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

[servoyguru]

2 hours ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

Prepare a USB thumb drive with the correct AutoScript for Sony/Pioneer units (no that Oppo script you've always used won't work).

 

Set-up the S5100 to enable Quick Start mode (this is what allows the machine to sleep).

 

Follow the previously supplied step-by-step:

 

Step 1: Power on Sony S5100

Step 2: Connect USB thumb drive dongle/AutoScript runs/tray opens automatically/load SACD

Step 3: Power down Sony S5100/tray closes automatically/player goes to sleep/AutoScript gains root access control

Step 4: Execute rip in ISO2DSD with one click while Sony S5100 is fast asleep

 

 

Well, thank you from me!

I got a Sony BDP-S490 for £29 on eBay last week & now have finally got it to rip an SACD using this method (although I tweaked the auto script file to use 'CLI(CLI_exec cp `ls -d /mnt/sd*`/AutoScript/sacd_extract_160 /)' instead of the hard coded mnt point)

 

So excited to now be able to get all my SACD's into ISO format & play them back from Mac Mini/Audirvana/Pro-Ject S2 Digital!

 

Thanks again everyone on this thread ? 

[gammarayson]

Thanks so much!

[gammarayson]

17 hours ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

Prepare a USB thumb drive with the correct AutoScript for Sony/Pioneer units (no that Oppo script you've always used won't work).

 

Set-up the S5100 to enable Quick Start mode (this is what allows the machine to sleep).

 

Follow the previously supplied step-by-step:

 

Step 1: Power on Sony S5100

Step 2: Connect USB thumb drive dongle/AutoScript runs/tray opens automatically/load SACD

Step 3: Power down Sony S5100/tray closes automatically/player goes to sleep/AutoScript gains root access control

Step 4: Execute rip in ISO2DSD with one click while Sony S5100 is fast asleep

 

 

Ok, now I have the right AutoScript on my thumb drive(AutoScript TSS,AutoScript,sacd_extract_160) and have enabled Quick Start mode but the drawer does not open automatically when I insert the thumb drive in the Sony....

[tmtomh]

5 hours ago, gammarayson said:

Ok, now I have the right AutoScript on my thumb drive(AutoScript TSS,AutoScript,sacd_extract_160) and have enabled Quick Start mode but the drawer does not open automatically when I insert the thumb drive in the Sony....

 

If that's the case, then I would tend to suspect the formatting of the thumb drive. Are you sure it's formatted in FAT16 or FAT32, with an MBR scheme/partition table?

 

In my experience, the only time the Sony's drawer wouldn't open was when I had the USB drive formatted as exFAT (which is similar to FAT32 but not the same).

[tmtomh]

22 hours ago, servoyguru said:

Well, thank you from me!

I got a Sony BDP-S490 for £29 on eBay last week & now have finally got it to rip an SACD using this method (although I tweaked the auto script file to use 'CLI(CLI_exec cp `ls -d /mnt/sd*`/AutoScript/sacd_extract_160 /)' instead of the hard coded mnt point)

 

So excited to now be able to get all my SACD's into ISO format & play them back from Mac Mini/Audirvana/Pro-Ject S2 Digital!

 

Thanks again everyone on this thread ? 

 

This is a fascinating tweak - thanks!

 

A couple of questions, if you don't mind:

1. When you change "sda1" to "sda*" does the script recursively look for sda0, sda1, sda2, etc until it finds a mounted volume with the sacd_extract_160 executible on it? Doesn't really matter I suppose - I'm just curious about how it works.
2. Is that little mark after the * just a single opening quotation mark, or is it some special diacritical character?

Thanks!

[MikeyFresh]

1 hour ago, tmtomh said:

This is a fascinating tweak - thanks!

 

It is pretty cool, I think this was another @mindset suggestion back in April, but if I read/remember it correctly, it is unneeded when using the sleep method, i.e. if you already have the Quick Start mode enabled then this becomes unnecessary?

 

1 hour ago, tmtomh said:

Is that little mark after the * just a single opening quotation mark, or is it some special diacritical character?

