Coaxial is my plan and have a cable ready to go. Fedex just notified me of shipment so should be with me on Wednesday,
For SACD owners/users who are using analogue out or just using the onboard coax output, is the overall quality of the sound worth it? Richards comment that only red book audio is passed to the onboard coax suggest little point in SACD when used in this manner. So I could see a point if people used the analogue output into a amp to get the better quality, but for people on this forum with ND555 or similar DACs the one in the SACD player is unlikely (I would have thought) to be an improvement.
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As you mention the Luxman D10, using it as a transport will give you red book only audio and therefore I would assume the real benefit would come from it’s on board DAC and analogue output stage which I am sure is exceptional.
Has anyone had the chance to compare something in this league with extraction of the digital signal and into a Naim DAC or similar?
What I am trying to get at is where is the gain in SQ coming from? Is it a) getting at the SACD stream and then passing to a DAC b) Something like the Luxman has a great transport, excellent DAC and output etc, which is a step up over using an outboard DAC c) something else. As always with audio I am assuming c) but I am just wondering what to expect from my attempt to do this.
I recently purchased a Luxman D-07X player. I wanted a CD transport with an excellent onboard DAC but no Headphone amp/preamp or streaming/network connectivity.
Its redbook CD playback is excellent via Coax or analogue into my 222 and playing SACD’s over analogue are a step above that. I’ll be buying a lot more SACD’s
I’m using Vertere Redline RCA for analogue out, XLR’s between the 222/250. and speaker cables.
The SPDIF is Nordost Blue Heaven
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Thanks for this. Have you compared Digital using the 222 out to Analogue out from the Luxman? I understand this would have to be done using a normal CD to be relevant.
Wondering how the DACs compare.
Player connected and adapter seems to work. I was expecting the NDX2 screen to say DSD but just shows 2822.4 kHz which is technically correct I suppose.
Initial thoughts are that it’s an improvement on streaming. Sounds nice and open. Very punchy. Enjoying it.
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Congratulations great to see your up and running. What extractor did you use in the end?
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Some Sony blu ray players will output DSD64 (SACD) over HDMI. I’ve used that in the past and fed the signal to my Moon DAC which accepts DSD64 over HDMI (Brystom also offer this)
Be careful on the extractors and other alleged SACD capability; most use DoP, which is DSD over PCM. Not pure DSD. They’re also often very noisy (signal wise).
I’ve had very many SACD players, including Esoteric, dcs, etc. The best sound quality from SACD is always through the analogue outputs of the player. I’m using a Denon DCD 1700NE at present, which is a really excellent SACD player, not quite so good with red book, and a real bargain to boot.
If you want a really good DSD DAC, without going for dcs, the take a look at the T+A DAC200.
SACD playback, from a decent machine, with a good SACD disc, is about as good as it gets, sound wise, imo. That opinion is based on using all kinds of streaming kit (and file sources/formats) over the last 20+ years, in systems in the £5k-£40k region. Having said that, proper streamed DSD on dcs systems is outstandingly good, but we’re talking very serious money there.
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I trying this for a bit of fun, so low cost was my objective. That said on the results from the two 2 discs I have, I am very impressed.
Think I’ll look for a few more discs and get something to play before I go mad with a different solution.
With discs costing so much I need to be careful which ones I buy, so I’ll end up with some classic rock I expect.
Great that you are set up. My ND555 display shows DSD, but we are using different de-embedders, maybe your one converts to PCM. Still, if it sounds great, all good.
I have BiA on Japanese vinyl do haven’t grabbed that particular SACD, though I haven’t seen it here anyway. Enjoy!
Do you have any experience with the Yamaha CD-S2000? There’s a nice used one for sale locally.
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I go from an Oppo 205’s HDMI out to a Tripp-Lite De-imbedder with the Oppo set for PCM out and then to a nDAC with a Oyaide silver coax. My de-imbedder doesn’t do DOP and I think the nDAC prefers PCM anyway. The results are great with a noticeable improvement of SACD this way vs. the CD layer directly from the Oppo to the nDAC with the same coax cable. I’m itching to try a new DAC and plan to buy the soon to be released Gustard R26II R2R Ladder DAC as soon as it’s released to see if it beats the nDAC.
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The quality on BIA is very good, its a Japanese disc too. Very happy with it.
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I can set my player to PCB but then the NDX2 shows this as PCB 176 kHz so I have left it at Auto which results in it showing the 2.8 MHz figure. Would like to try more options to get at the audio, but I said above for now I want to spend a bit on discs.
Fleetwood Mac - Tango In The Night is on the way now.
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A couple of standout SACD’s I own are Goodbye yellow brick road, Elton John and Beck Sea Change. You will find that the quality of recordings varies widely with SACD’s, just like any format.
I just looked up the Beck one on E-bay, someone is asking $290.00 dollars for a copy.
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Elton John would be a good one, never really got Beck - $290 would be wasted on me.
When I looked into this some years ago…the only viable way appeared to be an Oppo DVD player…possibly with a 3rd party card…to get around restrictions Sony implemented. I think if you have computer DVD drive it may be possible to get a crack.(there was talk of one..becoming available) enabling ripping. Other than that it’s a case of getting a Playstation and using a crack to unlock…or buy a very early Playstation that’s just allows it. It’s all a bit tricky… unless things have moved on…any news???
Am I right in saying that if you play DSD say on ND555 it…ultimately converts it internally back to pcm….to allow playback???
According to Mr Gowan…he recons that DSD is really critical in the first stage of recording…then after that…the playback format is not so critical…
While I’m sure there are better solutions, I was looking for a way to dip my toes into SACD.
So the Sony Blu-ray I got delivers DSD down the HDMI out put and there are lots of de-embedding devices to get that stream to a Coax connector
So it works very for me, the two SACDs both sound better to streaming. I’ve got a few more SACDs on order so can get a better idea of what I can expect.
I might try a better player or different adapter to see how that changes things.
I have ordered a decent psu for the adapter I have so let’s see how the experiment goes.
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