Thanks Paul. I’ve learned a lot here in this brief video. 1. About SACD format and how it works. And 2. That it’s designed for middle aged audiophile farts who are trying to get that extra level of quality out of Pink Floyd and Steely Dan. Resulting in 3. Me having zero interest in this format lol. I appreciate you breaking it down and the comments section here has saved me a TON of time not going down this rabbit hole. 🙏

I’m a huge fan and consumer of SACDs.

If I keep watching these videos I'll start having dreams about DSD.

SACD is not limping along, it's the Defacto High Resolution Medium and thus audiophiles have supported the medium for now over 20+ years. For me, after listening to 5.1 SACD, going back to stereo from any medium is like going back to a Coke gone flat, no fizz. At any rate, today an audiophile can buy a very inexpensive Sony UBP-X800Mk2 and deliver DSD from stereo and 5.1 SACDs via HDMI connection to a modern DAC, like the DACs found in Marantz Receivers, AVRs, and Pre-Pros for truly great sound. The bottom-line is SACDs are now so easy to accommodate sales of them is increasing.

Peter Frampton SACDs just announced last week, and today MoFi announced SACD of Dire Straits’ “On Every Street”.

Paul. I recently ordered some of your SACD’s as i like to own the media. I notice you offer the option to purchase downloads. Why don’t you offer free download if you purchase the physical media?

As much as I’m interested in advancements in audio technology, in the end, it all depends on the engineer. Because without a good engineer, the technology doesn’t matter.

Acoustic Sounds have quite a big range of SACDs: much of it jazz, and I note that Gus Skinas is frequently involved in their production. Analogue Productions (part of Acoustic Sounds) do a brilliant job in producing them.

Great question I was wondering that thanks paul

Optical sacd drive vs ssd for playback of dsd? Is one better then the other? Pros or cons? For example, noise and jitter.

Paul, I hope Octave Recordings will be make all their releases available on SACD. Yes?

Paul, about a year ago I was talking to Scot and I asked him if PS Audio would produce a CD transport more in line with the Stellar series pricing. I got the impression that was going to happen. Might that transport be part of that? I’d love to take advantage of the I2S connection. Thanks

Great Video. So your DACs are converting PCM to DSD? And a new SACD Transport is coming up?

Listening to how DSD looks on a scope, this looks similar to FM ?

Is supporting a dsd in a dac requires specific hardware or it's just a matter of firmware and licences

Question: is there a way to have portable SACD players like Walkmans?or should I go better for a DAP or DAC for DSD files?

DSD will not require any error correction like SACD and CD’s need, so a DSD file will always sound superior. What about PCM conversion to DSD? That changes the sound, is it better? I think so.

My Sony 4K bluray player (the model number escapes me) luckily will play SACD's, and was VERY affordable compared to what I see dedicated SACD players go for. I'm building a library slowly, since the costs of some of these OOP discs have gotten quite high over the years. My question is, if it's a digital signal like DSD, then why would one player (like mine) cost only around $150 vs some others I've seen that are hundreds?!

2:15 3:15 I think Paul might not be totally correct about DSD data stream. When there's signal, he used term 'tighter cluster' & 'looser cluster' during low signal. As if there's no 0 and 1 where no signal presented (zero amplitude) and when there're signals the groups of 0 & 1 are presented tight/densely (like 11111 00 0 0 0 1 111 1). Actually during 'perfectly' no signal, the DSD streams 01010101 (zero-one-zero-one) continually without spaces (no blank bits).

5:30 ......Correction : Pure SACD discs can ONLY be played on an SACD-player . Hybrid SACD can be played on either an CD or SACD player. F.i. Pink Floyds Dark side of the moon is a hybrid sacd and can be played on every cd player. Dead Can Dance have pure sacd discs that can only be played on an sacd player. For those still into sacd as myself . In Japan you can get a lot of discs you wouldn't believe they existed onto sacd. But prices can be high. I got f.i. Steely Dan's Aja , but it was around 65 euros , but unbelievable sound in SHM-SACD. Now gone down to around 30 dollars in the usual JP-paperback sleeves.

Here's where I keep getting lost. For PCM, the sampling rate encodes the frequency, and the bit depth encodes the amplitude. I get that. For DSD, the density of the pulses encodes the amplitude. I get that. But what encodes the frequency? Seems like a 1 kHz sine at 10 dB would be identical to a 10 kHz sine at 10 dB because they're both 10 dB. The same amplitude, so the same density of pulses. Where am I going wrong?

