sacd_extract DSF output problem

[Synfreak]

My painful processes following:

 

My finding of DSF individual tracks output from sacd_extract will not do gapless perfect, I use mac mini+myteck, or Sony Z1ES, both are supposed to be gapless, but I still hear gaps.

 

I don't have problems with "gapless playback" at all - apart from the transition klick noises with *.dsf as reported above.

So this may be software/setup related?

 

I have quite a lot rips need gapless playback, so I'd rather have one big track. Unfortunately, sacd_extract only output DFF as whole disk track, I don't think DSF can.

 

It should be possible to get the SACD_extract output set to DSF "one file with cue sheet".

The batch file on windows should look like this:

@Echo Off

FOR /F "tokens=*" %%k IN ('dir /b *.iso') DO sacd_extract.exe -s -c -e -i"%%k"

Echo Extraction Completed

Pause

(Havent tested this, but will do later today!)

 

If you use Jesus' (Sonore) GUI programm on MAC, you may ask him to add this functionality.

[Synfreak]

OK, I have to revise my post from above ...

 

SACD_extract can not be set to get the "Edit Master" file (+ CUE) as *.dsf ....

 

Sorry.

[thm655321]

You can extract to individual dsf files (i.e., one song for each dsf). Just choose Phillips DSDDIFF as the output (in the Sonore gui).

[Synfreak]

You can extract to individual dsf files (i.e., one song for each dsf). Just choose Phillips DSDDIFF as the output (in the Sonore gui).

 

?

You surely meant "extract to individual dff files".

Philips DSDIFF = *.dff

[ted_b]

Gapless is not a DSF vs DFF issue. It is a player issue. I have thousands of DSF, playing gapless via JRIver Windows.

[Esprit]

It seems like it would be easier to just keep things as ISO files rather than extracting them to individual tracks, and use a player which supports that. (e.g. JRiver)

I'm using ISOs but I don't know/understand if the "final audio quality" is (could be...) the same...

My player is Audirvana.

[Esprit]

You surely can use the Sonore GUI, can't you?

I'm asking (Ted's Guide included)

[Esprit]

Is this the input file (2CH or MCH on the ISO) or the output?

 

DSF vs. DFF, ok.

What is DSDIFF Edit Master?

Is "Raw ISO" the same file (ISO) of the input? What is the utility of this option?

 

Cue Sheet?

Convert DST to DSD?

Print?

 

Thanks to those who can explain/clarify me.

[couchjr]

Not sure how to reach Jesus at Sonore other than this thread, so apologies if this doesn't interest others, but it may. I've just done a batch extraction of 100+ ISO files using his GUI version (ISO2DSD) for the Mac. I thought everything had gone fine until I realized that it skipped about 24 ISOs saying it couldn't read the files. A quick inspection showed that the problem was that it would not read characters with diacritical marks in the ISO filenames (conductors like Paavo Järvi or works like Götterdämmerung or Lt. Kijé). I manually replaced all these characters in the ISO names with plain Latin characters and then they extracted fine.

 

The *output* both for the folder (album) names and the track names *did* include all the correctly accented characters, so I presume Mr. Wicked's underlying utility is not the problem--though I haven't done a one-to-one comparison, I don't remember having this problem with it.

 

Is it possible that the Sonore app could be changed to recognize the appropriate ISO (not audio in this case, but characters) or Unicode character set for input? It's a huge pain and quite time-consuming to have to screen for files with these marks and then manually strip them before running a batch.

 

The software does offer a couple of nice advantages, so I'd like to keep using it.

 

One other feature request would be to abandon the horizontal scrolling in the selection window (appears when reading a folder with a large number of files.) It's hard to tell what you've already selected when trying to do a noncontiguous selection (command-click) of several files, since it's hard to accurately scroll back. A straightforward vertical scroll, as in any Mac Finder folder, with a side slider for fine movement among hundreds of files, would be much preferable, at least to me.

 

Many thanks for the effort to develop this!

[ted_b]

sonorejr at gmail dot com or PM vortecjr

[ted_b]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]10800[/ATTACH]

Is this the input file (2CH or MCH on the ISO) or the output?

 

It's the option window to pick your output.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]10801[/ATTACH]

DSF vs. DFF, ok.

What is DSDIFF Edit Master?

The full album in one file, aka the edit master. Is one way to get gapless if your player doesn't. Could use a cue file to delegate the track lengths, etc.

