Recently purchased a new NDX2 and I’m still in the early stages of experimenting and finding out what this unit can deliver.
Over the weekend I decided to hook up an old Oppo 983H DVD player I have lying around to check out how SACD and DVD Audio sounds, I’ve noticed that on switching to output 3 (Coax) which is how the Oppo is connected the app displays a signal quality of 44.1 kHz.
Now I have the Oppo set to output 192 kHz over PCM as some of the DVD audios are of this quality however I see no change in the quality of signal displayed on the NDX.
Therefore I’m questioning whether or not the NDX auto detects signal quality in the app or is it the Oppo outputting the lower CD quality signal of 44.1 kHz?
Hopefully some of the NDX2 owners out there will have SACD players hooked up in a similar way to be able to answer my question?
Yes, I think Sony are the exception to the rule as they have some sort of monopolistic control , I have my SACD player connected via analogue to my UnitiQute and the BluRay and Sky Box to digital inputs
The only real way is when you have a transport and dac that is designed to work together like dCS, esoteric, etc, etc.
The transport will output the digital sacd quality, and the dac will have the correct software to read it and convert.
Naim DAC’s will not do this with any sacd as naim have never taken on board sacd.
Originally I had the Oppo connected via its analogue outputs directly to the Supernait 3, then I thought why not connect directly to the NDX as the DAC is far superior, to my hearing this sounded much the better option.
So correct me if I’m wrong the easiest way to get the best out of my existing SACD/DVD Audios would be to acquire a new SACD player with a better built in DAC of similar quality as the NDX2 and hook it up to the analogue connections on the Supernait?
Or rip the SACD and play the file, which would give uou best sound quality. That said, I don’t know what device is available these days: lasyt I was aware a Sony Playstation (PS3 IIRC) could be used, which of course would still be applicable if one us available.
Are you testing this with SACD (which is probably playing the red book layer) or dvd audio (which I would think should work, if there is a setting to output pcm 192)?
Don’t do any firmware updates to the ps3 until you’ve done your homework - I don’t recall the details, but ‘later’ updates removed the ability to rip the SACD stream.
