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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

Showing 1 response by stereo5

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stereo5
2,766 posts
 
The new McIntosh SACD Transports use a Mac proprietary output to their dac with the same input to decode SACD.  Not positive but I believe you can output SACD from the Oppo using the HDMI out to a Wyred4Sound Dac with an I2 squared HDMI input.  I sometimes play my Esoteric through the dac in my preamp but always have to play SACD via the analog inputs.  You can play the newer Esoteric SACD players via the iLink output to their dac that has the iLink input for SACD decoding.

It's clear as mud.
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