Is "Raw ISO" the same file (ISO) of the input? What is the utility of this option? Good question...dunno really.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]10802[/ATTACH]

Cue Sheet? Needed for edit master (see above)

Convert DST to DSD? As has been stated here numerous times, DST is a compressed form of DSD, used on many SACDs that have multichannel content to fit all the music. Although DST saves space it is a pita to play back, so I ALWAYS have this check box stored. Also, in the rate case that DST creeps ino the stereo layer most players will not play DST-compressed stereo...so you get garbage. Storage is cheap...keep it checked.

Print? It displays disc and track info before the extraction begins...nice to have if you happen to be printing the output (copy-paste into text file).

Thanks to those who can explain/clarify me.

 

Bolded inside quotes cuz I was lazy

[ljames]

I think your are right. It's likely Sony-Z1ES the player has the gap problem even gapless was ON(AUTO) in the settings. I'd play more and see if there is a easier solution.

 

Gapless is not a DSF vs DFF issue. It is a player issue. I have thousands of DSF, playing gapless via JRIver Windows.

[wappinghigh]

Never mind.

[Talos2000]

I sent Mr Wicked and a couple of his partners an email, as it has been discussed ad nauseum on the trouble logs. Their contention is that the clicks are, again, dc offset which is then audibilized by switching to PCM ...

 

Is this still their position?

 

Whether it clicks or not is kind of irrelevant. These are lossless, uncompressed, native file formats. Either sacd_extract produces identical audio content in the DFF and DSF extractions, or it doesn't. If the two are different, then at least one of 'em must be wrong! Miska (and others) has pointed out precisely where to look for the differences. It is 5 minutes of work with a Hex Editor.

 

An easier way is to look at the very end of the DSD audio content in the DSF file. The DSF spec calls for the audio data to be stored in blocks of 4096 bytes. If the last block is incomplete, the spec calls for it to be padded with zeros. So unless the DSD audio content just happens to fit exactly into an integer number of 4096-byte blocks, then the last 4096-sample block will be padded with a bunch of zeros that are easy to spot with a Hex Editor. If the zeros aren't there, then either you've hit the one-in-a-thousand chance that the audio data just happens to exactly fill the last block, or else the data must have been truncated.

 

Oh, and thanks for pointing out the DFF2DSF converter from the Yate guys...

[root9]

I have the problem too. As stated above, the problem is only with DSF not DFF. I did a null test with the original ISO and converted DFF tracks and the two were identical all the way through Dark Side of the Moon- no missing data. I of course had to convert to PCM in foobar for the test, but the DSF had missing data and the DFF did not. Zooming in on the DSF I could see the truncated waveforms causing the audible clicks, but there was no problem with the DFF files. If the problem is really in the PCM conversion I don't understand how it would only affect the conversion from DFS. Hopefully this can be fixed since DFF is worthless for tagging.

[Synfreak]

@root9:

 

If you use Foobar2000 as player, you can tag DFF files. No problem here on my side.

The only problem with tagged DFF files may be, that these tags aren't recognized in other software players ...

 

I still have some faint clicks/ticks on song transitions, even with DFF files. But way less worse as with DFF.

That may be related to my setup, don't know.

[Miska]

If you use Foobar2000 as player, you can tag DFF files. No problem here on my side.

The only problem with tagged DFF files may be, that these tags aren't recognized in other software players ...

 

Does it write ID3v2 tags or what? I added support for ID3v2 tags in DFF files in HQPlayer 3.2.0, so it may work. I'd be happy to hear if someone who has both players have tried it out...

[Synfreak]

Jussi, why not trying it for yourself ... :-)

 

Anyway, I have requested a demo download of your player, and will report back!

Maybe it will also show if I will have the same "problems" as I have now with Foobar (see above).

[Synfreak]

Jussi,

AFAIK, your player seems to recognize my custom tags I added (i.e. composer(s), album name).

 

As I use quite a number of tags to organize my collection, HQPlayer only shows some of them (obviously), but it seems to work so far.

 

Here an example on what tags I use (Foobar tagging editor):

 

[root9]

Thanks Synfreak. I do use foobar, but I also stream to an Oppop BDP-103.

 

The BDP-103 streams have gaps between tracks, (which I think the latest firmware fixed for USB drive input only and not streaming), so the clicks are the least of my problems. I expect that Oppo will figure out a fix in a future firmware update but if not maybe I'll do some kind of workaround for albums where gaps are not acceptable.

 

I just ripped a bunch of SACDs and what I'm trying to do is future-proof this now as much as possible. Convert and tag them now as DSF and be done with it. I don't want to have to worry about staying with a certain player. Since the DSF files converted by this utility are not a complete representation of the ISO because of missing samples, I think I'll hold off until a fix is made.

