Pre-Amp: Denafrips Athena
Amplifier: Two Mark Levinson 333 Bi-Amp
Speakers: A Pair of B&W N801
Room: Acoustically treated
Playback is level match with pink noise track so both SACD Disc and DSF file playback are the same volume SPL.
We took note so the pre-amp volume setting are different for each playback
Observations:
Only slight sound characteristic differences among 2/3/4 (HDMI output) #1 the sound is distinctly different #5 the sound is distinctly different
Why we notice more audible difference between 1) and 5) , and very slight among 2/3/4?
Does the un-clocked HDMI-I2S interface introduce more jitter such that a dedicated SACD player will have better jitter control on its clocked SACD disc read signal?
Just as an point of information, in case #4 as far as I know when you are listening to the physical SACD it is the CD layer that is being sent via I2S to the DirectStream DAC Mk1.
This is add on card which extracts the I2S signal from OPPO’s internal digital audio data and transfers via HDMI to the I2S input of DAC’s such as the PS Audio DAC.
With this upgrade all digital audio signals, including SACD and DSD, can be transfered to the outside of the OPPO BD player (These signals can not be transmitted by a normal S/PDIF coaxial or optical output).
That looks good and if the DS DAC is displaying DSD then it seems like they got around the problem that previously limited the mod boards to Oppo 103 and 203 models.
I’m a bit confused… from what I understood so far, a DSD stream, originating from an SACD, over HDMI is encrypted en needs a special chip from Sony in the HT receiver to decrypt that stream. The PS Audio PW SACD Transport uses such a Sony chip to decrypt and is only able to send the unencrypted stream to a PS Audio DAC with special handshake, see this video from Paul.
However, jamesh seams mention that unencrypted DSD can be sent over HDMI (and I2S).
It looks like nowadays the encryption is not always as rigid as Paul said 6 years ago… or am I missing something?
I don’t know if it’s necessarily gotten less rigid but it’s certainly possible. I recall a discussion I had with our dev team regarding this. The reason Sony allows us to output the raw DSD is because of our I2S protocol via HDMI. Sony’s intention and purpose of making it so hard to output is exactly what Paul mentions in the video. Protect the artist and the high res files. Reverse engineering the I2S output and ripping an SACD from our player might not be impossible it is very unlikely.
I had an OPPO 205 a few years ago, it could play DVD music, but not SACD. It could not be modified because it was jammed packed inside. The only way to play SACD was to use a converter board (there was an old thread all about it a while ago).
I have since upgraded to PST, and it sounds much better than OPPO with converter board for sure.
I started with the OPPO 93 and now I have an all region OPPO 205. CD’s and SACD’s sounded so bad through it’s XLR outputs that I was giving away some of my SACD’s because it sounded so bad. Thin and harsh is how I would describe it. The PS Audio DS DAC changed all that. It was the first time CD’s was listenable. Of course it didn’t play SACD’s until I got the PS Audio DMP. That was a revelation! Music just flows through it’s HDMI output with such musicality through that combo. Now I have the DS MK2 and PST. That my friend is world class. Finally my Esoteric streamer and MK2 brings out even more fidelity than my PST through the MK2, especially with DSD256 material that almost make me forget about my beloved vinyl set up, but not quite.
I was using an Oppo UDP-205 in my audio/video system and did not like the Redbook/SACD sound much, though my DVR through a Wyred4Sound Remedy sounded pretty darned good. I replaced that Oppo with a NAD M51 and a Sony Blu-Ray player and that improved things.
Besides technically difficult, also the world “moved on”. Sony intended the SACD for the mass market, but nowadays only a relatively small group of (audiophiles?) is buying and playing them. I guess that lowers the risk for Sony because it would take a lot of work, time and skill to do such a thing.
However, then the following still is unclear to me: I understood that the DSD stream on a HDMI interface (not I2S) is encrypted and gets decrypted in the receiver. If that’s still true and all currently produced Blu-Ray players still are sending an encrypted DSD stream over HDMI, then the Chinese HDMI to I2S converter mentioned before would only be able to output unencrypted DSD over I2S in one of the following ways:
1 - The Chinese box uses a Sony chip in the same way as PS Audio’s Perfect Wave Transport does and decrypts the DSD stream.
2 - The Chinese box converts PCM from the HDMI interface to DSD
In my (humble) opinion, method 1 would make the converter box very interesting but I think it quite unlikely that it works that way. I think the second method is more likely but that would make the box far less interesting.
Or maybe I’ve got it completely wrong:-)
I hope you guys are able to give me some more insight.
I think you’re absolutely right and I would really love to buy a Direct Stream DAC and Perfect Wave SACD transport. However, unfortunately I don’t have €18990 that I can spend on this wonderful hobby… but I feel lucky to be able to spend a smaller budget to improve my system step by step
