Playing purchased SACD discs on the computer

[jimfisheye]

Mounting the SACD to the computer to play and backup the iso image.

Does anyone know how to mount a SACD in OSX or Linux?
I'm pretty much never going to buy an extraneous hardware player for this. I don't agree with the need for a different "digital language" (DSD vs. PSM) and thus have refused to buy any of these discs to date. But... there are music releases to be celebrated and sometimes you have to pick your battles. In that spirit, how do you mount an SACD in a standard file system in OSX? (Or Linux. Would be motivation to move forward more with Linux.)

If this isn't easy, what's the stumbling point?

Ripping from an iso image is pretty straightforward with a freeware Java app and then XLD. But mounting the image in the first place? I'm not afraid of Unix command line and know enough to be dangerous.

 

[HomerJAU]

SACD discs and ISOs are non standard ISO format. You need a SACD compatible computer drive (I don’t know of any, even for a PC).

EDIT: Hence the original SACD ripping via XBox and recently with specific BDV players over a network connection.

Windows will open and auto-mount any standard ISO with a double-click (DVDV, DVDA, BD etc) but not SACD ISOs (error messages).

You’ll need to find a SACD application for MAC or Linux. Not sure if Foobar for MAC supports SACD ISOs. JRiver for MAC or Linux probably will, there’s a 30 day trial version.

 

[Eclectic]

SACD is a highly non-standard, proprietary hardware format. You can't rip it with an ordinary Blu-ray, DVD-rom, or CD-rom drive. You need access to a disc player based on the Mediatek MT8580 chip to rip an SACD. The most affordable such player is the Pioneer bdp-80fd—they often go for under $150 on eBay. Once you have one of these players, you can easily rip an SACD to an ISO image. You don't have to mount the ISO to play it; just drop it into the FooBar 2000 open source media player, which will (with the appropriate plugin) either play it or convert it to flac. You can choose the sampling frequency and resolution; I use 48k x 24 bits. It's as simple as that.

 

[jimfisheye]

Thanks, HomerJAU, I'll follow up on that.
If that turns out to be an option, then it would prove that it isn't an optical drive firmware issue. Which would lead to a DIY software solution. (Command line at least.)

Right now, their proprietary greed begs for pirating. I'd like to see a solution that legitimizes the format more and encourages selling and artists getting paid and such. I'd rather see the format die of course and the titles liberated on bluray but I'm not holding my breath at this point!

 

[keshlam4]

Another solution would of course be to get an ADC with sufficient channels and capture it from the analog outs.

I don't know if there is an HDMI capture device that can record and play back the entire surround stream but theoretically that could be another way.

 

[HomerJAU]

Another solution would of course be to get an ADC with sufficient channels and capture it from the analog outs.

Capturing in real-time is such a waste of time

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

How about extracting the dsd streams from the .iso file using the Mac version of Sonore ISO2DSD GUI and playing the native/elementary dsd streams...

 

[mandrix]

For sure. But you still need a complementary device to extract that .iso.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

For sure. But you still need a complementary device to extract that .iso.

Oh... Can't the Mac version of Sonore ISO2DSD GUI natively see .iso files like the Windows version can?

 

[mandrix]

Oh... Can't the Mac version of Sonore ISO2DSD GUI natively see .iso files like the Windows version can?

Well if you have to create the .iso from the disc first....
Otherwise like Homer said, there are no pc/mac optical drives that I know of that can read an SACD image from a disc. So you need a disc player and the utility to create the image file.

 

[zdjh22]

A really good recent reference for ripping SACD’s, including a list of compatible bluray players, is “Down the Rabbit Hole of SACD Ripping and DSD Extraction”.

I got into this only about a month ago, using an older Sony UHD player (BDP-S5100) I found used on eBay for about $50. That’s led to an expensive new habit of acquiring multichannel SACDs! I also am resurrecting my old “fat” PS3 as a backup ripper.

Once you have SACD ISOs, the world is your oyster as far as options for playback. I’m currently using a “Chinoppo” Oppo 203 clone (M9702) and simply NFS-mount the filesystem containing the ISOs and play (native DSD streamed to a Denon AVR) from that mount.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

I would surmise that @jimfisheye's .iso image files are located either on his Mac computer's hard drive or on an external hard drive (not on a disc). This being the case, the Mac version of Sonore ISO2DSD GUI should be able to see them and unpack the dsd streams fromthe .iso image file.

Once the native dsd (.dsf or .dff contained) streams have been unpacked from the .iso image file, hopefully they should become playable. Or they could even be converted to FLAC using Sonore DSD2FLAC

If @jimfisheye only has SACD's then yep, he'll need a third-party device to read and back-up SACD's first to .iso... Personally I use my old OPPO BDP-103 for this...

 

[kfbkfb]

There's always the "brute force" option - my low end Pioneer VSX-534 receiver has MCH DSD (from SACDs) decoding but only speaker outputs, the speaker output(s) could be reduced in level to line level and digitized (and of course saved in various formats).