 

I think it is just a grave accent mark, on the Windows keyboard I use at work it's a shared key with the tilde, found directly to the left of the numeral 1 key.  If so it's an ` as opposed to '.

 

 

 

[tmtomh]

16 minutes ago, MikeyFresh said:

 

It is pretty cool, I think this was another @mindset suggestion back in April, but if I read/remember it correctly, it is unneeded when using the sleep method, i.e. if you already have the Quick Start mode enabled then this becomes unnecessary?

 

 

I think it is just a grave accent mark, on the Windows keyboard I use at work it's a shared key with the tilde, found directly to the left of the numeral 1 key.  If so it's an ` as opposed to '.

 

 

 

 

Thanks Mikey! Yes, I see now it's the grave accent - same location on Mac keyboards too.

 

RE the sda*` tweak, yes, it's not necessarily using the sleep method, since the machine doesn't need the USB key to be reinserted. It wouldn't hurt, however, to modify the script file that way for folks just getting started, as initial testing/working out the kinks can result in folks re-inserting the USB key without rebooting the machine, and this tweak would just eliminate one potential source of problems. (Not a criticism and not asking anyone to implement that tweak; just thinking out loud...)

[servoyguru]

Well, I may have been a bit 'premature' with my joy...

I brought a pile of SACDs from home to my office where Sony BDP-S490 is wired up & after getting one more disk to 'rip' easily using the sleep method & ISO2DSD, I couldn't then get any others to, even the ones I had just managed to rip ?

It was giving me this error

Response result non-zero or disc opened
libsacdread: Can't open 192.168.1.208:2002 for reading

I then tried starting afresh & using the combined AutoScript (with both Telnet & server mode commands in it * the tweaked mnt), I could Telnet to Sony, but when I tried to extract, I also got this error

libsacdread: Not a ScarletBook disc!
libsacdread: Can't read Master TOC.

I have now managed, somehow, to get local ripping to work after some combination of on/off, USB in/out, & various Telnet commands & the 2ch/multi ch toggle, but I REALLY wish I could get the sleep mode working properly for multiple discs ripping

 

I agree with the above comment about modifying the script & any instructions with

 cd `ls -d /mnt/sd*`/AutoScript/

instead of the /mnt/sda1 , as newbies will likely get stumped by the drive changing during trial & error process

 

If anyone has the answer to my top errors that stopped ISO2DSD from working, I'd very much appreciate it ? 

Thanks

[MikeyFresh]

29 minutes ago, tmtomh said:

It wouldn't hurt, however, to modify the script file that way for folks just getting started, as initial testing/working out the kinks can result in folks re-inserting the USB key without rebooting the machine, and this tweak would just eliminate one potential source of problems.

 

Yes I agree, and certainly don't see any harm in potentially eliminating one source of problems with USB key re-insertions simply by modifying the script.

 

I guess I should have said it isn't necessary when using the sleep method, if you just remove the USB key once the AutoScript has run and leave it out. You can still rip as many SACDs in a row as you want and would only need to re-insert the USB key if the unit's power cord were unplugged or some other full loss of power had occurred.

[tmtomh]

29 minutes ago, servoyguru said:

Well, I may have been a bit 'premature' with my joy...

I brought a pile of SACDs from home to my office where Sony BDP-S490 is wired up & after getting one more disk to 'rip' easily using the sleep method & ISO2DSD, I couldn't then get any others to, even the ones I had just managed to rip ?

It was giving me this error

Response result non-zero or disc opened
libsacdread: Can't open 192.168.1.208:2002 for reading

I then tried starting afresh & using the combined AutoScript (with both Telnet & server mode commands in it * the tweaked mnt), I could Telnet to Sony, but when I tried to extract, I also got this error

libsacdread: Not a ScarletBook disc!
libsacdread: Can't read Master TOC.

I have now managed, somehow, to get local ripping to work after some combination of on/off, USB in/out, & various Telnet commands & the 2ch/multi ch toggle, but I REALLY wish I could get the sleep mode working properly for multiple discs ripping

 

I agree with the above comment about modifying the script & any instructions with

 cd `ls -d /mnt/sd*`/AutoScript/

instead of the /mnt/sda1 , as newbies will likely get stumped by the drive changing during trial & error process

 

If anyone has the answer to my top errors that stopped ISO2DSD from working, I'd very much appreciate it ? 

