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

[Phthalocyanine]

1 hour ago, MeiSh5am said:

 It turns out that all my USB sticks were formatted as "Superfloppys" without a partition table, and that Windows 10 apparently also formats completely blank sticks as superfloppy by default. 

Not quite sure what you mean here.  The USB sticks I format with Windows 10 have a standard partition table etc.

 

But I'm glad you got it to work in the end.  Linux partitioning software like gparted are a wonderful resource.

[MeiSh5am]

3 hours ago, Phthalocyanine said:

Not quite sure what you mean here.  The USB sticks I format with Windows 10 have a standard partition table etc.

  

But I'm glad you got it to work in the end.  Linux partitioning software like gparted are a wonderful resource.

Do your USB sticks have a partition even before you format them? I've just tested it again, and my Windows 10 1803 32 bit just formats all my 4GB sticks without a partition table if I start with a completely blank (all 0) stick with no obvious alternatives visible.  It first states that "you need to format the disk in drive e: before you can use it." and the "Format USB Drive" dialog that pops up only has options for Capacity, File system, Allocation unit size restore device default, Volume label and quick format. Nothing that would indicate that a partition table could be created, unless I did so manually using Disk Management or diskpart.

 

I have to admit that I only used windows because I thought the default behavior should be foolproof and exactly what was needed here. I'm surprised that that is not the case.

[Phthalocyanine]

1 hour ago, MeiSh5am said:

my Windows 10 1803 32 bit just formats all my 4GB sticks without a partition table i

You don't get a choice of specifying MBR or GUID but Windows does create a partition table for the USB drive, probably MBR.

 

My understanding is that you need a partition table to have a file system, which the USB stick certainly has when formatted by Windows (which you can specify as FAT32 or ExFAT).

 

Anyway, not to get caught up in terminology quibbles, what is important for this thread is that people have successfully used USB thumbdrives formatted in Windows 10 (myself for one) for the SACD ripping procedures described here.  You can use other ways to format your USB drive, as you did when using Gparted in Linux, but such esoteric methods are not necessarily needed.

 

I leave any further explanations on formatting USB drives to our resident expert @Dick Darlington

[W49n3r]

That's why I think we should consider having USB "disk images" instead of formating instructions and everything that follows it.

 

Quite a lot of potential trouble simply disappear as the USB image restore tool will create the exact file system and contents every time, bit for bit, no matter the OS used. The average SACD listener shouldn't want to know about partitions, if it's bootable and whatnot.

[nUUK25]

Here is a report back to Phthalocyanine - more precisely about the Sony BDP-S790 and the downloadable guide at # 4377 and the instructions on #4260 about the use of sacd_extract_160 vs. sacd_extract_6200.  Your file replacement thoughts are correct.If you follow all the instructions in the guide: "SACD Backup (Awake-Server Method) Sony BDP S390/490/590" # 4377 it will work alright for the Sony BDP-S790 !  The player can be added to the list/guide  - adding notes about the file replacement on the USB-stick.

 

I have some remarks about the process in Sonore ISO2DSD: There are no problems with the recommended settings in the guide but output has some issues. Channel mode: Dual, tick on Convert DST to DSD...and... tick in Print.

Output mode:

RAW ISO mode, creates a file as predicted. (playable on Foobar2000 with DSD plugin on a PC).

DSDIFF Edit Master mode, creates 2 files as predicted. (playable on Foobar2000 with DSD plugin on a PC).

SONY DSF mode, 'processing' but no files are transferfed to the folder created. What happened here ?

Philips DSDIFF mode, 'processing' but no files are transferfed to the folder created. What happened here ?

 

If I transfer the iSO-file or the 2 DSDIFF Edit Master, set of files to a USB-stick and try playback on the Sony BDP-790, there are no readable files.How can I convert these files (one of them or both) to a readable file-type whish can be read from the USB-port on the Sony BDP-790, keeping the high sound quality and not converting them into a PCM lower quality format ?

If I am all wrong here !

Can I burn the ISO files back onto a DVD using some particular burner software - and playback the DVD on the Sony BDP-790 ?

 

What is the best way to listen to the Music/files over the Stereo ? I have a Vincent tube-preamplifier SA-T7 with digital optical and coax inlets (no USB-inlet). The DAC is a Texas Instruments; PCM5100 chip 24 bit /192KHz.  (Maybe a Burr Brown ?)I also have a Simaudio Moon D260 CD-player (with DAC) with digital inputs and outputs (24 bit /192 KHz)

What is the best practical HiFi setup I can make using the ripped files as files ? 

