Thiel Owners

Happy Friday! All

tomthiel

Thank You for the SCD-1 update. What a shame? Did Bill expound upon the aspect(s) that are non(un)- repairable?

On the other hand (OTOH), there has never been a better time to purchase a CD/SACD spinner. Of course, I will suggest Accuphase, Ayre or Marantz, for openers.

Regarding OPPO, I found the 105 too smooth for my taste. Most of these players will playback discs and files. Something for all Audiophiles.
I have not heard a PS Audio disc spinner to date. The newest one is advertised as their best technology to date. Paul offers beta-testing, this could make for a gateway to ownership.

Keep me posted as this talk is right up my alley.

Happy Listening!

tomthiel

2nd Note:
most OPPO players will act as a Transport as well. Check out AVS Forum where there are many, many, happy OPPO owners representing this brand.

Happy Listening!

@tomthiel

Some considerations when looking to use a disc spinner as a SACD transport:

The PS Audio solution is pretty much limited to coupling their Perfectwave Transport to one of their own DACs via a fairly proprietary I2S connection. It’s an elegant solution, although rather expensive.
I have a friend who has this setup.

Otherwise, the approach I would consider would be to employ the Geerfab D.BOB (Digital Breakout Box) which is a $1000 item that sits between an SACD spinner with HDMI out (like an OPPO) and a DAC supporting DOP (DSD over PCM) via its COAX or Toslink input. The Benchmark DAC3B is a compatible DAC.
Note if connecting a spinner directly to a DAC via COAX or Toslink, you will not be able to access an SACD’s DSD layer (only the CD layer of a hybrid SACD).

An alternative solution, and the one that I employ, is to rip SACDs to my music server, and then use Roon to play them (you could do this with JRiver or some such as well) using a DAC that supports DOP (in my case a Chord Qutest). The ripping process is somewhat involved, so won’t get into that here ... but if interested, can provide guidance.

Hope this helps. Feel free to PM me directly.

I gave up disc spinners some time ago.  Yes I still have them for video and extras (like a modded Oppo BDP-83 which gets little use but is there if someone brings a disc over - it is set-up to convert SACD discs to 88.2kHz and send it to my EMM Labs DAC 2X via a coax digital cable).  I've been ripping SACDs for many years and also ripping them for others (and happy to do it) when they wanted to convert to file playback.  My SACDs are in a closet.  Yes with file playback you need to keep back-ups but a disc spinner will at some point will no longer be usuable.  Before file playback, I used an HDMI audio de-embedder (with an an upgraded power supply) and took the  88.2kHz files directly to a good DAC.