Thanks

 

The first error (non-zero/disc opened; Can't open... for reading) is pretty generic - could be lots of potential causes. It basically means the SACD is not available to the ripping app. Usually with the Sony machines this is because there's been some glitch in getting the machine to unmount/"let go of" the disc. However, it could also mean that the disc, or its SACD layer if it's a hybrid, simply isn't detected by the machine...

 

... which leads to your 2nd error, which I think is much more specific: That means the Sony machine was not seeing the disc as an SACD. Some machines sporadically fail to read the SACD layer - temporary glitch or perhaps marginal laser.

 

There is an issue sometimes with overly long track titles or nonstandard characters in the disc title or some such - but I don't think they result in the kind of error you saw. I could be wrong though - others would know better.

[Phthalocyanine]

1 hour ago, servoyguru said:

libsacdread: Not a ScarletBook disc

As silly as it sounds, make sure the disc is not a just a regular Redbook CD and go to music settings and make sure you have not inadvertently changed the setting for reading the SACD layer or the CD layer of a SACD.  That's an error message that occurs when you put in a CD or when the player is set to read the CD layer of a SACD.  (But the error message can also occur when the ripping program cannot find the SACD TOC for various other reasons.)

[servoyguru]

3 hours ago, Phthalocyanine said:

As silly as it sounds, make sure the disc is not a just a regular Redbook CD and go to music settings and make sure you have not inadvertently changed the setting for reading the SACD layer or the CD layer of a SACD.  That's an error message that occurs when you put in a CD or when the player is set to read the CD layer of a SACD.  (But the error message can also occur when the ripping program cannot find the SACD TOC for various other reasons.)

The discs are all Hybrid SACD's, the settings are to use the SACD layer & also the player is recognising the discs correctly when they are inserted, as I am switching my monitor to the HDMI connection to the Sony & see it accessing GraceNote db & then displaying disc with correct album & track names & also saying sound won't play over HDMI.

Once I've 'jiggled' around a little, it then will rip locally to USB, so disc must be ok... (confused)

[[email protected]]

When I started to rip my sacd collection s using telnet method, the 2nd error was encountered occasionally. It is solved when I toggled the music setting from sacd to CD. That means I do the toggling 2 times for each rip.

[BluRay444]

Out of curiosity, after ripping my SACDs to a hard drive to use with jRiver, I was wondering, as a extra backup, could I write my ISOs out to a disc (DVD) so I'd have an extra backup if something ever happened to my SACDs or had read errors in one, and the drive that their on in jRiver died... would I be able to re-rip the SACD-R's  to ISOs again in my Oppo BDP-103? I know I can't play SACD-R's in the Oppo, but when I rip, aren't I reading out the disc before the pit-detection copy protection? (You start thinking about things like this after your house burns down and you lose everything in it!)

 

 

[mindset]

12 hours ago, tmtomh said:

1. When you change "sda1" to "sda*" does the script recursively look for sda0, sda1, sda2, etc until it finds a mounted volume with the sacd_extract_160 executible on it? Doesn't really matter I suppose - I'm just curious about how it works.
2. Is that little mark after the * just a single opening quotation mark, or is it some special diacritical character?

1. No.  When you put sd* and there are multiple matches, the command will not work.  However there is usually only one match as long as only one US stick is inserted, so this is not a problem

2. This is known as back quote or back tick which sits next to the "1" key in regular US keyboard as MikeyFresh mentioned.  The command surrounded by `` is executed and the command and `` are replaced by the output of the command.  This is a very common technique used in UNIX shell.

 

11 hours ago, MikeyFresh said:

It is pretty cool, I think this was another @mindset suggestion back in April, but if I read/remember it correctly, it is unneeded when using the sleep method, i.e. if you already have the Quick Start mode enabled then this becomes unnecessary?

Even for the sleep method, it is needed in case the usb stick is mounted as /mnt/sda (without a number).  In that case sacd_extract_160 will not even run without the tweak.

