO encrypted. It looks like the actual un-encryption is done in the DAC.
There is no standard for doing the un-encryption so every manufacturer has their own proprietary way of doing this.
So I cant use a Esoteric SACD transport and an Auralic DAC which is what I tried to do?
londontk
cheeg's avatar
cheeg
80 posts
 
I had a similar issue with my Cambridge CXU disk player. The explanation from the tech support folks at Cambridge was that the Sony license prevents them from outputing the digital signal from the SACD on anything but an HDMI cable. Their approach to playing a SACD disk is to send the digital stream to their digital signal processor, which converts it to PCM. They then send the converted PCM signal to their internal DAC, which outputs to the Analog Output ports. Seems very klugey. They said:
"If you want to bypass the internal DAC, you’ll need to use the HDMI output and select DSD as the SACD Output. However, DSD can only be selected as the SACD output providing your HDMI cable is connected to a DSD compatible device, so you would need to be sure that whatever DAC you have has a HDMI input and can process DSD."  My DAC does not have an HDMI input, but even if it did, I’m not sure their solution would work. The .iso solutions posted by others sound interesting -- good luck, and if you try it, please let us know how it turns out.
jafant
10,525 posts
 
mahler123very interesting topic here guys. Do you like the Sony ES/ Bryston DAC3 combination better than the stand alone player?
Happy Listening!
audiovideonirvana's avatar
audiovideonirvana
18 posts
 
I have a DirectStream DAC and Player. I'm very happy withe the results I get. SACDs sound great decoded by the DS DAC, as do Redbook CDs.
glupson
1,794 posts
 
What Esoteric model do you have?
dobnbav
30 posts
 
WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THIS??? You are only degrading the source, converting and interpolating. You spent many thousands on you Esoteric which makes the concept even nuttier. Have your player modded if you want.  Of course SACD is encrypted, that’s the whole idea, just like HDCP for video. The SACD is made from the DSD. Exact same source unless a different mastering. The idea that some other DAC will improve your SACD sound (all dependent on the quality of the recording and mastering) is sadly a complete misunderstanding of the technology.  Use your external DAC for streaming and in place of an inferior internal DAC.
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