Beware of SACD Transports -- they probably will not work with your favorite DAC


Hello, I just learned a painful lesson. I'm guessing that not many people will know this so I'm going to put it in here.

The audio on a SACD is encrypted.
If I were to purchase a SACD / CD player I have nothing to worry about. The Audio is un-encrypted inside the player.
However if I were to purchase a SACD / CD Transport made my brand Z, I would have to purchase a brand Z DAC???
Apparently Sony who owns the SACD format mandated that the audio on the SACD itself is encrypted and
the digital output from a SACD transport is ALSO encrypted. It looks like the actual un-encryption is done in the DAC.
There is no standard for doing the un-encryption so every manufacturer has their own proprietary way of doing this.
So I cant use a Esoteric SACD transport and an Auralic DAC which is what I tried to do?
londontk

Showing 3 responses by uberwaltz

Usually you need both the transport and DAC from the same company. Mix and match seldom works.
Would agree for the most part but it has been proved by Mahler here and Stereophile that you can output the sacd dsd via hdmi from Oppo 103/105 (possibly 93/95 too ) into a Bryston BDA3 quite successfully.

And by all accounts it sounds pretty darn good.
Big Greg.
If the OP has JUST a transport then that has NO DAC.
Which I feel is the crux of his question.
It has always been my understanding that sacd can not be output over digital like toslink or spdif.
I use analog rca out to my DAC for SACD.
I think you can output over HDMI but how many dacs accept HDMI?
A home theater processor possibly.
I have my sacd player hooked up by both spdif and RCA so can play CD over digital if I want to but SACD goes over RCA.
Sure there is better solution but has worked for me so far.
Might have to try my daughter's PS3 on toslink see if it does SACD!