I am confused about high resolution CD’s. For example, say I hook up u a Oppo 93 via digital coax to my Outlaw 950 and play a SACD. What type of signal will the 950 see or be able to handle?

Thanks Bob

First, SACD's are more than just a "high resolution CD" - they are a completely different format using a higher capacity disc (think "DVD"). The SACD standard does not allow audio output at all of the SACD layer(s) via coaxial or optical. It is part of the licensing agreement, and the only player to ever circumvent it was the original PS3 (which had SACD support and could output SACD's in stereo over optical). The BDP-93 cannot output any audio from SACD's via optical or coaxial. You must use either HDMI (not an option with the Model 950) or analog audio outputs. Since you've got the BDP-93 connected to the Model 950's 6CH input already, use that for SACD's just like you do for Blu-ray.

Second, DVD-Audio is a similar "high resolution CD" - it was SACD's competitor in the high resolution audio disc format war that both formats largely lost when the iPod combined with bad marketing and stupid restrictions on digital output to relegate SACD to a niche market and DVD-Audio to even greater obscurity. DVD-Audio can be output via optical and coaxial, but it's limited to downmixed stereo. Again, I'd recommend using the BDP-93's analog output.

Hi Gonk:

I don’t have an oppo I was more just interested in the technology. If SACD and DVD audio so obsecure, where are most folks getting their high resolution content?
If licensing is a problem with SACD over a digital link, is that the same for the newer surround formats such as Doubly True or our these allowed over the HDMI link?
Thanks Bob

My comments apply to basically any SACD or DVD-Audio player, not just the OPPO players.


There are a lot of ways to get high resolution audio content. SACD and DVD-Audio have both been around for something like 10 years now, so there's a decent amount of content available in those catalogs. Many people have libraries they started building 10 years ago, and SACD in particular still sees new releases. Other options that exist include Blu-ray (which so far has mostly seen concert music releases, although there have been some studio albums released on BD) and lossless audio files from several online services.


Licensing is a problem for stereo digital output of SACD over optical and coaxial. Bandwidth is a problem for multichannel lossless audio of any sort. Put simply, optical and coaxial won't handle more than two channels of lossless audio. If you are listening to a Blu-ray Disc via optical or coaxial output and it has a lossless multichannel audio track, you are going to get one of two things: stereo only (downmixed from the multichannel track), or a lossy Dolby Digital or DTS multichannel track (either a "core" track embedded in the original or something that the player is encoding on the fly).

At this point, HDMI can be used with any available format. It's been that way for several years. HDMI v1.3 supports bitstream output of TrueHD and DTS-HD MA. Starting with HDMI v1.2, SACD's native DSD format could be passed over HDMI. Even before then, HDMI had licensing issues with Sony resolved and Sony felt that HDMI was secure enough to output SACD over HDMI. Going all the way back to HDMI v1.1, you could output multichannel LPCM over HDMI. That can work for any formats (SACD's DSD, DVD-Audio's MLP, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, or raw multichannel PCM) as long as the player converts to PCM first.

>Other options that exist include Blu-ray<
If Blue-ray, will the format will be one of the surround modes such as TrueHD or does Blu-ray have a special format for Stereo Audio?
>Licensing is a problem for stereo digital output of SACD over optical and coaxial.<
Why is licensing not an issue with HDMI. My guess is venders are able to insert copy protection into the stream?

>Put simply, optical and coaxial won't handle more than two channels of lossless audio.<
Very informative.

>or a lossy Dolby Digital<
Is Dolby Digital always lossy? I thought DD was the default format even for BD?

>That can work for any formats (SACD's DSD, DVD-Audio's MLP, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, or raw multichannel PCM)<
Are all multichannel formats passed via LPCM when using HDMI?

Thanks Bob

In theory, the Blu-ray spec has room for a special "Profile" that would be audio-only, similar to the Profile 1.0, Profile 1.1, and Profile 2.0 players that we've already had. In reality, nobody seems to want to develop the standard enough to define this profile, so it's doubtful we'll ever see a "Profile 3.0" Blu-ray audio player - which makes sense, since Profile 2.0 players should be sufficient for any audio-only disc releases that get created.

Studio recordings have generally been released with video that includes a static slide for each track. As for the audio track, Blu-ray supports so many lossless options that there's no need for anything special. TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio can be stereo or multichannel, as can uncompressed LPCM. Any of these will work. In some cases, discs include both a multichannel track (TrueHD or DTS-HD MA) and a PCM stereo track.


HDMI requires HDCP, so once you have HDMI you have copy protection. That was enough to convince Sony (the primary force behind SACD) to allow digital output of SACD over HDMI.


Dolby Digital is always lossy. Blu-ray still supports Dolby Digital and DTS, but it also supports Dolby Digital Plus (a more advanced lossy format), DTS-HD High Resolution (also a more advanced lossy format), Dolby TrueHD (a lossless format that has its roots in MLP - just like DVD-Audio), DTS-HD Master Audio (also a lossless format), and uncompressed multichannel PCM. Any of these can be included on Blu-ray.


