Andrew Everard



A format some thought was long gone, when SACD proved unable to replace CD in the mass-market, is staging something of a comeback as a computer audio option

DSD was born as part of one of those inevitable consumer electronics format battles, as hardware and music companies sought to find the next step on from CD. For the proponents of Super Audio CD (or SACD) and DVD-Audio, the stakes were high: not just the chance for them to sell a whole new set of hardware, but also the lucrative technology licences required by third-party manufacturers wanting to build their own players.

As it turned out, neither SACD nor DVD-Audio took the audio world by storm, as the mass-market seemed much more interested in compressing its music to cram it onto portable players, and higher-resolution audio remained a specialist interest.

SACD is still supported by a number of labels, notably including Linn’s Award-winning imprint, Channel Classics/Pentatone, CPO, 2L, some of the world’s orchestra’s ‘house labels’ and more. In Japan, where SACD never really went away, there’s a much greater appetite for releases in the format, and of course there’s a good range of hardware on which to play the discs, from machines from original co-promoter Sony to a variety of CD/SACD players and Blu-ray-based universal disc hardware.

However, there’s a new twist in what some may have thought a saga long ago told, finished and forgotten – the re-emergence of DSD as a format in the ‘computer audio’ arena. Just as one example, in the July issue of Gramophone I review the new Naim network music preamplifier, the NAC-N 272, which will play DSD files from local or network storage, and Naim has also said it will extend DSD capability to a number of its other products.

And the NAC-N272 isn’t alone: from inexpensive digital-to-analogue converters to high-end players and DACs, DSD is proving a must-have feature, while I recently reported on a network streaming initiative by the the Internet Initiative Japan, pro-audio company Korg, and Sony, involving the live streaming of concerts in ‘double-DSD’ quality over the Internet.

A number of websites offer music for download in DSD format, including Norway’s 2L label and specialist site Blue Coast Records, which both makes and sells its own recordings and, via its sister site Downloads NOW!, offers DSD files and more from the likes of the San Francisco Symphony’s own label.

Native DSD is another source of DSD recordings, including recordings from Channel Classics, which also sells them via its own website.

If you’ve recently acquired one of the new-generation of DSD playing hardware, either as an all-in-one unit such as the Naim or in the form of a DAC connectable to a home computer via asynchronous USB, you can find out whether DSD is for you with free sample files from a variety of sources. Both 2L and Blue Coast offer such samples, as does Native DSD.

However, if you already have a large collection of SACDs and want to move them onto hard-disk storage so you can stream them to suitable network players, or store them on your computer so they can be played through a DSD-capable DAC, there is a workaround available using, of all things, one of Sony’s PlayStation 3 games consoles. Using this, and some software available online, you can rip SACD discs to ISO disc image files, which can then be split up into individual DSD ‘tracks’ for playback through the latest systems.

I’m not going to pretend that getting set up for this ripping process is exactly simple – you need one of a few early PS3 consoles, made before Sony decided to drop SACD playback from the device, and the console needs to be running an early version of the PS3 firmware, namely version 3.55.

There’s a wealth of information on using the PS3 for SACD on the PS3SACD website, where there’s a useful table explaining which models you should be looking for, while another useful resource is Ted’s SACD Ripping Guide.

There are still examples of these early consoles available on the secondhand market, but many will have been updated to newer firmware by owners more interested in gaming, or abandoned due to a design/manufacturing problem leading to many of these consoles overheating and being ditched by their users.

Not surprisingly, working PS3s running version 3.55 firmware seem to sell for fairly high prices on sites such as Ebay, as sellers have wised up to the fact that such machines can be ‘cracked’ not only to rip SACDs, but also do all kinds of other more nefarious things to do with gaming.

My own journey into SACD ripping using a PS3 suffered a few fits and starts, as the first console I bought from Ebay overheated and shut down almost as soon as I received it, showing what’s called ‘the yellow light of death’: the power indicator light, usually red when the player is in standby and green when in use, flashes yellow to indicate the problem.

What happened is caused by a combination of poor airflow in the console, which tends to suck up dust in use, hampering the work of the cooling fans, and a manufacturing fault principally involving the use of an insufficient quantity of poor quality thermal paste between the main processors and their heat-sinks. Heat build-up causes a failure of the solder connecting the processors to the main circuitboard, and the console ‘dies’.

It can be fixed: if you’re braver than I am, it’s a DIY job involving a complete strip-down of the console, baking of the circuitboard – yes, really – and the removal and replacement of that thermal paste. If you’re much less brave, you can find any number of companies offering a repair service for prices starting from about £30 or so – just Google ‘PS3 repair’.

If you’re not put off yet – and I was fortunate in finding both a well-looked-after PS3 on my second Ebay attempt, plus a chap who sold a console to a friend able not only to do a preventative overheating fix, but also sort out the firmware and install the SACD ripping software – then copying SACDs using the console is considerably simpler than getting the hardware set up to do it in the first place.

With the SACD ripper software running, you insert a USB memory stick into one of the ports on the front of the PS3, slip your SACD disc in, click ‘OK’ on the screen the player shows, and away it goes.

Multiple discs can be copied up to the capacity of the USB stick, but it’s worth bearing in mind that multi-disc sets may produce ISO files that overwrite each other, so you’ll need to rip one disc, then either remove its ISO file to your computer or switch USB stick before ripping the second disc, and so on.

That done, and with the files transferred to your computer, you can use free ISOtoDSD software from Sonore to split the ISO file into separate .dsf or .dff tracks – choose .dff as these carry tagging information for artist/album/track title/composer and so on.

If you’re playing these files from your computer via a DAC, a third-party player software package such as Audivarna will do the job; if you want to stream DSD to the likes of the Naim NAC-N 272, you’ll find the ubiquitous Twonky Media Server will serve the files over a home network, as will MinimServer, which I’ve found to be the most convenient choice for streaming all of my music to a huge range of network playback hardware.

Yes, the above may seem complex, and I’ll fully understand anyone who decided somewhere along the way that this all seems a lot of faff just to get some discs onto your network player: however, when you hear what these files can do when played through a good DSD-capable digital-to-analogue converter or network player, I hope you may begin to share my view that the end results are well worth the effort.