Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2009/01/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]2009-01-15-14:14:56 Steve Unsworth: > An SACD may have a Toslink output, but that's only used when playing > standard CDs. That's correct. > As far as I'm aware there's no SACD output, and no one makes > an external SACD decoder. Separate SACD or DSD (the encoding used by SACDs) transports and digital-to-analog converters have existed (as they'd have had to) for awhile in the realm of studio recording/mastering equipment, and that realm squishes over into the realm of the hyper-high-quality audiophile system. Companies like Meitner/emmlabs and dCS are known for excellent equipment of this type. In the consumer realm... there are now some combo video/SACD players which are allowed to send the DSD stream over the HDMI combo video/audio link. I guess all the evil HDCP copy protection incorporated in that stuff was enough to satisfy Sony and friends their precious bits wouldn't get hijacked. There are current AV receivers (from Onkyo, Denon and others) and A/V preamps (from Integra and others) which will consent to decode this DSD stream into the requisite two or more channels of audio. HDMI is still considered a problematic, suboptimal medium for an audio bitstream, but we can hope the people who've managed over the last 20 years or so to tweak CDs into sounding much more like music will figure out how to work around its limitations. -Jeff