How Long to Convert SACD ISO Files?

[user 11358]

First participation to this forum so, I hope it comes out ok.
The subject intrigued me, so I did a test on my workstation,
Processor: i7-7700 - 3.6GHz
File: Genesis - We Can't Dance.SACD.iso; 4.36GB
Task: ISO to 176KHz M-ch FLAC using Foobar,
CPU resources grab: 95%,
Test 1: HDD to SSD = 7:29 minutes,
Test 2: HDD to same HDD = 7:26 minutes !

I don't see any HDD/SSD data xfer related bottleneck here,
Chances are that the processor might be the cluprit for slow transcoding.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I do the same, but I’m considering a mass conversion to FLAC simply to get all my files into the same format. I don’t really have a good technical reason though.

One good reason is that you can then apply bass management and room correction. Aren't the tagging routines for FLAC superior also?

Just ripped another Vocalion disc. There were 40 total songs (20 stereo & 20 MCH). It was 2.23 GB and took 14 minutes via Sonore and my Oppo. Now I'll convert iso to flac....and it took 31 minutes.

I believe the actual conversion steps go like this: (1) disc to ISO -- (2) ISO to DSF (or DFF) -- (3) DSF to WAV ---(4) WAV to FLAC. All but the first step are taking place in Foobar. The timing kind of makes sense.

Those flac files ~24/96 take up a whole lot less room than the ripped dsf files, but then can you here the difference in the music; (a lot less 0s & 1s- makes you wonder that something should be missing?)
Personally I just rip to dsf and keep it there; I believe I hear more of the quietness between the instruments yadda yadda
At my age I'm lucky if I can hear a cymbal crash -LOL

I'm surprised you can hear any difference at all. I can't, not between 24/88.2 PCM and DSF anyway. Do you keep it as DSF all the way through the decoding process, or convert to PCM in order to do a bass management routine? And if you do convert to PCM in your AVR, what is the difference you are actually hearing? If you don't, you may prefer the result you get with BM and RC.

I was under the impression that the extra bits were the ultrasonic noise that gets filtered out eventually by the brick wall filters required for DSF playback.

I'll be damned. I've never once heard a difference. LOL! Maybe I can't hear. Anyway, if I leave as a DSF or whatever it's called....my laptop doesn't handle them too well. They skip.......not sure why. Never skip with flac.

Mine too. Haven't tried it lately though. But even if I could play back DSF, I wouldant. For the reasons above.

The .iso file is 3.7 GB, the 176K FLAC files add up to 6.3 GB. I could probably get by just fine with 88K sample rate, but since my hardware resamples everything to 96K, I guess my thinking is I'd rather have it downsampling instead of up. Of course I have no solid data to back up this theory. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My understanding is its the anti-aliasing aspect that you want to avoid. SACD sample rate is built on multiples of 44.1kHz, 88.2Khz, 132.3kHz, 176.4kHz, etc . Conversion to the video standards like 48kHz or 96kHz or 192kHz involves interpolating between samples, or aliasing.

My routine uses Sonare ISOtoDSD to extract the DFF files directly. I dont need the ISO for anything. Foobar then converts the DFF to 24/88.2 FLAC which I then tag and apply replay gain. For what its worth, I think my process is slow as well.

 

[MrSmithers]

I think the reason why it could take so long and be so data intensive is because of DST compression... I don't use foobar and I only convert to .DSF rather than FLAC, but the principle would be the same I think? Getting the multichannel DSF files from the ISO does take a while - say around half an hour?

A lot of the MCH layers on SACDs have to use DST in order to squeeze it onto the disc... If you were to uncheck the DST box in the SONORE ISO app and use .DFF instead - it would be super quick... DFF files would be the equivalent size of FLAC, but without tagging capability. Of course you won't be able to play them as no renderers seem to have a DST plug in... So it is what it is for the mo...

 

[bmoura]

Yes, I rip all my files as is and then play them as is.

Same here. I keep them as .DSF files for playback.

