.MCH Files?

[timbre4]

Puzzled - tried to search QQ and no dice on this one. Got some burned "SACD" discs that don't make sense to me. Burned ISO files once upon a time, labelled them and forgot about them for a few years at least. OPPO player says Unknown Disc, example of the layout is shown below.

The only relevant info from Google search on .MCH file extension (among a number of unrelated non-audio contexts) was this:
"Within the Super Audio CD (SACD) standard file structure, the .mch extension is assigned to multi-channel digital audio track container files ("TRACK001.mch," etc.) located in the "MC_AUDIO" directory. SACD is an advanced audio-only media format developed by Sony and Philips and based on the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) encoding. SACD disks contain both multi-channel (up to 6) and conventional stereo tracks (.2ch). Both .2ch and .mch files can be played by several multimedia players, like foobar2000 (with additional libraries)."

Does that make sense? What can I add to Foobar if anything to convert these files to FLACs? [already have SACD + DTS decoders, etc.] I searched Foobar and nothing comes up on MCH. Can I convert these with anything else or should I toss them - try to find in familiar formats?
THX

 

[Marplot]

Music Media Helper can probably help you, someone more comfortable with it will probably chime in.
I would copy one to my HD and use ffmpeg to see if it converts.
ffmpeg -i TRACK001.MCH -sample_fmt s16 -ar 88200 track01.flac

 

[J. PUPSTER]

found this article Tim; maybe there's something in there that can help

https://www.filetypeadvisor.com/extension/mch

 

[timbre4]

found this article Tim; maybe there's something in there that can help

https://www.filetypeadvisor.com/extension/mch

Thanks, that was what I was quoting from above.

 

[steelydave]

It seems like these are the files extracted out of the UDF filesystem that exists inside an .ISO rip of a disc. More info here:

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/56176-sacd-images-that-mountin-windows/
I don't know if these are playable or convertable, but it suggests to me that someone misunderstood ripping from ISO, and instead of extracting the data using iso2dsd or similar, that they mounted the .ISO on their computer and just extracted the files, like a drag and drop process akin to when you're extracting files from a .zip using WinRAR.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Puzzled - tried to search QQ and no dice on this one. Got some burned "SACD" discs that don't make sense to me. Burned ISO files once upon a time, labelled them and forgot about them for a few years at least. OPPO player says Unknown Disc, Tan example of the layout is shown below.

The only relevant info from Google search on .MCH file extension (among a number of unrelated non-audio contexts) was this:
"Within the Super Audio CD (SACD) standard file structure, the .mch extension is assigned to multi-channel digital audio track container files ("TRACK001.mch," etc.) located in the "MC_AUDIO" directory. SACD is an advanced audio-only media format developed by Sony and Philips and based on the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) encoding. SACD disks contain both multi-channel (up to 6) and conventional stereo tracks (.2ch). Both .2ch and .mch files can be played by several multimedia players, like foobar2000 (with additional libraries)."

Does that make sense? What can I add to Foobar if anything to convert these files to FLACs? [already have SACD + DTS decoders, etc.] I searched Foobar and nothing comes up on MCH. Can I convert these with anything else or should I toss them - try to find in familiar formats?
THX

View attachment 73953

I would first try the easy way. Change the .MCH to .DSF or .DFF and see if they play.

 

[timbre4]

I would first try the easy way. Change the .MCH to .DSF or .DFF and see if they play.

Thanks for the idea; alas, no playback or convert option with Foobar - tried as DSF and DFF = file seen as invalid.

 

[timbre4]

It seems like these are the files extracted out of the UDF filesystem that exists inside an .ISO rip of a disc. More info here:

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/56176-sacd-images-that-mountin-windows/
I don't know if these are playable or convertible, but it suggests to me that someone misunderstood ripping from ISO, and instead of extracting the data using iso2dsd or similar, that they mounted the .ISO on their computer and just extracted the files, like a drag and drop process akin to when you're extracting files from a .zip using WinRAR.

Definitely a whacked up approach whatever they did. I've got 14 discs like this; burned as ISO files years ago and untested for play. I'm going to set these aside and look into finding files that are ready to go.

 

[steelydave]

Maybe they're SACD-Rs - have you tried putting them in a universal player and seeing if they do anything?

ETA: Paging @ted_b , king of SACDs and all-round smart guy. If anyone would know what to do with these it'd be him.

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

These don't look to be in the correct directory structure for the contents of an SACD? How did the individual files even end up like this?

 

[timbre4]

Maybe they're SACD-Rs - have you tried putting them in a universal player and seeing if they do anything?

ETA: Paging @ted_b , king of SACDs and all-round smart guy. If anyone would know what to do with these it'd be him.

Definitely not SACD-Rs, those are read on the Oppo fine. These are not seen at all "No Disc" status.

What gets me is the discs are burned with something that Windows says is not an identifiable file system. I wrote MCH on these discs and set them aside for now. THX

 

[timbre4]

These don't look to be in the correct directory structure for the contents of an SACD? How did the individual files even end up like this?

Good question! This is early stuff (2001-2004) possibly authored on an Adobe product no longer around?

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

Good question! This is early stuff (2001-2004) possibly authored on an Adobe product no longer around?

Definitely not. This is not SACD-compatible spec, at least to me. This just looks like someone extracted an iso, and dropped the contents of the 6c folder onto a DVD. The individual files probably can be read as raw DSD, but I am not sure.

Also, Adobe never released any SACD authoring software. Surprisingly.

 

[DuncanS]

They seem very small for multi-channel I only have a few DSF/DFF files and they are 3-4 times bigger, could they be flacs with the 'wrong' file extension on the end?

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

They seem very small for multi-channel I only have a few DSF/DFF files and they are 3-4 times bigger, could they be flacs with the 'wrong' file extension on the end?

Remember, most SACDs store music in DST!

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

You can try dragging the entire folder into foobar, or moving the files around to replicate an SACD file structure, then drag that folder into foobar. That should work, and you should even be able to extract the DSF/DFF from it!