Sorry to ask this SACD question, but

So folkfreak,

Why do so many companies have players labeled SACD if they can't play SACD?  Isn't that more than kinda illegal??  My Oppo plays them through HDMI, but I want to play just the stereo layer through my main system, not my HT.

JD

SACD players will play the disc through the internal dac  what they will not do is output the signal through the digital out to an external dac. Those that do have paid a fee in order to do it. 

Any SACD player will play the discs and output the converted analog signal from its analog outputs (either RCA or XLR). It will be playing the actual DSD layer from the disc converted to analog by its internal DAC.

The problem is trying to output the digital DSD data to an external DAC which is what you stated was your objective, and that can be a problem due to licensing restrictions with SACDs and not generally allowing the extracted DSD to be transmitted digitally. There are some exceptions as noted in posts above with specific transports and DACs which can only pass the DSD data between specific devices.

The Bryston BDA-3 DAC is an unusual implementation which is able to accept a DSD signal via its HDMI input from an SACD player with HDMI output, which its DAC is then able to convert to analog. Hope this helps!

SACD is a 1bit 2.8224 MHz format. You will need SACD player to pay it.

What @bill_k said, run the analog outputs into your main system and enjoy! You can even switch between the CD and SACD layers to see if you prefer what DSD brings over red book, you just cannot use your stand alone DAC