 

[GOS]

Hey, this has turned out to be a fairly interesting thread. More than I thought. But yes, I have always felt my laptop was a piece of shit. At work now, so can't tell you the specs.

 

[J. PUPSTER]

Just to be clear, I assume we’re all talking about the same piece of music just processed differently from both a storage aspect or playback modes. I don’t believe I hear much difference at all from listening direct from disc with my Oppo set to DSD, or from a dsf conversion to flac in Foobar to 24/96 and played through the Oppo via USB/SSD.

Something I am wondering about as a slight detour is not so much the sound quality, but the actual processing in a DAC (in say an Oppo) using flac 5 vs. 0 compression. My thoughts are; 0 compression is supposed to be less work for the DAC than a 5; and how does that relate to any increase in chip heat within your components during long listening periods?

 

[J. PUPSTER]

Hold on a sec., how did I/we get so far off subject?
I just know my new NUC with a SSD is 4-5 times faster processing audio files than my 10 year old Dell desktop with a 5,400 HDD!

 

[ubertrout]

Yeah, it's not (mainly) about your disc - I transcoded an even larger ISO (A Beautiful Mind Soundtrack) in Foobar to 24/88.2 multichannel FLAC in 3:26 - source and destination the same spinning disc. But my PC has an AMD Athlon 2700X processor (the most important element) and 32GB of RAM.

Although they don't advertise it, most laptops actually undervolt considerably from their desktop versions - if you're doing serious processing like converting ISOs regularly, get a desktop with a good CPU.

 

[jimfisheye]

I've always felt like it takes forever for me to convert my newly ripped SACD (iso file) to flac. For example, I just converted a 19 song disc (ended up being 3.02 GB) and it took 35 minutes. I use Foobar by the way.

Does this seem like a long time? If yes, what on earth is slowing it down so much? Anyone else have comments about conversion times?

I use Sonore iso2dsd. It takes about 3 minutes on my laptop (which I usually end up using for this). quad core i7 2.5 - 3.6GHz Macbook Pro.
I had an older C2D laptop a few years ago and I think it took around 15 minutes. SSDs in everything for the last 10 years.

The old PITA thing that used to take forever was converting dts2496 to wav with this AudioMuxer app with the proper dts2496 codec hacked into it. This was before ffmpeg caught up to the format. The hacked app took a couple hours to decode an album! (Something was pretty wrong. Like rewriting the entire results file over and over instead of appending to it or something. Who knows...) ffmpeg does the same decode in 3 minutes.

 

[jimfisheye]

Although they don't advertise it, most laptops actually undervolt considerably from their desktop versions - if you're doing serious processing like converting ISOs regularly, get a desktop with a good CPU.

There are a ton of those Windows laptops that don't have much more power than a smart phone and then throttle the CPU down at the slightest bit of heat. The post-Jobs Apple machines are devolving into the same thing sadly. The Jobs era Macbook Pros are real computers. A tower model (the full tower with cooling, not the Mini or built-in screen models so much) will have more robust cooling and the CPU can be run at 100% 24/7/365.

 

[Jim the Oldbie]

First participation to this forum so, I hope it comes out ok...

Welcome to the group Adam. Thanks for the additional info.

 

[Jim the Oldbie]

...But yes, I have always felt my laptop was a piece of shit...

Hey Gene, didn't mean to slag your gear, heh! If it's any consolation, mine's even slower. Plus it smells bad when it gets stressed out (kinda like me). I did finally manage to flush the damn cat videos from the big machine though, whew.

 

[GOS]

Hey Gene, didn't mean to slag your gear, heh! If it's any consolation, mine's even slower. Plus it smells bad when it gets stressed out (kinda like me). I did finally manage to flush the damn cat videos from the big machine though, whew.

Oh, no worries. I was being serious. I've had nothing but trouble with the damn thing since I purchased it. I can tell you it's a Dell. I don't think I'll ever buy another Dell, just because. Customer service really didn't give me the time of day, so I have no use for them.