[Phthalocyanine]

2 hours ago, BluRay444 said:

Out of curiosity, after ripping my SACDs to a hard drive to use with jRiver, I was wondering, as a extra backup, could I write my ISOs out to a disc (DVD) so I'd have an extra backup if something ever happened to my SACDs or had read errors in one, and the drive that their on in jRiver died..

If you burn the .iso image to a DVD using the "write image to disc" function of a DVD writing program you will have a SACD-R, which will play in some SACD players, but maybe not your Oppo with its particular firmware.  And yes, you can rip SACD-Rs even on drives that do not play SACD-Rs.

 

But if all you really want is data backup, then just burn your .iso as data to Blu-ray discs.  SACD range in size from 1GB to 4GB, averaging 2GB, so you can fit about 10 onto a Blu-ray data disc.  Much less time than burning all those individual SACD-R, especially if you never intend to play them.

[Deyorew]

It took me about two hours to get it working, but I am now ripping ISO's on a recently acquired Sony BDP-S390.

 

I had a question....I am ripping to ISO using Sonore app and I was curious where the SACD CD Text Data came from....for instance for my Aimee Mann MFSL sacd:

 

Version 1.01

Creation Date: 2003-06-03

Catalog Number: UDSACD 2021

Category: General

Genre: Adult Contemporary

Locale: en

Title: Lost In Space

Artist: Aimee Mann

 

What does version mean? and is the creation date when the DSD file was first "authored" which of course was before it was release? or does it represent another date...?

[gammarayson]

18 hours ago, tmtomh said:

 

If that's the case, then I would tend to suspect the formatting of the thumb drive. Are you sure it's formatted in FAT16 or FAT32, with an MBR scheme/partition table?

 

In my experience, the only time the Sony's drawer wouldn't open was when I had the USB drive formatted as exFAT (which is similar to FAT32 but not the same).

I have tried with 2 different USB drives, a NoName 2GB and a Nashua 32GB. In Disk Utility I formatted them as in the attached screenshots. Unfortunately, the drawer still doesn't open. Its strange, it opened when I used the files intended for the Oppo 105. Any more suggestions, what I could be doing wrong?

[servoyguru]

Well it would seem that I might have an issue with my Sony, as, as correctly deduced here, it isn't always recognising the SACD layer of my discs, hence the errors/failures.

I am sometimes managing to get discs to work by cleaning them & just trying to open & close the disc drawer lots of times until it 'sees' the SACD layer [I am concerned that it's my own fault as I put a CD Lens Cleaner in to drive hoping to clean the laser, but I may have inadvertatnly damaged it...]

So, unless someone has a good idea how I can fix this or make it always recognise my discs, I may have to try & pick up another one on eBay 8-( 

[tmtomh]

1 hour ago, servoyguru said:

Well it would seem that I might have an issue with my Sony, as, as correctly deduced here, it isn't always recognising the SACD layer of my discs, hence the errors/failures.

I am sometimes managing to get discs to work by cleaning them & just trying to open & close the disc drawer lots of times until it 'sees' the SACD layer [I am concerned that it's my own fault as I put a CD Lens Cleaner in to drive hoping to clean the laser, but I may have inadvertatnly damaged it...]

So, unless someone has a good idea how I can fix this or make it always recognise my discs, I may have to try & pick up another one on eBay 8-( 

 

Sorry to hear this. I recall that when the Pioneer units were the lowest-cost known option, several people bought them, and some reported the same issue. In fact, if memory serves, I think even one or two new-old-stock 80FDs or 160s fresh out of the box wouldn't consistently read SACD layers.

 

The one silver lining here is that the Sony units are so cheap on eBay and elsewhere, you can pick up another one - or even two more - and still be out of pocket for less than one of the Pioneer units, which are the next-least-expensive option.

[BluRay444]

6 hours ago, Phthalocyanine said:

If you burn the .iso image to a DVD using the "write image to disc" function of a DVD writing program you will have a SACD-R, which will play in some SACD players, but maybe not your Oppo with its particular firmware.  And yes, you can rip SACD-Rs even on drives that do not play SACD-Rs.

