SACD and DAC

Unfortunately, there still are no SACD players with a DSD digital output that I know of, let alone a 6-channel DSD output, at least in the US (a lot of SACD players will have a digital output, but that's a pcm digital signal for the CD layer of hybrid discs and CDs). There are a few manufacturers with their own proprietary interfaces (EMM Labs, Accuphase and dCS) which make transports and DACs designed solely to work together and will send and process a DSD signal, but outside of those without modifications you can't get either a DSD signal out of the transport/SACD player or a DSD signal into a DAC. The industry has been slow to adopt a standard interface, and I'm not sure that they'll be doing it anytime soon. I haven't kept up with the latest developments, but I think this is still the case--hopefully someone will correct me if something new has come on the scene.

Good response. Let me add that some players/receivers can also do this with iLink (IEEE1394) and, in addition, some Denon devices can do this with DenonLink. However, the receiver end has, afaik, been restricted to receivers but there's no reason a DAC or pre/pro cannot be designed for that.

Kal

If your interested in multichannel SACD then pick up a used Sony XA-777es, I owned one for about a year...fantastic sounding SACD player. It's redbook playback is good but not great so an outboard DAC may help there.

Dave

kinda of strange question.. but why would want to digital output the sacd signal ????

most sacd d/a sections of sacd players are pretty darn good and better the pcm digital output hands down in the majority of cases...

what kinda makes sense is getting a outboard dac for redbook playback and using the internal dac for sacd playback.. or am i missing something?

Aveloguy,

The problem with outputing the raw digital signal from an
SACD player to the output isn't a technical one - but a
legal one. The Sony SACD licensing agreement forbids it!!

The concern is that the end user could pirate the digital
data and make high-def digital copies as good as the original.

Therefore, the digital output of the SACD player has to be
either encrypted or output via some proprietary interface
such as those that EMMLabs, dCS, Accuphase,... and others
have defined which allows interconnection between products
by the same manufacturer.

Dr. Gregory Greenman