Gunshy

I am putting some of my CDs onto my iPod via my PC and I have one or two hybrid SACD's around and I started wondering about this.

If you could extract the audio content from a SACD using a SACD player, say via your PCs audio line-in, how would the resulting .WAV file compare with the same audio from a normal audio CD of the same album? Would they be similar, the same, or would the SACD sourced one be a lot better?

-Gunshy

stevevt

The files from SACD --> line in would sound as good as your sound card's analog circuitry could ever possibly sound. Somebody who has tried this or read about it can elaborate on what you should expect, but I'd guess that the average card doesn't do a good job with this.

The Bus

If you're encoding via iTunes, you lose all the SACD quality. If you're encoding to MP3, you lose all all the SACD quality. The iPod already has trouble putting out near-CD quality files (from what I understand). If you're encoding via line-in, you're not doing a real digital extraction and you may actually have a WAV file that sounds worse than the source or a regular CD.

The advantage with CDs is that your extraction is digital, in that the file is put into your computer, then processed/converted into a WAV file.

I honestly don't think it matters. The only way to really preserve SACD quality is to create a disc image and as far as I know that is not feasible or useful.

Gunshy

Thanks both of you, that's what I figured. I guess I was just wondering if the audio from a sacd player could be put on a computer in digital form and if so, would the resulting quality be better than from a normal audio CD. I believe you have answered my question.

I suspect if the sacd format had taken off there might just be drives for the PC in which case software could have been made to extract the data or image as you say. Alas.

I don't have a sacd player at this point but I was curious if ripped files would be better from that source or if the higher quality could only be enjoyed on such equipment. OK, I guess I'm done

-Gunshy

BinaryTB

I don't believe there is a way to digitally extract audio from SACD. There was a way to do it with DVD-Audio using some versions of WinDVD, but Intervideo removed all DVD-Audio capabilities from WinDVD.

My preference would be digital audio from a CD than analog audio using line-in from SACD/DVD-Audio, just because the analog portion introduces a lot of variables (e.g. the D/A converter, cable quality, connector quality, sound card quality, etc etc) and I'm sure it won't be as "clean" as pure digital. That's just me though.

The Bus

What kHz does SACD play at? Even if you could only get stereo WAV files, if they were at ~48 kHz, that might yield some improvement...

BinaryTB

I don't know for certain, but I would assume SACDs play at 48kHz, 96kHz, and 192kHz; which is what DVD-Audio is specced for and SACDs directly competes with DVD-Audio.