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[eddyshere]

Matt, Thanks for the rapid answer. My Denon 5308ci is deemed to accept dsd over hdmi...but it sounds less good than through the proprietary denon-link. Without launching the endless debate of what sounds better dsd-pcm I tend to agree with you : currently I send multichannel 192/24 pcm into the denon and the results are really amazing. A million thanks to have thought about SACD and have it implemented so quickly !!!!

[pacwin]

HDMI does not support DSD bitstreaming, and I think there's little chance of that changing soon.

I think it does. A study of the HDMI specification 1.3 or later shows that HDMI can transport DSD or DST data  This is an optional not required feature. If it is implemented then it has to support at a minimum DSD 64fs but the HDMI standard allows up to DSD 512fs rates over HDMI and up to 8 channels. In terms of the  HDMI Handshake the device can advise/report DSD support, DST support and rate support (returned as the base frequency of 44.1 and the fs multiplier) in the SHort Audio Descriptor field of the EDID

"A Source may transmit One Bit Audio at an fS (1/64th of the bit rate) of 32kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz,88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz or 192kHz. Any Source capable of supporting One Bit Audio should support an fS of 44.1kHz, corresponding to a bit rate of 2.8224MHz.Transmitted One Bit Audio shall have an audio sample rate within ±1000 ppm of the targeted sample rate. A Sink may accept One Bit Audio at an fS (1/64th of the bit rate) of 32kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz or 192kHz. Any Sink capable of supporting One Bit Audio shallsupport an fS of 44.1kHz, corresponding to a bit rate of 2.8224MHz."

Just an observation. Your reliance on users to supply ISO files suggests that you don't have an extensive library of DSD data at your disposal and a restricted experience with DSD (not Analog tape->DSD or PCM->DSD, DXD->DSD). Native DSD (record->mix->master) recordings especially those which are stereo/simply miked, unmixed, live to DSD recorder through a good Analog to DSD converter like the Grimm AD-1 converter are in a different class than similarly sourced analog captured by PCM. However these are an audiophile niche and popular music listeners need not be concerned on missing out.

Pulse width modulation is not architecturally the same thing as pulse code modulation when it comes to capturing analog. Delta-sigma DACS and DSP type operations in software may effectively.practically obliterate differences between DSD and PCM in the digital domain but the ability of DSD to initially represent/capture the analog signal is superior to PCM, in the area of impulse response especially and micro dynamics like attack and decay. Multichannel listening is a different kettle of fish however. Room correction (time and frequency adjustements), for now, are best done in high bit rate PCM until such time as  CPU/DSP power allows SDM/DSD equivalents. DSD's benefits are further multiplied once you start to raise the sample rate. As others have suggested, on revealing systems in competent rooms DSD transcoded to PCM is a discernible sonic degradation compared to DSD left untouched on its way back to analog. This aural distinction is clearer with DSD originated sources as above but less so where the recorded source was PCM which has undergone PCM->DSD->PCM manipulations

[Matt]

I think it does. A study of the HDMI specification 1.3 or later shows that HDMI can transport DSD or DST data

Interesting.  I (obviously) did not know that.

Is there any HDMI hardware on a computer (video card, DAC, etc.) that would accept DSD?

on revealing systems in competent rooms DSD transcoded to PCM is a discernible sonic degradation compared to DSD left untouched on its way back to analog

I've heard people argue both sides.  Conceptually I don't see how DSD could contain anything that the converted PCM @ 352kHz could not contain.

Are there double-blind tests that substantiate the claim that you can hear the difference?  It would be a fun thing to try to test.

[ted_b]

I've heard people argue both sides.  Conceptually I don't see how DSD could contain anything that the converted PCM @ 352kHz could not contain.

Are there double-blind tests that substantiate the claim that you can hear the difference?  It would be a fun thing to try to test.

Prior to getting DSD-capable DACs (Meitner and Mytek to name 2) I had converted quite a few of my DSD folders (I've ripped hundreds of SACDs) to 24/352k or 24/176k.  Once I heard them in native DSD, especially those that were recorded and mastered in native DSD (about 30% of all 7000 SACD's out there) there was no comparison.  I'd love to do a double blind.  I feel I could guess 100% of the time.  This is not to say 24/192 or greater PCM isn't wonderful...it is..it's simply to say do not convert DSD to PCM without being willing to live with the sonic consequences (and frankly, the other way around too.   I'd much rather have the PCM masters than the PCM-based SACDs that are out there  ).

