Pretty much any time someone talks about media players, my first question is "Is it truly gapless?" Hey, I listen to a lot of Pink Floyd, so it really matters.
Anyway, as much as I love the Oppo players, it's been frustrating that gapless DSD playback is not possible with single-song files. It only works if everything that needs to flow is in a single large file.
Related to that, I thought I would pass along something I learned over the course of dealing with multi-disc albums yesterday and today. I've been using a DSD-aware fork of SoX to concatenate multi-disc sets into single files which are then broken into tracks via cue sheets. There's been some real frustration because, while the files themselves can always be played directly, sometimes the cue sheets would work and sometimes not. At first I thought it was due to file size as the ones that didn't work were larger than the ones that did. It turns out that's sort of the answer, but only sort of.
Oppo (and they're not the only ones) have taken a strict approach to interpreting cue sheets, even though that approach is counter-productive in cases like this. Specifically, because cue sheets were originally designed for use when burning audio CDs on computers, they were never intended to deal with files that had tracks starting as late as 100 minutes in. Of course, if you've got a single file with, say, both discs of "Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live in New York City", that's a real problem. Although I could play the giant DSF file perfectly, any attempt to access it via cue sheet would result in the Oppo claiming that it couldn't find the file. (An inaccurate error message, but whatever.)
After much back and forth with Oppo technical support (very nice, responsive people) and much close inspection of cue sheets that worked vs. ones that didn't, I finally noticed that the ones that didn't work all had tracks beginning at or after 100 minutes in. When I deleted those >100 minute track points but changed nothing else, everything worked. Of course, that meant I could no longer access those later tracks individually.
The workaround--which I would have immediately grasped were I not a complete moron--is to remember that cue sheets used for burning CDs can refer to multiple files. So my obsessive chasing of gapless playback that caused me to automatically and thoughtlessly create whole-album files of multi-disc SACDs and then write code to calculate the track points for what had been discs 2 and above was counterproductive and just made more work. It's much easier--and actually works--if you create one file per disc, then create a cue sheet that references the multiple files, e.g.:
It's entirely possible that everyone else figured this out a long time ago, but I thought I'd post it here Just In Case.
Anyway, as much as I love the Oppo players, it's been frustrating that gapless DSD playback is not possible with single-song files. It only works if everything that needs to flow is in a single large file.
Related to that, I thought I would pass along something I learned over the course of dealing with multi-disc albums yesterday and today. I've been using a DSD-aware fork of SoX to concatenate multi-disc sets into single files which are then broken into tracks via cue sheets. There's been some real frustration because, while the files themselves can always be played directly, sometimes the cue sheets would work and sometimes not. At first I thought it was due to file size as the ones that didn't work were larger than the ones that did. It turns out that's sort of the answer, but only sort of.
Oppo (and they're not the only ones) have taken a strict approach to interpreting cue sheets, even though that approach is counter-productive in cases like this. Specifically, because cue sheets were originally designed for use when burning audio CDs on computers, they were never intended to deal with files that had tracks starting as late as 100 minutes in. Of course, if you've got a single file with, say, both discs of "Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live in New York City", that's a real problem. Although I could play the giant DSF file perfectly, any attempt to access it via cue sheet would result in the Oppo claiming that it couldn't find the file. (An inaccurate error message, but whatever.)
After much back and forth with Oppo technical support (very nice, responsive people) and much close inspection of cue sheets that worked vs. ones that didn't, I finally noticed that the ones that didn't work all had tracks beginning at or after 100 minutes in. When I deleted those >100 minute track points but changed nothing else, everything worked. Of course, that meant I could no longer access those later tracks individually.
The workaround--which I would have immediately grasped were I not a complete moron--is to remember that cue sheets used for burning CDs can refer to multiple files. So my obsessive chasing of gapless playback that caused me to automatically and thoughtlessly create whole-album files of multi-disc SACDs and then write code to calculate the track points for what had been discs 2 and above was counterproductive and just made more work. It's much easier--and actually works--if you create one file per disc, then create a cue sheet that references the multiple files, e.g.:
Code:
PERFORMER "Dr. Whosit and the Scumpigs"
TITLE "Go Away"
FILE "Go Away disc 1.dsf" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "It Really Stinks in Here"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "What Are You Wearing?"
INDEX 01 05:40:07
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE "My Face Breaks Mirrors"
INDEX 01 11:56:17
FILE "Go Away disc 2.dsf" WAVE
TRACK 04 AUDIO
TITLE "The Dirtiest Song Ever"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 05 AUDIO
TITLE "Talentless Hack"
INDEX 01 05:40:07
TRACK 06 AUDIO
TITLE "Atrocity Is an Idiot"
INDEX 01 11:56:17It's entirely possible that everyone else figured this out a long time ago, but I thought I'd post it here Just In Case.
...
