Ripping SACDs the right way

ted_b

Well-Known Member
Feb 4, 2011
113
7
405
My recent efforts, which have been quite successful are:

1) oppo dv981hd DVD player (£24 off eBay)
2) Aten vc880 hdmi to spdif converter (ca £120)
3) spdif to m-audio 192 soundcard, capture using cubase 4
4) invert phase (yes odd, but somewhere in the hdmi/Aten the phase is inverted. Aten claim it's not them, so maybe the oppo. Anyway, something to check for in general).
5) manually separate rip into tracks in Nero wave lab
6) compress to flac, bdpoweramp.

Purists might hate the dsd to PCM conversion going on, but the sound is just perfect so far as I can tell.

Indeed I have used the foobar abx comparator to check 88/24 vs downsampled 44/16 which clear ~99% detection in double blind mode.

Man that sounds like a lot of work, and you still don't have DSD. And purists don't do DSD-to-PCM. Purists do DSD native! :) My ripping is reaching 750 SACDs to-date. It's really not difficult, folks.
 

Idiocratease

New Member
Jan 19, 2011
25
0
0
UK
Fair enough, but my dac accepts PCM, so that conversion is needed in my case anyway. I expect there are a lot of folk with similar reqs. Thanks.
 
Last edited:

Drikus

Member Sponsor
Sep 28, 2012
1,390
223
985
Brussels
I guess technically we're not "ripping" the data off. We're doing a direct 1:1 transfer of the digital DSD data stream and capturing it.

Hello, would it be possible to do something similar like this but not the digital way like connecting the line in jack from a Korg MR-2 to the analog outputs of a Lindemann 820S with a stereo mini jack to 2x XLR cable?
 

miguelito

New Member
Feb 8, 2015
30
0
0
NYC
goo.gl
Also the thing with the PS3, you're tied to what the mastering engineer authored the disc by. Misplaced markers, incorrect codes and a whole slew of other things can actually leave out a lot of material. There are several ghost and bonus tracks that don't rip on a PS3 and also I've had missing movements, artist chatter and other things that don't get included with a rip. I didn't figure this out until I was trying to line these things up and the transfers I was doing on the Sonoma were 5-10min longer than the PS3 rips.

And lets not get into the A/B and null tests....

Sorry.... we're getting off topic.....

Can you give specific examples? Also, was this playing an ISO file from the PS3 or the dsf tracks off of the ISO->DSF conversion?
 

Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
7,006
512
1,740
Snohomish, WA
www.pugetsoundstudios.com
Can you give specific examples? Also, was this playing an ISO file from the PS3 or the dsf tracks off of the ISO->DSF conversion?

Just to give a quick example. I line up the beginning of both the PS3 rip and the downloaded file, at the end of the album, they can be as much as 10-15 minutes off in extreme cases. Most cases, they are off 3-5 minutes.

Then, invert phase of one album or the other, and they do not null. Not to mention what I found out here: Bogus Downloads!
 

firedog

Well-Known Member
Mar 21, 2011
25
3
908
Bruce, sorry if this has been answered before, but the thread is long and I didn't find the answer. When you wrote:

Don't people realize that the rips you get off these SACD's from a PS3 are ...... let's say. questionable?

I can rip a SACD from a PS3 and do it again using the Sonoma. They are 2 totally different files. Even the track lengths are different!

Are you also saying a Sonoma rip from an SACD is sonically superior to a PS3 rip of the same SACD?
 

Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
7,006
512
1,740
Snohomish, WA
www.pugetsoundstudios.com
Bruce, sorry if this has been answered before, but the thread is long and I didn't find the answer. When you wrote:

Are you also saying a Sonoma rip from an SACD is sonically superior to a PS3 rip of the same SACD?

Yes, this is what I have been told from people whom I trust and also what I have heard here in the studio.

Edit: Let me rephrase this...... they sound different and do not null.
 

firedog

Well-Known Member
Mar 21, 2011
25
3
908
Yes, this is what I have been told from people whom I trust and also what I have heard here in the studio.

Edit: Let me rephrase this...... they sound different and do not null.

Any explanation for why the rips are different?
Or can you tell us how the 2 rips from the same SACD sound different? What do you hear?
 

miguelito

New Member
Feb 8, 2015
30
0
0
NYC
goo.gl
Just to give a quick example. I line up the beginning of both the PS3 rip and the downloaded file, at the end of the album, they can be as much as 10-15 minutes off in extreme cases. Most cases, they are off 3-5 minutes.

Then, invert phase of one album or the other, and they do not null. Not to mention what I found out here: Bogus Downloads!
Ok got it. Any specific example I could play with?
 

miguelito

New Member
Feb 8, 2015
30
0
0
NYC
goo.gl
Yes, this is what I have been told from people whom I trust and also what I have heard here in the studio.

Edit: Let me rephrase this...... they sound different and do not null.
Assuming gain adjusted to remove an offset, what's the spectrum of the diff? Is this an alignment issue possibly?
 

miguelito

New Member
Feb 8, 2015
30
0
0
NYC
goo.gl
Are you also saying a Sonoma rip from an SACD is sonically superior to a PS3 rip of the same SACD?
This is my issue with the claim... A trusted source had a TSDX+DAC2X which link via optilink (same as the link to the Sonoma). His assessment was that PS3 rips sounded superior to the SACDs played on the TSDX. The Sonoma slaves to the TSDX clock so I don't think it would be doing any reclocking. So barring any post processing on the Sonoma, this seems to contradict the claim of Sonoma rips sounding better than PS3 rips.