And yes, there are dozens of HDMI-capable AVRs and pre/pros that accept, from capable SACD and universal players, DSD over HDMI (i.e have the ability to not convert to PCM automatically).  DSP things like bass management are disabled, however.

[eddyshere]

Absolutely. For me the problem is the following. I use two denons an 5308ci amp and a dvda1udci. I listened to pure SACD's through the denon-link. Quality is just fantastic. and i would also think I could find ou blindly if my denon gets fed with dsd directly or with PCM. For HD music I use a LINN Akurate which goes analog to the amp.
Now for the htpc (dvd-bluray mostly live concerts) & sacd's i can bitstream the dvd's and the bd's but sacd through hdmi bitstream is a no go. I understand that this is dependant on the hdmi audio driver (nv/amd or intel) used and that the hurdle is there.
I saw some DAC with dsd support but these are for the moment all 2-channel DACS. What about multichannel sacd's....and should i abandon the pretty good DA quality of my denon for a only-2channel DAC how would i go for BD and DVD (Actually i?m unaware if in river it would be feasible to play SACD automatically through DAC 1 while BD and DVD would still bitstream through hdmi

Actually I'm very glad and thankfull of the SACD support in MC17...(made me buy MC and switch my whole home server concept over to JRiver) but multichannel PCM even if at 24/192 is the best I can get with my actual setup and the hdmi-no-dsd-bitstreaming limitation.

[jimmy neutron]

This is all very technical for a regular guy to understand, and I completely appreciate the thought process and hard work involved in getting DSD to work as best as possible in MC. I love how it works now - drag the ISO into MC and done. It would be greatt if MC would just scan and pick it up like any othr FLAC file in the library. Now, I don't have (yet) a DSD capable DAC as my Krell pre amp's DAC tops out at 24/192. I will purchase soon a DSD capable DAC, so the learning curve is kinda steep right now. I guess this is the only thing keeping me from going out and buying one right now. I don't know how this will end up and I'm just waiting to see how all this will get resolved. But I gotta say that DSD downsampled to 24/192 sounds pretty darn good from my listening chair!! 

Thanks for your hard work guys.

Jimmy

[stealer]

Hi,

Finally, I managed to get a sacd ISO file from a friend.
"drag & drop" the file into the "Now playing' and true it expands to multi music files.

But when I "import to library", i can't seem to find the files...
Am I suppose to see this file physically...?

[Matt]

"drag & drop" the file into the "Now playing' and true it expands to multi music files.

But when I "import to library", i can't seem to find the files...

Currently you have to import with drag-n-drop.

Import with the regular import tool will be supported in the future.

[Skogkatt]

I've tried to import (drag-n-drop) a couple of SACD ISOs and they played flawlessly.
The strange thing is the album file size reported at the bottom of the "tracks" view: it looks like that the displayed album size
is the result of the ISO size multiplied by the number of tracks. This happens for both discs so that each album weights several
tens of Gigabytes while the real ISO size only few GB. It is a minor problem but this makes difficult to quickly evaluate the total disk space
used by the disc collection, at least from MC.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks. 

 

[stealer]

Hi Matt,

thanks for the response, but think you misunderstood my question..
I was following the steps by Ton, after the drap & drop of the file...see bold text
Can't see to find where the library, I have not setup the library so it must be at the default location...
Basically was attempting to play from my library so that, like Ton Mentioned .. I don't have to drap & drop every time I wanted to play a iso file.

Meanwhile I  think I figured out how to do it, including import in the Library, but I would like to know if this is also the right, simplest and recommended way.

I dragged and dropped the iso from Windows Explorer in the Playing Now window. It expands then to all the tracks. Then I select all tracks, right-click and choose Import To Library. Subsequently I get an entry in Library and next time, after restarting MC, I can play it from the library without having to import it again.

[eliwankenobi]

Hello,

I imported my SACD ISOs from my local hard drive just fine. But now I all my library to an external hard drive. And when I try to drag and drop the SACD ISO into the Now Playing section, it doesn't expand into the individual tracks.  It only shows the single iso filename and when I try to "play" it, the roxio software opens up.

When I try doing it from the local hard drive, it does it just fine as its supposed to.

Don't understand.....

