The Dark Side; Digital audio equipment recommendations and setup.

Thanks for all the great replies on this one, everybody. Lucky to have a small mom & pop (well, just pop - it's literally one guy!) used hifi shop literally right around the corner from me, very reasonable and honest to boot. May just have to swing by to see if he has any SACD players in stock.
 
HayesWeighsIn said:
Thanks for all the great replies on this one, everybody. Lucky to have a small mom & pop (well, just pop - it's literally one guy!) used hifi shop literally right around the corner from me, very reasonable and honest to boot. May just have to swing by to see if he has any SACD players in stock.
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Man I wish we had places like that over here. I could spend hours browsing through a store like that.
 
Joe Mac said:
Yeah the chances are that most don’t. It’s a very small number of the initial run from 2006 that also had backwards compatibility with PS2 games.
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Mine was backwards compatible (and I honestly thought they all were). Mine doesn’t list sacd and in my research has way more memory than any of the ones did play sacd.
 
Lee Newman said:
Mine was backwards compatible (and I honestly thought they all were). Mine doesn’t list sacd and in my research has way more memory than any of the ones did play sacd.
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They’re all backwards compatible with PS1 games but after the early runs not PS2. I had an 80GB from early 2008 that didn’t do SACD or PS2 but would play PS1 games.
 
Joe Mac said:
They’re all backwards compatible with PS1 games but after the early runs not PS2. I had an 80GB from early 2008 that didn’t do SACD or PS2 but would play PS1 games.
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Mine plays my ps2 games. There may have been a patch later on. It looked like in checking out the specs on mine this morning that it has 300 GB. 🤷‍♀️
 
Honestly, I don’t know if I would have even used it for sacds if it did do them. It’s hooked up to my very basic tv setup… not a priority in our household. I would have had to do some crazy stuff to get it to run to the hifi and probably wasn’t gonna move it.
 
Lee Newman said:
Mine plays my ps2 games. There may have been a patch later on. It looked like in checking out the specs on mine this morning that it has 300 GB. 🤷‍♀️
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It was possible to change out the HD on the older ones. I had a friend with a TB HD in one of the old machines. My understanding was that it was a hardware, rather than a software, issue that prevented PS2 game playback.
 
Joe Mac said:
It was possible to change out the HD on the older ones. I had a friend with a TB HD in one of the old machines. My understanding was that it was a hardware, rather than a software, issue that prevented PS2 game playback.
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No idea. All I know is I kept my ps2 games and played them a lot more than my ps3 games?
 
Lee Newman said:
Honestly, I don’t know if I would have even used it for sacds if it did do them. It’s hooked up to my very basic tv setup… not a priority in our household. I would have had to do some crazy stuff to get it to run to the hifi and probably wasn’t gonna move it.
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Honestly the DAC in the PS3 is shit. Where it is handy for them is that SACDs are a bastard to rip. No computer can do it natively from the disc. With old firmware and a little pen drive with a programme it’s possible to send the iso image file over your home network to a computer. You can then use the sonore ISO 2 DSD programme to rip the SACD layer down to individual DSD tracks.

Similar can be achieved with a selection of Blu Ray players that support SACD.
 
displayname said:
I think DAC marketing relies heavily on chips because it’s easy to market the specs of a new chip, and newer tech is an easy false need for obsolescence.

But I truly believe that most people massively overlook the analog stage and the power supply in DACs. These are huge impacts in how the sound feeds into the rest of the system. I’m not song a chip or R2R structure don’t impact the sound. But I do think that’s what you see advertised because it’s much cheaper to “upgrade” new models with “improved” chips than it is build out actual upgrades like dual mono circuits feeding into a class A analog stage with a high quality power supply.
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That is good feedback.
I'll probably pick up another DAC on closeout or used when the time is right.
I feel like whatever that DAC turns out to be in the future needs to read DSD 256.
Sooner or later that is where all of this digital content ends up IMO.
Better to already have capabilities built in and hopefully it can read it over the home network from a PC on the other side of the house.
 
Jbraswell said:
I feel like whatever that DAC turns out to be in the future needs to read DSD 256.
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Is there purchasable content in DSD 256 today?

My outlook is somewhat different - I buy the least expensive DAC that meets my needs now. DACs have a short retail sales life and are often replaced with better spec’ed models for cheap.

Even then, I’ve yet to really outgrow my years old Schiit Modi 3 in my office system, which cost me $100 at the time. YMMV.
 
Angsty said:
Is there purchasable content in DSD 256 today?

My outlook is somewhat different - I buy the least expensive DAC that meets my needs now. DACs have a short retail sales life and are often replaced with better spec’ed models for cheap.

Even then, I’ve yet to really outgrow my years old Schiit Modi 3 in my office system, which cost me $100 at the time. YMMV.
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Minimal and it’s very expensive. Outside of classical I’d be shocked if there’s even 1000 available titles.

High sample rate DSD, particularly 512 and 1024, is a bit like 32 bit PCM in that it’s really more of a useful tool for recording than home reproduction.
 
Angsty said:
Is there purchasable content in DSD 256 today?

My outlook is somewhat different - I buy the least expensive DAC that meets my needs now. DACs have a short retail sales life and are often replaced with better spec’ed models for cheap.

Even then, I’ve yet to really outgrow my years old Schiit Modi 3 in my office system, which cost me $100 at the time. YMMV.
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Yeah more than a few retailers I'm sure.

I purchased Waltz For Debby from here previously.

Rare Classical and Jazz music in Audiophile Sound

High Resolution Downloads, Classical Music, Jazz Music, Rare Audiophile, DSD Downloads, Pure Audio. Blu ray Audio
www.highdeftapetransfers.ca www.highdeftapetransfers.ca
 
Jbraswell said:
Yeah more than a few retailers I'm sure.

I purchased Waltz For Debby from here previously.

Rare Classical and Jazz music in Audiophile Sound

High Resolution Downloads, Classical Music, Jazz Music, Rare Audiophile, DSD Downloads, Pure Audio. Blu ray Audio
www.highdeftapetransfers.ca www.highdeftapetransfers.ca
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That’s great! I’m such a dinosaur - i do some streaming but most of my digital consumption is CD!

I’ll need to try some of these higher resolution files now that I have Google Fiber.

Edit: I just checked that a $200 Topping E50 DAC can handle up to DSD512. I was surprised.
 
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Jbraswell said:
Yeah more than a few retailers I'm sure.

I purchased Waltz For Debby from here previously.

Rare Classical and Jazz music in Audiophile Sound

High Resolution Downloads, Classical Music, Jazz Music, Rare Audiophile, DSD Downloads, Pure Audio. Blu ray Audio
www.highdeftapetransfers.ca www.highdeftapetransfers.ca
Click to expand...
I have a few from that site. They mostly sound great. He doesn’t really ever share what his tape sources are…so have always been confused about how he’s able to sell them
 
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