Kirk Bayne

 

[humprof]

A really good recent reference for ripping SACD’s, including a list of compatible bluray players, is “Down the Rabbit Hole of SACD Ripping and DSD Extraction”.

I got into this only about a month ago, using an older Sony UHD player (BDP-S5100) I found used on eBay for about $50. That’s led to an expensive new habit of acquiring multichannel SACDs! I also am resurrecting my old “fat” PS3 as a backup ripper.

Once you have SACD ISOs, the world is your oyster as far as options for playback. I’m currently using a “Chinoppo” Oppo 203 clone (M9702) and simply NFS-mount the filesystem containing the ISOs and play (native DSD streamed to a Denon AVR) from that mount.

Welcome to QQ, @zdjh22. I have multiple Oppos (and a couple of old Sonys) and I'm familiar with the ripping game--about which there are a couple of dedicated threads here. I hadn't seen that PSAudio blog post before, though; thanks for that. But what I really can't believe I'd never heard of is the "Chinoppo M9702." So am I understanding correctly that the Chinoppo is like a "jailbroken" Oppo--and/or like those older Oppos which would play ISOs natively, at least before the firmware update that wiped out that capability?

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

For anyone who wants to learn more about backing up their SACD's, you could do no worse than reading the following: SACD Ripping using an Oppo or Pioneer? Yes, it's true!

There are quite a few old Sony and Pioneer [2K] Blu-ray players that can be configured to back-up SACD's...

 

[zdjh22]

Welcome to QQ, @zdjh22. I have multiple Oppos (and a couple of old Sonys) and I'm familiar with the ripping game--about which there are a couple of dedicated threads here. I hadn't seen that PSAudio blog post before, though; thanks for that. But what I really can't believe I'd never heard of is the "Chinoppo M9702." So am I understanding correctly that the Chinoppo is like a "jailbroken" Oppo--and/or like those older Oppos which would play ISOs natively, at least before the firmware update that wiped out that capability?

Thanks for the welcome!

Yes, the Chinoppo is like a jailbroken Oppo, except they (M9702, M9201, M9202, M9203, M9205) don't have an optical disc transport, just a motherboard that has the same MediaTek ARM-based quad-core system-on-a-chip and the necessary glue electronics. Originally they came with a Chinese version of the jailbreak firmware that had some additional eye candy (fancier background screens) and restrictions (AutoScript turned off, various features requiring a registration key). Lately they've just come with the "standard" (LOL) jailbreak firmware.

I found a used M9702 for sale and undid the Chinese firmware and installed the standard firmware. Since there's no BluRay drive Oppo firmware works (no decoding needed since you can't read an actual disc). The MediaTek chipset runs Linux, and I have about 29 years of Linux experience so love to play around inside. Also, developer software for the MediaTek chipset is available (MTKTOOL) and with it you can downgrade to older Oppo firmware. It's hard to pass up the jailbreak features, however.

The M9702 isn't made any longer, but the M92xx still are. The M9203 is an Oppo 203 clone, and the M9205 an Oppo 205 clone. The M9201 and M9202 are simpler or have restrictions (e.g., no Dolby Video IIRC). The M92xx don't have discrete analog outputs, so you still need to find a genuine Oppo 203 or 205 (or 103 or 105) for those. DSD multichannel output needs to be done over HDMI to a compatible AVR; PCM multichannel can be done over an optical or coax line. The M9203 and M9205 have the same 4K scalar as the Oppo's, with an HDMI-in, and two HDMI-out (full video, and "audio only").

Lots of info is available at AVFORUMS and AVPASION. You can buy them directly (Aliexpress or bd-mod) or via AVPASION (2 year warranty there!).

 

[mandrix]

A really good recent reference for ripping SACD’s, including a list of compatible bluray players, is “Down the Rabbit Hole of SACD Ripping and DSD Extraction”.

I got into this only about a month ago, using an older Sony UHD player (BDP-S5100) I found used on eBay for about $50. That’s led to an expensive new habit of acquiring multichannel SACDs! I also am resurrecting my old “fat” PS3 as a backup ripper.

Once you have SACD ISOs, the world is your oyster as far as options for playback. I’m currently using a “Chinoppo” Oppo 203 clone (M9702) and simply NFS-mount the filesystem containing the ISOs and play (native DSD streamed to a Denon AVR) from that mount.

First welcome to QQ!
I have a jailbroke Oppo 103, I use an NFS utility to feed the Oppo .iso's. But truth is I don't use the Oppo that much any more, I use the pc mostly. PowerDVD and VLC between them play most everything although I still use Foobar for FLAC out of habit, and DVDA and SACD .iso's.

Motherboard HDMI > AVR > 7.1.4 Atmos system. Although I do use a second AVR and pre out the side surrounds to it.
I keep my music collection on my pc when possible in .iso format, although I do have other formats e.g. as bought downloads in FLAC, & Atmos downloads in MKV, MP4, M4A.