[eliwankenobi]

Update

I created a new library with some files stored locally on my laptop. Now this is what happens:

In Main library, all my files are in an external hard drive. In that case, I can only import the ISO file using drag n' drop from the local hard drive in my laptop. If I try from the external harddrive, it only imports the iso file itself and not the individual tracks. If you try to play it, it opens roxio to burn the iso image.


When I switch to the Laptop Library, everything is backwards. I can only import using drag n' drop from the external harddrive. If I try with the local hard drive, it does the same as above. 

Has someone had this happen? What could be happening?

[eliwankenobi]

I figured it out!!

I had the ISO file inside the Album artist folder.  I just removed the ISO from the music folder and put it in a SACD ISO folder and drag n dropped from there.

So Now I have Media\Music as the main music folder but also have Media\SACD_ISOs for the SACD ISOs and all is fine now!!

Hope this info helps those who can't import their SACDs

[salora]

that is a strange behavior
I have 2 computers with MC installed

My sacd are on a folder E:\sacd, and my flac music is on E:\music

on one computer I can have my library with both flac and sacd (with drag&drop) on the other I can't
I must put the sacd into E:\music if I want to drag&drop them

very strange!!!

[bulldogger]

SACD iso is great.

[bulldogger]

Now for the htpc (dvd-bluray mostly live concerts) & sacd's i can bitstream the dvd's and the bd's but sacd through hdmi bitstream is a no go. I understand that this is dependant on the hdmi audio driver (nv/amd or intel) used and that the hurdle is there.
Actually I'm very glad and thankfull of the SACD support in MC17...(made me buy MC and switch my whole home server concept over to JRiver) but multichannel PCM even if at 24/192 is the best I can get with my actual setup and the hdmi-no-dsd-bitstreaming limitation.

Have you had any problems or has anyone else with multi-channel playback? When I try to playback with multi-channel, it plays for a brief moment and then starts buffering. Two channel playback is just fine with no such problem.

[eddyshere]

Have you had any problems or has anyone else with multi-channel playback? When I try to playback with multi-channel, it plays for a brief moment and then starts buffering. Two channel playback is just fine with no such problem.

No I had no issues with multchannel SACD's at all. I would just love to find out a way to bitstream the dsd audio over hdmi rather than sending PCM multichannel 192/24 over HDMI.
BTW I do stream the files (ie are not local but on server-wired gigabit lan). when I press play MC buffers (approx 3-4sec) and then it's just playing steady all the way through.

[bulldogger]

No I had no issues with multchannel SACD's at all. I would just love to find out a way to bitstream the dsd audio over hdmi rather than sending PCM multichannel 192/24 over HDMI.
BTW I do stream the files (ie are not local but on server-wired gigabit lan). when I press play MC buffers (approx 3-4sec) and then it's just playing steady all the way through.

What type of hardware are you using? Your PC? At least one other person is having similar issues. I am wondering if it's a hardware issue on my end.


Also when JRiver converts dsd at 64/384 it applies a roll off at 30khz because of the noise in SACD. Is this 30khz roll off applied when you pass 24/192 with b5.1 out via HDMI?

[eddyshere]

Regular DIY HTPC, core i3, 2130 /AsRock Z77-mini-ITX / AMD 6570 (catalyst 12.6)/ 8GB RAM-1600 / Win 7 64bit. Reduced bitrate output settings in DSP : over 192 to 192. The Amp is a denon 5308 ci(a)...connected through HDMI. I Use WASAPI event style or direct sound.
Source files are stored in dsf format (after extraction from the iso).
Cannot tell re 30khz...where could I check that ? I assume it happens as it is a default setting in the downconversion from either 64bit @ 352.8 kHz or 64bit @ 705.6 to 24bit @ 192 by MC.

[bulldogger]

Regular DIY HTPC, core i3, 2130 /AsRock Z77-mini-ITX / AMD 6570 (catalyst 12.6)/ 8GB RAM-1600 / Win 7 64bit. Reduced bitrate output settings in DSP : over 192 to 192. The Amp is a denon 5308 ci(a)...connected through HDMI. I Use WASAPI event style or direct sound.
Source files are stored in dsf format (after extraction from the iso).
Cannot tell re 30khz...where could I check that ? I assume it happens as it is a default setting in the downconversion from either 64bit @ 352.8 kHz or 64bit @ 705.6 to 24bit @ 192 by MC.

Thanks. I assume everything is 30khz as that's the default but not sure. Matt?