 

[Sal1950]

I don't have any problems playing my .dsf file so I never gave any consideration to transcoding them. GOS, as has been already posted the most likely prospect for your slowness doing the transcoding is your laptop and it's processor, very little to be done about that except to minimize the other programs running at the same time and a clear memory bank as much as possible. To get the fastest response you could try doing so from a fresh boot so minimal background processes have been started yet.
Same might help with the shuddering of dsf playback or trying a different media player.
I don't know what to recommend for your OS as I run Linux here.
Normally playing of flac or wav's is very nondemanding of a cpu but things can get difficult with other paths.

 

[HomerJAU]

First participation to this forum...

Welcome OkAtan, or should it be congrats on a first post after nearly 4 years?

 

[ubertrout]

Oh, no worries. I was being serious. I've had nothing but trouble with the damn thing since I purchased it. I can tell you it's a Dell. I don't think I'll ever buy another Dell, just because. Customer service really didn't give me the time of day, so I have no use for them.

I don't think it's about Dell, per se (although IMO customer service is a waste of time pretty much universally for anything beyond getting a refund, I know others disagree). Rather, most consumer grade laptops aren't really designed for serious number crunching that's involved with transcoding high-bitrate multichannel audio. They can do it, but it will take a long time and slow your PC down in the process.

For reference, this would be a typical chip in a mid-priced laptop five years ago: PassMark - Intel Core i5-4210U @ 1.70GHz - Price performance comparison
This is what I have in my desktop: PassMark - AMD Ryzen 7 2700X - Price performance comparison

 

[Deek57]

I have hit a block, I'd like to convert an SACD iso to FLAC, can anybody tell me what I need for the task, would it be sonore, foobar or a combination of both, or something else. I tried using sonore? to convert to DSD to play on my Denon reciever but got DSF instead, which I can't play. FLAC would be best, then I can transfer to a USB stick to play on my Oppo 103, any help would be appreciated. I would rather not have to hack my Oppo to get it to play SACD-R, which was something I was considering a while back.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I have hit a block, I'd like to convert an SACD iso to FLAC, can anybody tell me what I need for the task, would it be sonore, foobar or a combination of both, or something else. I tried using sonore? to convert to DSD to play on my Denon reciever but got DSF instead, which I can't play. FLAC would be best, then I can transfer to a USB stick to play on my Oppo 103, any help would be appreciated. I would rather not have to hack my Oppo to get it to play SACD-R, which was something I was considering a while back.

DSD is the methodology, not a file format. The only consumer options for DSD file formats are DSF and DFF. The first is the Sony format, the second is the Philips format. The primary difference is that DSF retains the original metatadata (tags).

You can take the DSF or DFF files generated by the Sonore software and use Foobar to convert them to FLAC. You will need the proper Foobar plugins. Set bit depth to 24. The sample frequency will default to 88.2kHz.

 

[Deek57]

DSD is the methodology, not a file format. The only consumer options for DSD file formats are DSF and DFF. The first is the Sony format, the second is the Philips format. The primary difference is that DSF retains the original metatadata (tags).

You can take the DSF or DFF files generated by the Sonore software and use Foobar to convert them to FLAC. You will need the proper Foobar plugins. Set bit depth to 24. The sample frequency will default to 88.2kHz.

Thanks, I'll give that a go.

 

[ubertrout]

I have hit a block, I'd like to convert an SACD iso to FLAC, can anybody tell me what I need for the task, would it be sonore, foobar or a combination of both, or something else. I tried using sonore? to convert to DSD to play on my Denon reciever but got DSF instead, which I can't play. FLAC would be best, then I can transfer to a USB stick to play on my Oppo 103, any help would be appreciated. I would rather not have to hack my Oppo to get it to play SACD-R, which was something I was considering a while back.

There's many ways to do this, but the simplest way is to use the SACD plugin for foobar and convert the ISO to FLAC directly.