Can one play Hybrid CD/SACD on CD5si

Hi-Fi Corner
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Hello (New here: first post)

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Welcome to the forum.

Yes, the CD5Si should be able to play the CD layer of a Hybrid CD/SACD disc. However, note that itā€™s not absolutely guaranteed to play discs that fall outside of Redbook standard. Iā€™ve had no issues though with any of my own dual layer CD/SACDs, although I have had issues with one or two dual sided CD/DVD-As.

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Thanks Richard
I have a large CD collection (mostly classical and Jazz) including a half-dozen Hybrid SACD/CD on the Pentatonelabel. The latter do not play. They played oK on my (now deceased) CD5 i
Is there any trick to making them play on the CD5si that Iā€™m missing?

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It sounds like it is a problem with the label. I have many hybrid CDā€™s which all play on my cd player. Chandos and Channel Classics hybrid CDā€™s all play without any problems.

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The OP says that their CDā€™s played on their former CD5i, but will not play on their current CD5si.

So its the same discs.

1 Like
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Yes good point but what I was trying to suggest was to try other hybrid labels to see if they donā€™t work either. Possibly his hybrid CDā€™s are not as well made???

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When I looked on the web there were SACD owners who could only play the cd layer on some SACDs!

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I know that the mech used in the CD5Si is different to the Philips mechs of old on other Naim CD players, so maybe thereā€™s some issue with the newer mechs playing Hybrid discs that Iā€™m unaware of (the CD5Si arrived after my time at Naim). Probably worthwhile talking to your dealer or emailing Naim and asking for advice.

For all that, hybrid discs do fall outside of Redbook standard and so their reliable replay is likely not guaranteed.

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Possible workaroundā€¦ rip the cd layer, then burn a red book standard cd.

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Yes, thatā€™s the usual workaround. Iā€™ve managed to do this on the double sided hybrid discs, although it took a few ripping drives before I found one that was happy with them.

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Iā€™ve never come across a commercial double sided disc. Were many produced?

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I donā€™t know. Mine came from when I was in the States. They were called DualDisc. Whatā€™s interesting is that the UK versions had separate CD and DVD-A discs, whereas the US ones were a single dual-sided disc.

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There are 892 DualDisc issues listed on Discogs.

DualDiscsOnDiscogs
DualDiscsOnDiscogs1350Ɨ1080 190 KB

2 Likes
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Hello again
Sorry about the delay: time difference between UK and Aotearoa/New Zealand!
Have also a number of hybrid discs from Ondine, and BIS and they do not play either.
In a bit of a bind here. Naim no longer has a distributer here in our country. The machine I have was the last in the store!
I have begun the process of ripping the cd layer and re-recording on CD-R. The CD-Rs do play, but Iā€™m not very happy with the quality ā€” even to my elderly ears not as good as the originals on the old CD5i,
Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Iā€™ll pursue a better rip process if I can find something that wonā€™t break the bank.
Cheers

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Update on this:
Have ripped a few hybrid discs to .aiff files, and burned back to CD-Rs which play OK.
But I have run into a blank wall trying to do the same with Hybrid SACD/CD Multichannel disks from Pentatone. I can rip them to my computer OK using dbpoweramp (and Apple Music, actually). The files play in the computer. But Iā€™m having no luck at all in burning these to a CD-R to play in the CD 5si.
This is frustrating. The Pentatone Label has quite a stable of excellent classical musicians and orchestras with apparently exclusive contracts. Thatā€™s why we bought the disks!
Has anyone any hints on:

  1. the best burning software* to use? (Iā€™ve tried ā€œBurnā€ (Open Source) Toast Titanium (latest version) and Apple Music;
  2. traps to watch out for when burning the files back?
    *. Apple User: OS 13.6
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Not a Mac user, so I may be way off, but I gather there is scope for confusion about how an aiff is encoded. It might make no difference, but Iā€™d try ripping at least one disc to wav and burning a red book standard cd from that.

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Thanks Andy
Iā€™ll try .wav
The burning tools I have specify ā€œAudio CDā€. But thereā€™s no explicit reference to Redbook Standard. I assumed burning an ā€œAudio CDā€ would make a standard disk. Do you know if thereā€™s anything else I should be trying to control In the output settings?

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Quite a few Alia Vox hibrids, no problem with my CDX 2.2

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The ā€˜audio cdā€™ setting should be red book so, no, I donā€™t think youā€™re missing anything obvious. I have no recollection of any CDs I burned needing anything other than default settings to play in my CD5 (yes, the even older oneā€¦ ), but Iā€™ve always been a Windows user, and not the same software either.

It was your earlier comment about the CDs youā€™d burned from rips not sounding as good as you thought they should that made me wonder if something odd was happenning. Were you following the same steps as you outlined for the hybris discs, ie ripping to aiff then burning to CD-R?

My thoughts about aiff is based solely on reading about different encoding within the file, including seemingly simple things like byte order, which any of the software you are using should be aware of - butā€¦

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Thanks leni
I had no problem with my old CD 5i either. The issue is compatibility with the CD 5si.