 

I'm surprised you are occasionally hearing clicks on the DFFs, even faint ones... Maybe foobar can have a small amount of trouble keeping up on the fly when converting to PCM from DFF..? There seems to be zero potential for clicks if playing a PCM already converted from DFF (meaning a DFF converted from ISO by the Sonore utility) by foobar judging by my null test. (well except for any system slowness that might affect foobar..)

[Synfreak]

Hi!

 

... I expect that Oppo will figure out a fix in a future firmware update but if not maybe I'll do some kind of workaround for albums where gaps are not acceptable.

 

I wouldn't hold my breath on this, 'cause AFAIK, the "gapless" problem (whilst streaming) isn't firmware related, but a "fault" of the used chipset (MediateK?). Maybe a future version of the player(s) will use a newer/different chipset, which then will enable gapless streaming.

 

I just ripped a bunch of SACDs and what I'm trying to do is future-proof this now as much as possible. Convert and tag them now as DSF and be done with it. I don't want to have to worry about staying with a certain player. Since the DSF files converted by this utility are not a complete representation of the ISO because of missing samples, I think I'll hold off until a fix is made.

 

The best way of handling it at the moment would be keeping the ISOs for future reference, and convert to DSDIFF for use.

A small utility which converts DSDIFF to DSF without mangling the actual content would be great, but I think that was/is only available for MAC OS (mentioned somewhere in this thread). I haven't tried KORGs Audiogate for that purpose yet, maybe it does the job needed - but that would cause some additional processing and time to do it.

 

 

I'm surprised you are occasionally hearing clicks on the DFFs, even faint ones... Maybe foobar can have a small amount of trouble keeping up on the fly when converting to PCM from DFF..? There seems to be zero potential for clicks if playing a PCM already converted from DFF (meaning a DFF converted from ISO by the Sonore utility) by foobar judging by my null test. (well except for any system slowness that might affect foobar..)

 

I don't hear any of the clicks/ticks (with DSDIFF files), when converting DSD to PCM on the fly. They seem only to be apperent when streaming DSD directly to the Mytek.

I will give HQPlayer a listen the next days to see if this is Foobar related or ...

[root9]

Hi!

 

I wouldn't hold my breath on this, 'cause AFAIK, the "gapless" problem (whilst streaming) isn't firmware related, but a "fault" of the used chipset (MediateK?). Maybe a future version of the player(s) will use a newer/different chipset, which then will enable gapless streaming.

 

I heard something about that too, I'm hoping it's not the case! It's pretty surprising to me that gapless wasn't a priority from the beginning.

 

The best way of handling it at the moment would be keeping the ISOs for future reference, and convert to DSDIFF for use.

A small utility which converts DSDIFF to DSF without mangling the actual content would be great, but I think that was/is only available for MAC OS (mentioned somewhere in this thread). I haven't tried KORGs Audiogate for that purpose yet, maybe it does the job needed - but that would cause some additional processing and time to do it.

It's unfortunate to have to spare the extra hard drive space, but I think you're right.

 

I don't have access to a MAC unfortunately. I'm not so sure about Audiogate, I don't like the twitter BS, I'd rather pay for it but they don't give you the option.

[Miska]

Jussi, why not trying it for yourself ... :-)

 

At some point I looked into installing foobar, but then gave up hunting correct plugins...

 

I thought that someone may have both already installed and functional.

 

AFAIK, your player seems to recognize my custom tags I added (i.e. composer(s), album name).

 

As I use quite a number of tags to organize my collection, HQPlayer only shows some of them (obviously), but it seems to work so far.

 

OK, great, thanks! I hope this unofficial feature becomes de facto for DFF just like it has already for formats like AIFF and WAV. Puts the two formats more on the same line.

[Miska]

I will give HQPlayer a listen the next days to see if this is Foobar related or ...

 

Please note that in playlist mode there's some click reduction processing performed at track switch because tracks are assumed not necessarily to belong together. In transport mode the processing is omitted since tracks should belong together...

[Synfreak]

Jussi,

 

At some point I looked into installing foobar, but then gave up hunting correct plugins...

 

I thought that someone may have both already installed and functional.

 

Hehe, yes.

But I could send you a pre-configured and "complete" portable version, if you like ...

 

 

Please note that in playlist mode there's some click reduction processing performed at track switch because tracks are assumed not necessarily to belong together. In transport mode the processing is omitted since tracks should belong together...

 

Errhmm, what ?

Seems that I really need to check the manual first before digging further into it ... :-)

 

How is "transport mode" enabled? What would be the right settings to look at/for?