Digital recording from SACD or DVD-A

[watcher666]

Hi

I was just wondering, has anyone tried optically recording from a SACD or a DVD-A yet?

And if so, what was the quality like on the MD recording!!??

I was'nt sure whether you could or not through the optical connection as the sampling rates on SACD and DVD-A are not compatable with a MD unit's sample rate converter? And do you know whether you can use SonicStage with SACD and DVD-A?

???

Thanks!

[jadeclaw]

It will either not record at all or it will be identical to recording from a normal CD.

Infact, depending on the quality of the SACD/DVD-A player and the A/D-converter in the MD-unit, an analog recording could be better.

So, why is that?

First, to prevent copying of High-Res audio, SACD/DVD-A players downsample the audio data to 16bit@44.1 kHz. Depending on the quality of these downsamplers, the quality could be below that of a regular CD. Sometimes, instead of downsampling, digital out is simply switched off, when playing back High-res audio.

Doing an analog recording, a higher number of bits can be preserved, but that needs very good components on the player side as well as on the recorder side.

With very good equipment, like Sony's ES-series MD-recorders, you could end up with a clean 20-bit recording compared to the 16 bits of the digital out.

Ripping DVD-A / SACD is not possible on the PC. I don't know of any drive, that is able to read the DSD bitstream format used for SACD, DVD-Audio is a similar problem, as that one uses stronger encryption. Compared to the weak CSS-encryption of DVD-Video, this one takes a bit longer to decrypt, as that one uses a longer key length.

DVD-Audio and SACD are explained here:

http://www.disctronics.co.uk/technology/dv...vdaud_intro.htm

Finally, when buying a player for these formats, make sure, that the player takes both.

[ProAudioGuy]

Jadeclaw's response is largely correct but bears some expansion:

First with SACD, Sony made sure from the beginning that digital copies would be difficult at best. Very few SACD players output any digital stream, and those that do are using, as Jadeclaw points out, downsampling to 16/44.1.

That said, using analog I/O between units going through a single D/A to A/D cycle from SACD to MD should bring about results at least on par with digital dubs from 16bit PCM (i.e. via your S/PDIF input).

DVD/Audio is in a similar fix, they were just more supportive of existing DVD standards. Most DVD/A discs have a regular PCM program outputing 5.1 compatible material (I think usually in DTS but that may be coincidental to my titles). The other thing to remember with DVD/A is the -potential- for analog watermarks in the signal. I have not personally been able to discern this but others say it is clearly audible onceyou know what tol listen for. More experimenting there for sure!

[dex Otaku]

DVD/Audio is in a similar fix, they were just more supportive of existing DVD standards. Most DVD/A discs have a regular PCM program outputing 5.1 compatible material (I think usually in DTS but that may be coincidental to my titles). The other thing to remember with DVD/A is the -potential- for analog watermarks in the signal. I have not personally been able to discern this but others say it is clearly audible onceyou know what tol listen for. More experimenting there for sure!

DVD-A contains multiple formats in its standard, including [this is from memory so I might make errors here]:

* AC-3 / A52 [Dolby Digital] from 2.0 to 5.1 channel

* DTS [which counts as a PCM bitstream according to the spec]

* PCM from 44.1kHz to 192Khz sampling rates, 16-24 bit quantisation, with channels limited by total bitstream bandwidth [higher sampling rate, higher bit res, fewer channels - lower sampling, lower bit res, more channels]

as well as

* Meridian lossless packing [MLP] in multiple sampling rate/bit res/channel configs

MLP is the format to cause the most real excitement, in my opinion.

Please note that the potential length of a given disc depends completely on the format used as well as the resolutions; higher res = shorter recording length, &c.