I remember many years ago when the search for an improvement to the standard 16/44.1 CD started. There were 2 systems which started a format war, those being the SACD from Sony/Philips, and DVD audio (DVD-A) which was high-res PCM up to 24/192 backed by most of the rest. The general consensus from what I have read was that the 2 systems were not only indistinguishable from each other, but also from regular CD's which I find astonishing given all the hype at the time.

Sacd players mostly have digital outputs: do they output pcm (i.e. they've converted DSD to pcm inside)?

Pentatone was a sub-label of phonogram. Phonogram was the record-label of Philips Eindhoven/ The Netherlands

What is the highest rate of DSD on SACD?

Would make sense for Octave to publish a book/audio companion allowing a layperson to discern the wonders of DSD with some A/B comparison tracks, just a thought : D Apparently in the world of optical media, weve really got just Pioneer & Panasonic left manufacturing the actual disc drives. Id be flabbergasted if that transport mech paul is holding is made by anyone other than those 2.

I'm sad that SACD for "normal music" has died and we can only buy classical music in that format. Well, I buy as much SACDs I can anyway but I'm a bit "cheap" so I want "Nice Price" on the classical SACDs I buy.

recall the good old laser disk.. l d,, days,,, no compressions,, etc

Years ago I turned down the gift of a CD/SACD player primarily because I doubted I could get it home safely --- I was riding a bicycle, not driving my pickup. Oh, well...

Most people fail blind tests when hearing SACD vs redbook CD.

I am not sure that Sony "invented" CD's. Philips Medical Systems (Netherlands) had developed this optical technology for storing large 3D medical image data sets. Not sure of the dates (1980's?). Perhaps Sony perfected CD's for music applications.

If they had made DSD easier to use for small productions or home users it probably would have been a bigger thing. I don't understand why it has to be so hard to work with.

Paul has yet to verify that DSD sounds better than PCM, other than a single hardware test that he has repeated (meaning with the same hardware -- specifically, a single real-time analog-to-digital converter). Like testing with only one CD player, and making a blanket conclusion on how CDs sound compared to vinyl. That is neither a proper nor a conclusive test. And when you factor in that PCM files have virtually the same sound quality as DSD files (when the PCM files are derived from DSD files), then that points to the problem not being with the PCM format, and that the problem is with Paul's real-time analog-to-PCM converter. DSD might very well sound better than PCM. But that needs to be confirmed by evaluating more than a single real-time analog-to-PCM converter. As to the scope, that is meaningless (to me), since we have no idea what it represents in terms of sound quality. If we are to go by scopes, then no need to listen to audio gear before we buy. Just find out how the gear looked on the scope. @3:24 "You can almost directly play that into a set of speakers into an amplifier without any kind of DAC involved" What does that mean? Why the adverb "almost"? I almost won the lottery. How is that relevant? PCM is 100% digital. DSD is 100% digital. Which one sounds better is at the mercy of how the files were created, and the hardware and the software used for playback. I want to believe that Paul is correct about DSD sounding better than PCM. But in other videos he has sung the praises of how PCM is DSD's equal, when a PCM file is created (converted) from a DSD file. So I cannot shake loose that PCM sounds as good as DSD when the PCM file is properly created. That, combined with the fact that Paul has tested one, and only one, analog-to-PCM converter, makes his conclusions insufficient for my standards of verification. Paul is also heavily invested in DSD. Is that influencing his refusal to test real-time high-end analog-to-PCM converters? Paul is a straight shooter. I agree with nearly 100% of everything he discusses in his videos. I write "nearly", because this time he has fallen short, due to his lack of testing with other real-time high-end analog-to-digital PCM converters. Cheers!

You always speak that Sony invented CD and DSD. As I Know it’s invented by Philips nat lab Eindhoven. Philips and Sony put together the Systems on the market. Also laserlicht was a Philips invention.

They were too greedy. The price was crazy and people had just replaced their collections with CDs. If they had sold them at a reasonable price it would have taken off.

u have to get great musicians to ur studio.... ro,,, move a mobile studio to musicians

Steely dan acoustic sounds sacd... limping?

Years ago I turned down the gift of a CD/SACD player primarily because I doubted I could get it home safely --- I was riding a bicycle, not driving my pickup. Oh, well...