HDCD and SACD: Ripping and Playing?

[Temporal_Dissident]

Two questions about two pieces of hardware: 

 

1. Looking for a transport to feed my dCS Bartok DAC. Does a transport need special specs to play a HDCD or SACD disk if it is just sending digital out to external DAC?

 

2. What about ripping HDCD and SACD? Is a special drive needed to rip these formats? Or is all the magic on the software side?

 

 

Thanks,

Bart

[Kal Rubinson]

33 minutes ago, Temporal_Dissident said:

1. Looking for a transport to feed my dCS Bartok DAC. Does a transport need special specs to play a HDCD or SACD disk if it is just sending digital out to external DAC?

Not for HDCD but a different hardware/firmware is needed for SACD.

34 minutes ago, Temporal_Dissident said:

2. What about ripping HDCD and SACD? Is a special drive needed to rip these formats? Or is all the magic on the software side?

Ripping HDCD requires any CD transport player and an HDCD-compliant ripping program.  Ripping SACD requires an suitable transport and these are, generally, discontinued model Universal players.  It also requires appropriate software for the purpose.

 

IMHO, if you are looking for a "transport to feed my dCS Bartok DAC," pick whatever suits your playback needs and, if you want to rip SACDs, look for a separate dedicated device for that.  They need not be expensive.