SACD Ripping using an Oppo or Pioneer? Yes, it's true!

[bnbayer]

PLEASE report back, especially a successful rip. I will act as go-between for the silent folks behind the scene who actually discovered and created this stuff.

 

Another success story to add! I just discovered the thread the other day, and have finally managed to read my way all the way through it. (Gives me something to do while waiting to change discs in the Oppo...) I've ripped about 30 discs so far; extracted DSF files from about half, and tagged about a third of those. 5 of those were BIS 'extended play' SACD-stereo-only discs of over 4 hours each; the rest were hybrids. Only about another 50 or so to go.

 

So, I'm using an Oppo BDP105 and a 2014ish i5 iMac which is normally my music server only. Both are connected directly to router or switch by Ethernet cable. (My WiFi would slow it down quite a bit.) The Oppo has BDP10X-83-0715 [latest] firmware update; the iMac is on Yosemite. Speeds have been about what has been reported on this forum.

 

I used the instructions from tmtomh in post #127 on page 6. Worked perfectly, first time (well, actually second time: first time I put in the wrong IP address for the Oppo, and oddly enough it didn't work...).

 

I'm using Sonore iso2dsd to rip the raw ISO file, then (as a second, separate step) to extract the stereo DSF from that. Speeds for this step are much slower than has been mentioned: not that much faster than the original ISO rip.

 

Archiving the ISO file, and fixing/adding tags to the DSF with Yate. This I do from an iMac upstairs in my office over WiFi, so iso2dsd can keep working downstairs unimpeded. Actually much less work than tagging classical music on most CD rips - the metadata from the SACD is far better than the info that XLD or others find on the internet. (The SACD info comes from the producer of the disc; the CD internet stuff is a wiki sort of thing which is well-meaning, but wildly inconsistent and often flat-out wrong.)

 

None of my SACDs have had cover art with this process, so I add it with Yate, embedded in the dsf.

 

Playback is from Audirvana+ and the rips that I've completed, extracted, and tagged sound very good. No clicks or other nastiness. Definitely about 3db quieter than PCM files, though.

 

Huge thanks to Ted B, tmtomh, and all the rest of you for getting this info out there. I haven't listened to spinning discs much for about 3 years, so this has rescued some really good stuff from oblivion.

[bnbayer]

So it looks like the Oppo 103 is now sold out at Amazon.com and Oppo direct.

I wonder if this is a temporary shortage, or if the drive is now out of production.

 

By coincidence, I was at the Canadian Oppo distributor just the other day - before I discovered this thread - and heard quite a bit about this.

 

The 103 and 105 ('D' or plain) have been out of production for a while. Oppo and its distributors have been selling off their stock in anticipation of the BDP-203 4K player. (The 203 is supposed to arrive in the US in November, and before Christmas in Canada. The 205 or whatever it will be called is still at least a year out.) There are very few 10x models available now anywhere.

 

This is good news for any of us who are looking for an Oppo 10x as a ripper, though. It's a cinch that the new player won't work for us, BUT Oppo nutters are very loyal. Dollars to doughnuts, most of those new players will be going to existing Oppo owners, and gently used 103s and 103Ds (and even 105/105Ds) will start appearing on the audio marts in good numbers. With the 203 selling for only USD499, once they start shipping in quantity the used prices for the 10x models can't stay too high. (Right now there are some stupid asking prices...)

[bnbayer]

I'm only aware of these 4 titles:

 

J.S. Bach - Complete Organ Music, 20 hours+ of music on 5 SACDs for the price of 2!, BIS-SACD-1527/28

Total Time: 20 hours 8 minutes 21 seconds

 

What is the 5th title? Thanks!

 

No 5th title: I meant the 5 discs of the Bach Organ set.

 

(BTW, I love the note BIS puts on the back of the box-set:

 

"What if you do not have an SACD player? May we suggest that you buy this box AND and SACD player. In all you should pay no more than the original 18 CDs would have cost."

 

You have to give him full marks for nerve...)

[bnbayer]

BTW the extraction of the dsf files from the iso image with ISO2DSD is very CPU intensive whereas the iso extraction itself is not.

On my i7 the CPU jumps to 98-99% mostly for sacd_extract.exe (around 95%).

So the speed of this dsf extraction will very much depends on your hardware.

 

That makes sense: my music server is a pretty slow iMac (1.4 GHz dual-core i5). No wonder the extraction is slower than the rip.

[bnbayer]

Only used Oppo's out there anymore on Ebay.

The relevant OPPO's have been out of production for a while, and distributors have probably sold off all the old stock. There is a new model due (with 4K, I think - BDP203) but it won't have the same chip set, so no good for our purposes.

 

Possible that more used 103's and 105s will show up when the 203s start shipping.

[bnbayer]

Seeking help in trying to rip SACD from 105.

 

[clip]

 

What could went wrong, this seem to be a simple steps.

 

Any suggestion is helpful.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Full instructions on page 6, post#127

 

If you're already following this... your problem looks to my non-expert eye like the OPPO isn't reading the USB stick. I recall they had to be smallish sticks, the files needed to be in the folder, and the folder needed to be at the root of the USB drive.

[bnbayer]

5 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

I have no doubt that is true today, and some professionals routinely use ultra resolutions of either PCM or DSD for recording and mastering of SACD.  Actually, higher resolutions are now more routinely used for recordings destined for CD, as well.  But, even as few as 5 years ago, 44 or 48k were more prevalent than today for recording and mastering.  And, many of those slightly older SACDs are still for sale.  