 

But if all you really want is data backup, then just burn your .iso as data to Blu-ray discs.  SACD range in size from 1GB to 4GB, averaging 2GB, so you can fit about 10 onto a Blu-ray data disc.  Much less time than burning all those individual SACD-R, especially if you never intend to play them.

From my original post "I know I can't play SACD-R's in the Oppo, but when I rip, aren't I reading out the disc before the pit-detection copy protection?"

[Phthalocyanine]

1 hour ago, BluRay444 said:

aren't I reading out the disc before the pit-detection copy protection?"

I'm sorry if I've misunderstood your question.

What is the significance of this to your concerns about making back-up data of your SACDs?

[BluRay444]

There's no need to apologize for trying to help my friend. The question was intentionally specific. I'm an engineer- I've had an unquenchable thirst to know how things work since I was a small child.

 

Regarding backups- writable/re-writable CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays all have store their information in a dye layer that is change by a laser when writing data on it. The dye layer is a fluid, in the same sense that glass is a fluid... if you ever doubt that, examine a very old glass window and you'll find that it is thicker at the bottom than at the top, and there are variations in the thickness over the entire window that distort objects view thru it. Earlier in the history of re-writable discs, things were a lot worse... you could find read errors sometimes within a few months, now it's a much longer period of time, but the fact remains that discs still do fail, just after longer periods of time and at different rates. Some may last for years, even decades, others may fail next month.

 

The effect of consumerism: The average consumer wants to pay the least amount possible. This is the most primitive reason why Amazon exists. Consumers want things cheap. They buy the cheapest discs possible. But you might reply, "I'll just go out and buy the best discs I can"...  enter capitalism. Most consumers really don't know the difference, or care about knowing the difference between cheap discs and high quality discs, so they are driven mainly by price, and sometimes by brand name. It costs a bit more to manufacture really good discs, so even the manufacturers who know how to make them still have to complete with manufacturers of cheap discs, so they in-turn adapt to the consumer and make what the consumer wants, even if the manufacturer has something much better. Manufacturers who choose to only the best discs become a niche market, there's less competition and less sales and the cost of manufacturing goes up, and the end price goes up as well.

 

A basic law of backups: all media will eventually fail. Optical discs, hard drives, tape, solid state storage- all will eventually fail. The longest man-made storage media we currently have are the bricks that Egyptians carved records into. (This is not a literary device used to demonstrate a point, this is fact. I know because I was one of a group of engineers and archivists who were tasked with this research).

 

A second basic law of backups: the greater the amount of data that can be stored on a single media device, the greater the amount of data that is at risk. This why certain modes of RAID are used. We know the drives will fail, so we spread the risk over multiple drives and encode it in such a way that if one of the drives (sometimes more than one, depending on the version of RAID used) fails, the information lost on that drive can be recovered from the bits contained on the other, still functioning drives. 

 

I think the above should go a long way in explaining the economics of backups. When you back up discs that will cost you anywhere from, say $25 to a couple of hundred or more dollars to replace, it doesn't make sense to save money by putting a bunch of them on one blu-ray disc, and risk losing everything on it at once. Economics and time do play a part- imagine the cost of putting each song from an SACD on it's own M-DISC. You may as well go out and buy a second copy of every SACD you own instead. Everyone has to strike a balance of safety vs economy that they're comfortable with. 

[servoyguru]

Me again ? 

I decided to see if I could fix my Sony, so I took it apart, prised open the optical mechanism housing, polished up the lens using a camera lens cleaner pen, put it all back together & it it now recognising each disc correctly 1st time & I am happily using the 'sleep method' to (re) rip all my SACDs!

Thanks again to all on this thread

[MikeyFresh]

1 hour ago, servoyguru said:

I decided to see if I could fix my Sony, so I took it apart, prised open the optical mechanism housing, polished up the lens using a camera lens cleaner pen, put it all back together & it it now recognising each disc correctly 1st time & I am happily using the 'sleep method' to (re) rip all my SACDs!

 

Outstanding, I thought you might try that before giving up on that unit and finding a replacement. Hopefully you'll get a good run out of it now!