[Christian_Rork]

Another thing I noticed is that if the SACD iso's reside on an external drive, JRiver seems to lose the connection of where the files are on the system - whereas if the iso's are JUST on the harddrive of the CPU, its fine.  Any thoughts?

........on a sidenote, its functionality at this point is pretty good and most importantly the sound is awesome, keep up the good work.

Erik

I seemed to have solved this issue......when I have "Memory Play" selected in the audio settings, that appears to cause this issue.  So I de-selected it and VOILA, problem gone.

[bulldogger]

Source files are stored in dsf format (after extraction from the iso).
Cannot tell re 30khz...where could I check that ? I assume it happens as it is a default setting in the downconversion from either 64bit @ 352.8 kHz or 64bit @ 705.6 to 24bit @ 192 by MC.

Ok, I can play multichannel dsf files with no problem. I just do not have enough CPU power to play them from the iso files without extracting them first. Who can do that? Play multichannel directly from the iso files with no extraction to dsd or dsf first?

[firedog]

Meanwhile I  think I figured out how to do it, including import in the Library, but I would like to know if this is also the right, simplest and recommended way.

I dragged and dropped the iso from Windows Explorer in the Playing Now window. It expands then to all the tracks. Then I select all tracks, right-click and choose Import To Library. Subsequently I get an entry in Library and next time, after restarting MC, I can play it from the library without having to import it again.

Is this indeed the right way ?
Thanks in advance

I'm doing this as above. The iso files will unpack and play. I right click and click import. Subsequently, I see only the first track in the Library, and can't play the other tracks. If I try the drag and drop again the file also doesn't play. The only way I get the file to play again is by deleting it from the HD, and then recopying it to the HD. At this point the "drag and drop" method works again. But only for one time.

[Paulus 69]

I've tried to import (drag-n-drop) a couple of SACD ISOs and they played flawlessly.
The strange thing is the album file size reported at the bottom of the "tracks" view: it looks like that the displayed album size
is the result of the ISO size multiplied by the number of tracks. This happens for both discs so that each album weights several
tens of Gigabytes while the real ISO size only few GB. It is a minor problem but this makes difficult to quickly evaluate the total disk space
used by the disc collection, at least from MC.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks. 

 I am having the same problem, Skogkatt is having... I have about 20 SACD and the total size displayed in the botton of the tracks view of all the SACD I got is more than 1 tera... however the size should be about 3GB for each SACD... is it OK?

[justbecause]

wonderful to see that SACD ISO support was added to this fine HTPC player!!!!

is there any update on the HDMI DSD bitstream playback idea? Is there a way it could be added to the app, then the onus is on people who own various HDMI 1.2+ cards to get THEIR hardware drivers updated/modded to allow for DSD bitsream in windows?

Sadly I'm not an expert and I don't have time to research to know what I'm talking about with the matter any more than what I just summarised :-P.

[amco]

Any update on playing SACD ISOs with MC version 18 ?
Any comment on reproducing multi-channel SACD audio ?
Thanks in anticipation !

[Matt]

Any update on playing SACD ISOs with MC version 18 ?
Any comment on reproducing multi-channel SACD audio ?

Both should already work great in MC18.

If you have a problem, just report it as a bug in a new thread.

[bactam]

Hi Matt et al.
I can play sacd iso with JRiver 18 by a few methods but I have some problem as below:
1. in Theatre view, I can see the sio files with song list and can play, however some iso files when play it needs buffering a lot, so stop start play while buffering. This only happens to a few iso files, most other files are played smoothly.
2. In Window Explorer, I click iso file and open with JRiver default. Then in Window Explorer double click iso it will open JR to play. But if JR already opens, it doesn't work. If I want to play another iso file I have to close JR, then open the other iso from WE again. The buffering issue is the same with those files above.
3. From WE, drag and drop iso into Playing Now window of JR: sometimes it works, sometimes not.

My question 1: does JR20 fix the problem, if so I will upgrade to JR20 from JR18. If not, what can I do to avoid buffering too long?
Question 2: I convert iso to dsd by using the jave sacd2dsd where I select convert DSF to DSD, does converted dsd file have similar quality as iso or is quality compromised?

[Podiumman]

ok I must be dumb. You said it's at the top of the board, but scrolling all the way up, I don't see anything to download.

[Matt]

ok I must be dumb. You said it's at the top of the board, but scrolling all the way up, I don't see anything to download.

This is the version 17 board, but we're on MC 21 now.  So download that.