[Phthalocyanine]

6 hours ago, W49n3r said:

I think we should consider having USB "disk images"

An interesting idea.  Is it possible to prepare a USB disc image for the smallest drive (say 512 MB) and then burn that onto any thumbdrive that size or larger?  Otherwise we face the daunting task of hosting various sized images (which will be rather large. 2GB, 8GB, 16GB etc.)

 

Also what software is a good (hopefully free) disc image writing program for Windows and Mac?  I've tended to use disc image writing tools in Linux when I've had to burn a disc image for special purposes .

[stereo hifi]

Rufus should work. Boot selection, nonbootable and select the .zip script files.

 

 

[W49n3r]

52 minutes ago, Phthalocyanine said:

An interesting idea.  Is it possible to prepare a USB disc image for the smallest drive (say 512 MB) and then burn that onto any thumbdrive that size or larger?  Otherwise we face the daunting task of hosting various sized images (which will be rather large. 2GB, 8GB, 16GB etc.)

 

Yes, but then the disk will be formated with the same size of the original one. Not really a problem if the disk isn't going to be used for writting the ripped files.

 

Quote

Also what software is a good (hopefully free) disc image writing program for Windows and Mac?  I've tended to use disc image writing tools in Linux when I've had to burn a disc image for special purposes .

 

For Linux there's the native "Disk utility gui" and for Windows there is the free USB Image Tool (https://www.alexpage.de/usb-image-tool/). They both generate cross compatible IMG files as long you don't use compressed image formats. I couldn't say which one to use on Macs (I don't have one) but it certainly exists.

 

Edit: Well, after a bit of googling it seems OSX also has a native "Disk utility" that can be used to restore IMG files to USB drives. Worth a try just to be sure.

[MeiSh5am]

18 hours ago, Phthalocyanine said:

You don't get a choice of specifying MBR or GUID but Windows does create a partition table for the USB drive, probably MBR.

 

My understanding is that you need a partition table to have a file system, which the USB stick certainly has when formatted by Windows (which you can specify as FAT32 or ExFAT).

That's definitively not true. USB Sticks without a partition table (and FAT16/32 Filesystem) work without problems in all versions of Windows since at least XP, in MacOS and of course Linux.

 

1 hour ago, Phthalocyanine said:

An interesting idea.  Is it possible to prepare a USB disc image for the smallest drive (say 512 MB) and then burn that onto any thumbdrive that size or larger?  Otherwise we face the daunting task of hosting various sized images (which will be rather large. 2GB, 8GB, 16GB etc.)

I've created the smallest partition and filesystem possible on my smallest USB stick, stuck the required files for Oppo 10x ripping scripts/tools on there and tested that successfully. A Zipped image is attached. Unzip, then use Disk Utility under MacOS, dd in Linux, and maybe Rawrite32 under windows to write that to any USB storage device. 

 

OppoSACDRip.zip

[Dick Darlington]

18 hours ago, Phthalocyanine said:

I leave any further explanations on formatting USB drives to our resident expert @Dick Darlington

 

Well I spent some time looking around the house for an expert of one form or another and sadly I found none.  I didn't want to come up completely empty handed so I figured a series of pictures would have to do.

 

TL;DR:  After trying myself, it went exactly as @MeiSh5am described.  Windows does indeed initialize and format a small uninitialized USB disk without a partition scheme.  Neither MBR or GPT.  Just a single volume containing the file system.  Such a disk will mount as sda and NOT sda1.  Of course this is somewhat mitigated by using the "/mnt/sd*" technique in the AutoScript, however I have reason to believe the Oppos will have problems with a "no partition" disk regardless.

 

Starting with an uninitialized disk, i.e. one with NO partition table or volumes, on my Mac ...

... and then inserting the disk on a Windows 10 system, it shows up as RAW in Windows Disk Manager.

 

 

An attempt to open the disk by double clicking it in Windows Explore results in this ...

 

 

Okay let's do it and see what happens ...

 

 

After formatting on Windows, it's back to the Mac.  Lo and behold the mystery of how my one "special" disk got that way is solved!!!  Sure enough this disk is now a partition less disk having a FAT32 volume at the physical disk level as seen by the Mac.  I also looked via the command line diskutil command and it is neither MBR nor GPT nor anything else.  Note the "disk5" in the lower right corner.  That translates to /mnt/sda when inserted in the player.

Okay so now after being properly prepared for SACD ripping, there are two levels depicted in the Mac Disk Utility for the same disk:  The top (physical disk level) showing the partition layout ...

