Can I play a sacd on my laptop? - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

spacemanspliff · 05-22-2008, 01:59 AM

Just curious if I can play sacd on my laptop with software? Or is it a hardware based difference?

If not, is my laptop with Trends TD-10 usb to coax converter into a lite dac ah modded by PV better than a similarly priced ($300-400) sacd player?

I am getting some pretty good speakers soon and want to source them well.

Covenant · 05-22-2008, 02:12 AM

I'd be interested in the answer to this as well, particularly as i've never seen a SACD computer optical drive.

spacemanspliff · 05-22-2008, 02:19 AM

Yeah I just thought of it b/c if you can rip cds bit perfect then playback off of the HD. Why not SACD? Unless they are unreadable I suppose.

CanMad · 05-22-2008, 02:27 AM

The SACD layer will be unreadable in a non-SACD drive

spacemanspliff · 05-22-2008, 02:43 AM

Originally Posted by CanMad

The SACD layer will be unreadable in a non-SACD drive

Ok then. What would be a good entry level player? aka used aka cheap?

plaidplatypus · 05-22-2008, 02:45 AM

The PC will be able to read the CD layer of Hybrid SACDs only. The SACD layer is recorded in DSD so a PCM DAC wouldn't be able to play it even if you could read the DSD data off the disk.

I have a Pacific Valve DAC-AH and a DA-10 sitting beside me both are nice but SACD is better.

I'm selling my SACD player because I listen mostly to streaming music these days and I'm looking to downsize my rig as much as possible as I move on average once a year.

spacemanspliff · 05-22-2008, 02:50 AM

Ah so, I will put a sacd player on the list. I am slowly building up a decent audio room.

I listen to a lot of streaming music too. Digitally imported $7 bucks a month is nice.

CanMad · 05-22-2008, 02:52 AM

Originally Posted by plaidplatypus

The PC will be able to read the CD layer of Hybrid SACDs only. The SACD layer is recorded in DSD so a PCM DAC wouldn't be able to play it even if you could read the DSD data off the disk.

No but it is possible to convert DSD to PCM in software. This is how some version of the PS3 play SACDs. Not that I know of any software for PCs that can do this, but I guess teoretically it is possible.

Bones13 · 05-23-2008, 12:30 PM

Its the Sony licensing and the proprietary decoder for SACD that is the root of the problem as I understand it. Even the digital out from an SACD player will not work going through a standard DAC. I think the licensing requires that all SACD output is analog only, stereo and/or multichannel.

One could record the analog out from the SACD player to a file, but certainly enough information would be lost to negate the advantages of the SACD in the first place.

Uncle Erik · 05-23-2008, 02:18 PM

SACD is, literally, a different format from CD.

It uses a different laser to read and is in a different format from CD layers. You can get the details here:

Super Audio CD - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This might be a little confusing, but there are hybrid SACDs, which are discs that have two separate layers on them. One layer can be read by CD players (but ONLY at CD quality) and there is a SACD layer, that can ONLY be read by a SACD player. The SACD layer can't even be picked up by a CD laser.

A good, inexpensive SACD player is the Sony SCD-CE595. I owned one for awhile before upgrading to the Marantz SA8001. The CE595, around $100 new, is one of the best values out there. It'll give you the benefits of SACD and you can hear them.