Absolutely right. I suspect few professionals today are recording "for" either SACD or CD today: they'll go with the highest res they can afford and work with (it's especially the editing suite they find efficient to use), and then transcode as needed for all the different formats their label can sell - increasingly that's streaming and download, but usually CD and sometimes SACD as well. But SACD has been out for almost 20 years, and many of the recordings released on SACD are older than the format. Not too many years ago 24/44 was the best [PCM] you could do, and SACD was the only way to release it in better than CD sound.

[bnbayer]

As an FYI aside - A lot (if not most) of newer SACD MCh recordings are actually 3-channel stereo as well. They generate a standard 6-channel SACD master so as not to cause issues in manufacturing, but the producers put no information in the rear or sub channels. (This is true of classical producers and labels - I don't know about other genres.) 

 

You're supposed to have 3 equal front speakers for this, not a surround sound centre. I've heard that setup in an editing studio and it was brilliant. Never had that setup at home, though.

[bnbayer]

2 hours ago, ted_b said:

This is news to me, too.  I'm in the industry, and we do mostly classical at Channel...but even knowing Soundmirror and others (and all our NativeDSD labels), this is not what I know, especially the "if not most".

I'm sure I was over-stating the case with 'if not most'. Certainly I'm aware that Channel has been a great supporter of both real multi-channel and real DSD recording - a number of labels were issuing SACDs as the only way (15 or so years ago) to get higher-than-rebook recordings to the public, but were actually recording in PCM, whether because they preferred the sound or preferred the editing software.

[bnbayer]

Sooner ISO2DSD will get individual DSF files for each track. If you're on a Mac, XLD will transcode the DSD files to FLAC.

[bnbayer]

13 hours ago, John A said:

I tried re-inserting the stick a bunch of times.  The turn off/turn on method worked for me right away.  I am in the process or ripping my ninth SACD as I type.  I have 300 so it's going to take a while.  

I hope you don't mean you're re-booting the Oppo for every disc. Once the USB stick has been inserted and the Oppo has opened the drawer once, you can take the USB stick out and open the drawer manually for the next disc you want to rip. The only provisos are 1) don't press the PLAY button for a disc you want to rip, and 2) don't turn off the power.

You can even a play a disc normally in-between rips. When you want to to rip another disc, just open the drawer with the button, insert the disc to be ripped, and close the drawer with the button (NOT 'play').

[bnbayer]

8 hours ago, CuteStudio said:

I was wondering about the benefits of ripping SACDs as they are unfortunately stuck in DSD land rather than what may be regarded as the industry standard PCM24 quality format.

 

I.e. http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/sacd-fundamentally-flawed.26075/page-3

 

So what do you do with the rips and is the PCM conversion any better than an up-sampled CD of the same music?

I'm impressed with the ripping concept in general however: the copy protection on SACD was the main thing that stopped me buying any, and that was even before I'd read up on DSD.

 

Whoa! Stop.

 

The opinion expressed on the linked forum are expert opinions, but they were certainly NOT universally held among all the experts, and can't be taken as gospel. More to the point, the post is 14 years old! In computer audio terms, 2003 is the Bronze Age.

 

PCM24 is certainly the most commonly used recording format but certainly not universal. (And "standard" doesn't mean "best"...) In any case, which PCM24 are we talking about? There are at least 6 in common use (24/44, 24/48, 24/88, 24/96, 24/176, 24/192), plus some really high-res ones (like 24/384 - although I guess most 384 sampling rates may be done at 32-bit depth).

 

Plus there are important labels and great engineers and producers - all with big ears and a firm commitment to great-sounding music - firmly committed to DSD recording. Increasingly that's higher resolution DSD128 or 256, rather than the 20+ year old SACD format (DSD64).

 

I would argue that rather than PCM24, the current industry standard is that there is no industry standard. Modern DACs, network players, and computer audio players are agnostic. Get a DAC/player/program that plays as many formats as possible. Then you pick the music you want to hear in the best version it comes in. Let the artists, labels, and producers worry about what system to use to record and master it: to you it doesn't matter as you can play them all.

 

 

[bnbayer]

4 hours ago, art said:

 

It would be difficult - if not impossible - to determine the actual source type of each of my SACDs.

 

When it comes to SACD RIPs - to stay on topic! - the actual source recording of your SACDs doesn't matter. The original source material isn't on the CD or SACD - it's in the vaults, back at the label office.  The Sony-Philips Red Book locked the CD format in 1983 to 16-bit/44mHz sampling rate: that's all that's on a CD. Sony locked the SACD format to DSD64: that's all that's on an SACD. Those are the only file types you can RIP. If you have an SACD, by all means RIP the SACD layer - it will [*almost!*] always be superior to the Red Book layer. Even if the the original recording was done in PCM24/192 or whatever, that is NOT on the disc. There will more of the 24/192 information on the DSD layer than on the Red Book layer.

 

** The almost bit above would be a few examples where some misguided label created a DSD master for an SACD by running the 16-bit CD master through the conversion program while the engineer went for tea. The SACD layer probably doesn't sound any worse than the Red Book, but not much better either.

[bnbayer]

10 minutes ago, beerandmusic said:

I know this was written awhile ago, so just curious if the new Oppo's work too (e.g. oppo 205)?

 

 

No. Different chipset.