[Andrew LB]

Ok, my Sony NS500V arrived today via Brown and all my CDs sound awesome and DVDs are crisp and have excellent sound. My question is about SACD's. I picked up my first SACD today at Tower Records and I cannot get any audio out of the Digital Audio Optical or Coaxal outputs. I went through all the menus and tried all the settings, yet no sound. So i then went and plugged my MG-Head OTL directly into the two channel stereo analog output on the player and i finally got music. I also get sound out of the analog 6 channel outputs on the DVD player. Just nothing out of the digital. Do all of you with these types of players run the 6 channel into your receiver to get sound on SACDs? Or is there something i'm missing? Those three pairs of cables are going to be really expensive...

 

[andrzejpw]

I'm not SURE(and I'm probably wrong), but I don't think you can output SACD audio through a digital out.

Note: don't take my word for it. In fact, until further notice, I am wrong.

 

[kerelybonto]

No, you can't get SACD output from a digital jack. Even if you could, you wouldn't be able to do anything with it, since you'd need a SACD DAC, which does not exist in stand-alone form.

What were you trying to do with it? If you're trying to record it, unfortunately the only way to do that will be to convert it to analog via the player's SACD DAC and then back to digital via a normal 44.1kHz, 16-bit DAC. If you do that, obviously you won't get everything that's there, but it should give you something resembling CD quality.

kerely

 

[andrzejpw]

Yes! Ok: now I'm right again. Everything I say is gospel.

 

[grancasa]

I think there is one player somewhere out there that outputs SACD via digital, and has a seperate DAC, but I know that Sony and the other big players in the SADC format specifically designed the system not to output digital, in order to prevent bit-acurate copies (they would call it piracy).

 

[andrzejpw]

Sorry, a bit confused here. What would the point be of outputing digital, if you're going to use a dac anyway?

 

[Andrew LB]

I was hoping i could just run the DVD/CD/SACD audio from my NS500V straight into my Harman Kardon receiver through a digital optical output. I guess ill have to go blow a bunch of cash on three pairs of RCAs and run the 6 channel into my receiver. Hmm..

 

[Hirsch]

Yep. If you want multichannel SACD, you have to use six analog connections. The one transport/DAC that can handle SACD digitally (Accuphase?) would still need six analog connections to the system's preamp.

 

[Andrew LB]

Well... for now i just hooked it up using the 2 channel output on the DVD player and ran that to my CD in on my receiver. Since im mostly using headphones, i dont need 6 channel anyways.

 

[eric343]

Yep, AFAIK there's only one digital-out compatible transport : the Accuphase DP100/101 transport/DAC two-box combination, and it uses a proprietary jack and format IIRC. It's also about $28k...

 

[wallijonn]

grancasa, see www.cdrinfo.com . there's a story there about some sacd/dvd players that have no macromedia protection schemes.