Hi-Rez Highway

Posted by Daveslater (A) on October 15, 2021 at 22:54:45

In Reply to: RE: Streaming High Rez PCM vs SACD Playback posted by GreatSound on October 15, 2021 at 17:13:58

I am a long term SACD user with a Sony scd-xb940QS Player. Quality from this is very good but you are constrained by SONY to hear only analogue out from this player but you can take digital out when playing the CD layer of discs.

I rip my discs using a modified Playstation 3 and save them on my music server. They are played back through a Raspberry Pi 4 USB to a Project S2 DAC SACD files are DSD 64 format. I prefer the sound and convenience of the Pi playback but it's fairly marginal against the native SACD player.

I also have a Squeeze Box Touch with the Enhanced Digital Output mod. This plays back the SACD ripped files by conversion to 96K PCM To be honest I can't hear any difference between this and native DSD 64 files but I'm 68 now and my hearing isn't what it was.

So on balance not a lot in it. The Project S2 DAC makes ripped CDs sound very clean and since I've had this setup I am happy to listen to 44.1 CD files or Vinyl whereas before getting the DAC vinyl was the preference for sound quality.

Hope this helps.