... and the "child" level showing the volume and file system info.  Note the "disk5s1".  This translates to "/mnt/sda1" on the player.  Had it been "disk5s2", then it would mount as "/mnt/sda2" on the player and so on.

[BluRay444]

"In Windows 10 Anniversary Update and earlier versions of Windows 10, Windows would not allow users to partition USB drives from Disk Management. While it has always been possible to create multiple partitions on internal drives via Disk Management, partitioning USB drive was not possible."

 

"With Windows 10 Creators Update (v1703), Windows 10 allows users to partition USB drives. The only condition is that the USB drive must be formatted in NTFS to partition it."

 

Dick, I sent you 2 PMs w/ links

 

[007james]

I have the Sony 590 and I'm not sure how many different ways you can write up instructions but in the end none of them really work, am i missing something?

[Phthalocyanine]

I'm beginning to see why this USB preparation thing can drive people crazy.

 

Here is the structure of a USB drive I recently formatted in Windows (as shown in Isobuster):

 

This has a partition, although I cannot say that I went out of my way to create one.  Was there one there when I bought it?  I thought I did a complete re-formatting of this at one point.

 

Here's the structure of the image file that @MeiSh5am just uploaded (which Isobuster sees as an optical disc layout rather than a hard disk structure for some reason).  I suppose Track 1 corresponds to the partition:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MeiSh5am]

8 minutes ago, Phthalocyanine said:

[...]

Here's the structure of the image file that @MeiSh5am just uploaded (which Isobuster sees as an optical disc layout rather than a hard disk structure for some reason).  I suppose Track 1 corresponds to the partition:

The different display may be caused by the filename, more specifically its suffix. Try renaming it to .img, .raw or .bin, or whatever isobuster may use as a default extension for disk (as opposed to CD/DVD) images, instead of .iso as I've done with the image in the zip file.

[MeiSh5am]

36 minutes ago, 007james said:

I have the Sony 590 and I'm not sure how many different ways you can write up instructions but in the end none of them really work, am i missing something?

That's quite possible, but you'll have to specify exactly which instructions you have followed, what exactly you actually did, and how exactly things don't work, i.e. how the observed results differ from your expectations, including the exact messages you see and the name and possibly version of tools you're using to get them. Depending on the type of failure, information about the firmware of your player, its network configuration, that of the computers used and their OS and version may be helpful as well.

[Phthalocyanine]

@MeiSh5am

Yes if I change the suffix to .dsk it displays the structure correctly:

 

 

I had recently made a image of a bootable Mac USB installer for Sierra with Isobuster, which gave it the .dsk suffix.  (See below)

I cannot recall off-hand what the Linux disc utility names things when it makes a USB image file -- maybe .img?

 

[Phthalocyanine]

4 hours ago, Dick Darlington said:

 Of course this is somewhat mitigated by using the "/mnt/sd*" technique in the AutoScript, however I have reason to believe the Oppos will have problems with a "no partition" disk regardless.

Great job explaining things above! 

 

But this is the part I don't get -- is the problem with these partition-less USB drives simply that they show up as sda and not sda1 and thus don't work for the stock scripts.  Or on some fundamental level, does the lack of a partition make them unreadable to the Oppo -- and is this only a problem for the Oppo and not the Sony or Pioneer?

 

The other thing is that it seems to me to be fairly difficult to create a partition-less USB drive in the first place.  Or to put it another way -- once a USB drive has a partition, it seems difficult to get rid of it with a regular formatting program (like the default Windows formatter).  You need to use a  some heavy duty partitioning program like GParted and delete the old partition and then fail to create a new partition.

 

I assume that most USB drives have a partition when you buy them already formatted.  I don't have a fresh one to check.  But I recently found a promotional USB I got a while back that I never used for anything and it has a partition.  (See below.)

 

So in order to get a partition-less USB drive, you'd have to obliterate the existing partition with specialty software like GParted and then format it in Windows 10 (which is apparently dumb enough to format it with a file system without creating a partition).

 

 

 

[Dick Darlington]

2 hours ago, 007james said:

I have the Sony 590 and I'm not sure how many different ways you can write up instructions but in the end none of them really work, am i missing something?

 

Indubitably. 

[Dick Darlington]

31 minutes ago, Phthalocyanine said:

But this is the part I don't get -- is the problem with these partition-less USB drives simply that they show up as sda and not sda1 and thus don't work for the stock scripts.  Or on some fundamental level, does the lack of a partition make them unreadable to the Oppo -- and is this only a problem for the Oppo and not the Sony or Pioneer?

