Actually, switching MC to 'extract' DFF/DSF files from a SACD ISO (extracting the raw SACD ISO track data and putting it into a DFF/DSF container method sacd_extract uses) would probably be better than just disallowing SACD to DSD conversions. In addition, allowing
DFF > DSF or
DSF > DFF 'conversions' by repackaging and not re-encoding (so there's no actual DSD > PCM > DSD conversion) would also be nice.
MC could do the following...
1) If a SACD ISO is imported into a library, give the user a specialized tool to extract the SACD/DSD data into a individual track (by extracting the track's raw data, then packaging it into a DFF or DSF container), giving the choice of either DFF or DSF.
2) If the convert format option is being used to convert a SACD ISO to individual DFF/DSF tracks, either simply point it to the specialized tool mentioned above or do the conversion the same as above by extracting the raw track data and packaging it without doing any kind of re-encoding (and thus avoiding the DSD > PCM > DSD conversion).
3) If MC is being used to convert DFF to DSF or DSF to DFF, instead of converting (and going through the DSD > PCM > DSD conversion), simply repackage the container from DFF to DSF or DSF to DFF without re-encoding the actual data of the original file.
That way, the DSD > PCM > DSD conversion can largely be avoided. There are apps that can do both, so it's possible (
sacd_extract 'extracts' and
dff2dsf 'converts DFF to DSF by repackaging but it's Mac-only).
At the very least, having MC repackage DFF or DSF files without re-encoding would likely be MUCH appreciated. Probably would be interesting to experiment with seeing if you can take a DFF file and repackage it to a DSF file (then vice versa) without doing any re-encoding to see how easy it is.
If you want I can start a new topic regarding both requests.
EDIT: New topic is
here.