It depends on how the player is configured. If the player supports on-board decoding (as pretty much all current players do), you can set the player up to always output LPCM. You can also set the player to output a bitstream, though.

>and a PCM stereo track.<
When you say PCM stereo tack are you referring to standard Red book stereo, 16bit, 44.1 KHz?

>It depends on how the player is configured. If the player supports on-board decoding (as pretty much all current players do), you can set the player up to always output LPCM. You can also set the player to output a bitstream, though<
Let see if I understand this, when Outlaw release it next processor, I assume it will have DAC’s that will be able to decode multiple formats over the HDMI input . Does this mean you would use a bitstream as an output from the BD?

Bob

PCM can be any one of a number of sampling rates and bit rates. When looking at media other than CD, 44.1kHz is very rare and 48kHz or 96kHz is more common. Blu-ray frequenly uses 24bit as well.


The Model 978 and Model 998 will have digital signal processing (DSP) chips that can decode the new lossless codecs. You might still want to let the player decode the audio, though - some players can both decode lossless audio and mix in secondary audio, for example, which only works when decoding internally. The BDP-93 can do this, and it can be useful with some discs.

The DACs will not matter in this regard, as they are located after all the audio processing (decoding, bass management, room correction, etc.) is done.

Got it, for some reason I thought the DSP was incorporated inside the DAC. Can you give me an example of why you would want to mix in secondary audio into a movie?

Can a proccesoor perform bass management on it's analog inputs? If this is the case, does it first have to convert to digital, perform bass management and then reconvert to digital?


Thanks Bob

Any time you have a pop-up menu (a disc menu that is overlayed onto the video) with sound effects, those are secondary audio. Also some bonus features use secondary audio, such as commentaries and trivia features that can be viewed on top of the main feature. The most notable example I've run into is HBO's The Pacific, which has a lot of bonus material available separately from the main feature that uses secondary audio. Because the bonuses can be viewed in-line with the main feature as well as separately, all the bonus audio is set up as secondary audio.

As a general rule, bass management is handled in the digital domain. Stereo analog inputs are converted to digital typically, so we can apply surround processing and room correction as well as bass management, although most processors offer an "analog bypass" mode that can be selected to leave the stereo inputs analog all the way through the processor (which means no room correction or bass management). Multichannel analog inputs are handled in a variety of ways. The most common is a purely analog pass-through, with the processor only providing volume control. In some cases, analog bass management can be applied to the multichannel analog input (the Model 950 and Model 970/1070 being prominent examples of this). In other cases, the multichannel analog input is converted to digital for bass management. The Model 990 does this (as do the Sherwood R-965 and P-965 that the Model 990 was derived from), and I think some of Anthem's processors have done this as well.

Thanks Gonk, appreciate the time. Bob

No problem. Glad to help.

Not exactly. The older SACD capable PS3s briefly had a firmware version (I think it was 2.0) that would transcode the multichannel DSD layer to lossy DD or DTS 5.1 (forgot which) and output it over optical. It has never been able to put hirez from an SACD out over optical at all, stereo or otherwise (I have had mine since launch). Confusingly, you can of course output hirez stereo from a blueray or DVD over optical.

Interestingly, with the recent advent of a bunch of HDMI switchers with HDMI audio de-embedding, there are now several ways to rip your SACDs to hirez PCM and get them into you computer music library. I imagine it is not kosher to get into the topic here though. But I finally have a way to get my SACD music into my second music system where my 990 is, fed from my mac.

I could have sworn it output stereo from SACD's, but I never used one so I am sure you're correct - almost weirder that it converts to DD or DTS.

We were both sort of right:



http://www.ps3sacd.com/faq.html#_Toc177216796

When I was at 2.0, I always had DTS enabled, so I didn't realize you could force it to stereo by turning off DTS. But it was still only 48KHz downmixed from mch DSD, so never hi res PCM. I think that would have violated Sony's own SACD licensing agreements.

I think one could argue that what they did was already a violation of the SACD licensing agreement, but who's going to complain? It's Sony on both sides of the discussion...

Interestingly, someone has created software to rip DSD data off of SACDs that will run on the older PS3s with firmware 3.55 or earlier under the normal PS3 OS.

My PS3's firmware is to current to do so, as I keep it current for gaming. But it is an interesting development.

I saw that recently, as well. It appears that it was related to an exception in copy protection that was limited to the old PS3's and then rectified in later firmware. It wasn't clear to me how the resulting data could be used - if it had to be played through a PS3, or if there was some way to allow PC playback.

There are some pro audio devices from Korg (and Sony?) that will allow playback from a computer. No DSD ,capable DACs that I am aware of yet though. You can, however, burn the DSD to other disc formats like regular DVD-R and play them in your PS3, and keep your original SACDs as archival backups.