 

Yes. 

 

More specifically ... definitely yes wrt to the sda vs sda1 thing. As for the second ... that is what I remember observing when I experimented with my special USB disk 3 or 4 weeks ago — that is the Oppo wouldn’t launch the AutoScript from a partitionless drive whereas the Sony would. But it has been a few weeks and I didn’t spend that much time on it so I’d rather hedge on the side of caution until I make a sanity check pass at it. 

[tmtomh]

3 hours ago, 007james said:

I have the Sony 590 and I'm not sure how many different ways you can write up instructions but in the end none of them really work, am i missing something?

 

In the end, they all really work. You are not fully following the instructions. I know some of the instruction write-ups are not as clear as others, and there are a lot of little things that one can miss or that can go wrong. I was an experienced SACD ripper with my Oppo 105, but it still took me a little while to get my Sony 590 up and running for SACD ripping, and I needed help from folks here.

 

It's impossible to know what's going wrong for you, but the most common problem with the Sony machines for SACD ripping is that the machine mounts the SACD (as if to play it), making the disc unavailable to the SACD ripping app - the app is unable to get control of the disc because the Sony player won't let go of control of it.

 

The best way to solve this issue is not to try to use the telnet method, and instead use the "sleep method" with remote/server ripping.

[Dick Darlington]

41 minutes ago, Phthalocyanine said:

The other thing is that it seems to me to be fairly difficult to create a partition-less USB drive in the first place.  Or to put it another way -- once a USB drive has a partition, it seems difficult to get rid of it with a regular formatting program (like the default Windows formatter).  You need to use a  some heavy duty partitioning program like GParted and delete the old partition and then fail to create a new partition.

 

Well yes and no. Until today I *believed* it was hard to make a partitionless disk like the one that just was that way and gave me so many headaches a few years back. God knows I tried everything including GParted and low level command line utilities to reproduce it with no success. Turns out it’s easy ... automatic even if the stars are aligned a certain way. Meaning you’re starting with an uninitialized disk and you format it via the pop up that Windows 10 presents when you attempt to open the disk via Explorer. As it turns out I never format via that path so I never saw it. I always go straight to Disk Manager or sometimes DISKPART. Furthermore, most of the time a USB stick will have already been formatted and thus already initialized with whatever partition scheme. In that case you’d have to go out of your way to brute force clear the partition info before this would ever happen. Not something you can do with the Windows GUI. You need to use the DISKPART command line utility to de-initialize the disk. It’s not really heavy duty since it’s a native windows utility but even so it’s not something most people would arbitrarily do; or even know how to do without looking for it. Nevertheless I suspect some percentage of USB disks end up in users’ hands either uninitialized or already formatted without a partition scheme. In the latter case reformatting will not change that. 

[Dick Darlington]

1 hour ago, Phthalocyanine said:

So in order to get a partition-less USB drive, you'd have to obliterate the existing partition with specialty software like GParted and then format it in Windows 10 (which is apparently dumb enough to format it with a file system without creating a partition).

 

Yep. It seems that way to me. Who knew!? 😂 

 

Well except I couldn’t figure out a way to do it with GParted but the Windows DISKPART CLEAR command will make short work of it. 

[mindset]

1 hour ago, Phthalocyanine said:

But this is the part I don't get -- is the problem with these partition-less USB drives simply that they show up as sda and not sda1 and thus don't work for the stock scripts.  Or on some fundamental level, does the lack of a partition make them unreadable to the Oppo -- and is this only a problem for the Oppo and not the Sony or Pioneer?

It is probably the former since I see this hard coded in bdpprog (the main player program) in the BDP-105 firmware:

/mnt/sda1/AutoScript/AutoScript.TSS

 

[mindset]

39 minutes ago, Dick Darlington said:

 

Well yes and no. Until today I *believed* it was hard to make a partitionless disk like the one that just was that way and gave me so many headaches a few years back. God knows I tried everything including GParted and low level command line utilities to reproduce it with no success. 

On Linux, it's just a matter of running this :

mkfs.fat -F32 -I /dev/sda

Regardless of contents in the USB stick, it creates an empty partition-less FAT32 drive.

 

[mindset]

2 hours ago, mindset said:

On Linux, it's just a matter of running this :

mkfs.fat -F32 -I /dev/sda

Regardless of contents in the USB stick, it creates an empty partition-less FAT32 drive.

 

Forgot to include an important note:

 

This command is destructive.  Make sure to replace /dev/sda with the device name of the USB stick.  /dev/sda may be your main harddrive!