On the length of tracks, well, couple of things: I have no idea how the Sonoma determines when a track has ended. The PS3 rip is an ISO image of the disc, and the probability of that ISO not being a faithful copy (ie read errors go undetected) is pretty small. I very much doubt this is at issue. Then there's the ISO->dsf process and this is where I imagine hidden tracks etc being lost. One ought to compare playing the ISO directly.

Specific examples would be great so that we can look at concrete cases.
 
Last edited:

miguelito

New Member
Feb 8, 2015
30
0
0
NYC
goo.gl
Any explanation for why the rips are different?
Or can you tell us how the 2 rips from the same SACD sound different? What do you hear?
It would be like comparing CD rips directly from the disc data vs playing the disc on a cd player, taking the digital output, and recording it in your computer. "Bits are bits" but frankly I would not expect those two to be identical.

What I might expect is: if you take the pure PCM or DSD streams, align them, and do a numbers comparison, then those two ought to be identical. The files themselves... Not a chance.
 

Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
7,006
512
1,740
Snohomish, WA
www.pugetsoundstudios.com
Well the first issue is that any SACD's played on a player go through some type of filter to take out the UHF noise. Taking the signal directly out of the digital output via ST-optical, bypasses this filter. So you can't compare a PS3 rip to an SACD playing a disc. The same thing with playing a ripped CD and a player playing the disc.
One includes filters... .the other doesn't.
 

miguelito

New Member
Feb 8, 2015
30
0
0
NYC
goo.gl
Well the first issue is that any SACD's played on a player go through some type of filter to take out the UHF noise. Taking the signal directly out of the digital output via ST-optical, bypasses this filter. So you can't compare a PS3 rip to an SACD playing a disc. The same thing with playing a ripped CD and a player playing the disc.
One includes filters... .the other doesn't.
I'll assume you mean to respond to my comment regarding the TSDX+DAC2X...

The UHF filtering is done on the DAC2X in both cases so this is a meaningful comparison.

That is, you either
1- Play the disc on the TSDX sending the data over stoptical to the DAC2X or
2- Play a dff file produced with a PS3 rip over USB/DoP to the DAC2X.
Same DAC in both cases.

Method 1 is the Sonoma method barring any post processing the Sonoma could do. Method 2 is the PS3 way. My friend deemed method 2 to sound better.
 
Last edited:

mansr

New Member
Sep 20, 2015
33
0
0
I'll assume you mean to respond to my comment regarding the TSDX+DAC2X...

The UHF filtering is done on the DAC2X in both cases so this is a meaningful comparison.

That is, you either
1- Play the disc on the TSDX sending the data over stoptical to the DAC2X or
2- Play a dff file produced with a PS3 rip over USB/DoP to the DAC2X.
Same DAC in both cases.

Method 1 is the Sonoma method barring any post processing the Sonoma could do. Method 2 is the PS3 way. My friend deemed method 2 to sound better.

This is beside the point. The question was whether a digital rip of an SACD done on a PS3 contains different DSD data from a rip done using a digital SACD transport into a Sonoma workstation. Filters do not enter the picture in either of those cases.

If PS3 rips are inferior to Sonoma rips, there has to be a reason for this. I'd like to find out what it is and hopefully correct it. The first step would be to acquire an SACD known to reveal these differences, so could someone please name some specific titles?
 

Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
7,006
512
1,740
Snohomish, WA
www.pugetsoundstudios.com
This is beside the point. The question was whether a digital rip of an SACD done on a PS3 contains different DSD data from a rip done using a digital SACD transport into a Sonoma workstation. Filters do not enter the picture in either of those cases.

If PS3 rips are inferior to Sonoma rips, there has to be a reason for this. I'd like to find out what it is and hopefully correct it. The first step would be to acquire an SACD known to reveal these differences, so could someone please name some specific titles?

You want titles? Pick up most any Classical album by DG, RCA or PentaTone
 

mansr

New Member
Sep 20, 2015
33
0
0
You want titles? Pick up most any Classical album by DG, RCA or PentaTone

You've mentioned that with some discs the PS3 rip was missing entire (hidden) tracks. Can you name one such disc?

You also mention smaller amounts of audio missing from some rips. If you remember, I'd be interested in a specific example of this as well.

In another thread you say there are issues when there is continuous music across a track boundary, giving DSOTM as an example. Could you be more specific about what goes wrong with these discs?

Please don't get me wrong. I do not doubt that the rips are indeed different. My reason for asking is that I'd like to figure out why they are different rather than simply dismissing the PS3 out of hand.
 

Bruce B

WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Apr 25, 2010
7,006
512
1,740
Snohomish, WA
www.pugetsoundstudios.com
Here is the DG release of Mozart: Requiem - Karajan UPC028947163923

The PS3 rip is on the top and the Sonoma rip is on the bottom. Right from the beginning, these 2 are different.

Beginning.jpg
 

About us

  • What’s Best Forum is THE forum for high end audio, product reviews, advice and sharing experiences on the best of everything else. This is THE place where audiophiles and audio companies discuss vintage, contemporary and new audio products, music servers, music streamers, computer audio, digital-to-analog converters, turntables, phono stages, cartridges, reel-to-reel tape machines, speakers, headphones and tube and solid-state amplification. Founded in 2010 What’s Best Forum invites intelligent and courteous people of all interests and backgrounds to describe and discuss the best of everything. From beginners to life-long hobbyists to industry professionals, we enjoy learning about new things and meeting new people, and participating in spirited debates.

Quick Navigation

User Menu

Steve Williams
Site Founder | Site Owner | Administrator
Ron Resnick
Site Co-Owner | Administrator
Julian (The Fixer)
Website Build | Marketing Managersing