PS3 supporting SACD?

[dobyblue]

I know most people may not care all that much whether or not the PS3 will support SACD, but I though the inclusion of SACD support on the PS3 was a very good decision by Sony.
The last two weeks now I've noticed that the PS3 specs site no longer lists SACD support, yet I can't find any documentation anywhere as to why Sony may have decided to not include it.
I mean, an SACD player, a Blu Ray player and a next-gen gaming console! Awesome!
Anyone have any insight they can share on this?
http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/specs.html

[xberserker]

It's still there I believe. This pic is from the final production model of the PS3.


And I got this image from here
http://presscenter.playstation.com/l...=%2fpages.aspx

Username: SCEA
Password: SC3APR

I didn't tell you that password

Lots of high high rez photos of the PS3

[dobyblue]

Thanks very much!

[xberserker]

Anytime I have a question for you what is super audio CD? I've never heard of it.

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by xberserker

Anytime I have a question for you what is super audio CD? I've never heard of it.

You're not alone.

But hopefully once everyone upgrades her/his receiver/pre-pro to ones with HDMI 1.2 at least (and if it does native DSD decoding is better) then maybe SACD could finally replace the CD.

How does it sound like? Well I could compare that to DVD-Audio but that's still not common knowledge. So imagine this: take a 5.1 movie with a great sound score that you love on DVD. That sound is delivered to you via a lossy compression either via Dolby Digital or DTS.

SACD can do the same but deliver high quality 5.1 or stereo audio losslessly. So imagine listening to the same score in a higher quality. When using high quality master tapes, an SACD title can give you goosebumps.


fuad

[Jodi]

My only run-in with an SACD player was the Ayre Acoustics C-5Xe Universal Stereo Player (CD, SACD and DVD-Audio). It is a stereo player ONLY, but I listened to it at an Ayre Acoustics/Martin-Logan demo at Audible Elegance in Cincinnati about a year ago. This player's SACD performance was nothing short of absolutely stunning!!
This Ayre player is THE single best SACD player on the planet. I encourage you to visit ayre.com for your nearest dealer. And it suggests for $5,950 USD.

Jodi

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by xberserker

Anytime I have a question for you what is super audio CD? I've never heard of it.

SACD = Super Audio Compact Disc

Instead of using PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) as CDs (and DVDs) use, where the audio signal is sampled 44,100 times per second and each sample given a value in a 16 bit word length, the SACD uses DSD which samples the signal 2 million,822,400 times a second (2.82 MHz, 64x CD) in 1-bit. This is supposed to give a sound that's closer to analog smoothness than anything else can achieve (DSD was designed as an archiving format to preserve recordings for the future) and according to many audiophiles, they agree. (Just ask GoldenRedux ). Even better than 192 kHz/24 bit PCM.[quote] Did somebody call me?

A SACD can have up to 6 discrete channels (not 5.1, six full frequency) (Some Telarc SACDs have used the 6th channel as a height channel for example, other SACDs use it as the regular ES/EX back surround, and of course many as the normal .1), depending on how the title was recorded, you may get original Mono, original Stereo, 3-channel Stereo, (many early Stereo recordings were made as 3 front channels and mixed down to 2 for LPs), Quadraphonic, 4.0, 5.0, 5.1, or 6. If the title has a Multichannel mix, it also has the original Stereo mix in the disc.
A SACD recording has to be played on a SACD player.
Many SACDs also have a compatible CD layer so you can play them on regular CD and DVD players (The CD layer is Stereo (or Mono) only of course). It's all on a single side. No Combo flipping . These SACDs with CD layer are called Hybrids.

More than 4000 titles have been released, some gone out of print.
You can see the list on sa-cd.net

Deci has summed it all up quite nicely.

[dobyblue]

Well pretty much all has been answered above. The SACD's sampling rate is fantastic and a lot of people may already own one without knowing it.
The 30th anniversary release of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was released on Hybrid SACD only, there was no CD layer only version. I bought it for CDN$9.99 which is incredibly cheap for an SACD, but a step in the right direction for sure.
The only thing I'll disagree with the above post on is that it's better than 192/24. I do not believe it is. However DVD-Audio only supports 192/24 into 2 channels. When it's multi-channel it can only handle 96/24.

For stereo I believe the fidelity of a 192/24 recording on DVD-A is better than SACD, but for multi-channel the SACD has higher fidelity than DVD-Audio. The thing is that there are not many recordings on DVD-Audio that utilize the highest bit rate on the stereo track - you'll find a lot of 48/24 recordings on DVD-Audio.
With SACD you're always getting 1/2800 recordings, which is why it's often the choice of Audiophiles. DVD-Audio's greatest flaw was allowing the different configurations and also releasing DD5.1 tracks on thier releases, which may prevent people from actually buying a DVD-Audio player to realise the advanced resolution thinking they already have a 5.1 track so how much better can it be. Well I had just DD5.1 and thought NIN - Downward SPiral was awesome. Eventually I bought a Pionner Elite SACD/DVD-A player and realised what I'd been missing.

I have on SACD

Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism (Stereo Hybrid)
Elton John - Elton John (5.1 Hybrid)
Elton John - Madman Across the Water (5.1 Hybrid)
The Police - Greatest Hits (5.1 Hybrid)
Nick Drake - A Treasury (5.1 Hrbrid)
Michael Jackson - Thriller (Stereo SACD)
Pink Floyd - DSOTM (5.1 Hrbrid)
Bob Dylan - Desire (Stereo Hybrid)
Dire Straits - Money For Nothing (5.1 Hybrid)
Peter Gabriel - So (stereo SACD)
Peter Gabriel - Us (stereo SACD)
Peter Gabriel - Shaking The Tree (stereo SACD)
Oasis - What's The Story Morning Glory (5.1 Hybrid)

on DVD-Audio

REM - Out of Time (192/24 stereo 96/24 5.1)
REM - Green (192/24 stereo 96/24 5.1)
Metallica - Black (96/24 stereo/5.1)
Stone Temple Pilots - Core (96/24 stereo/5.1)
Donovan - Fairytale (96/24 stereo/5.1)
Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth (48/24 stereo/5.1)
Nine Inch Nails - Downward Spiral (48/24 stereo/5.1)
Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells 2003 (96/24 stereo/5.1)
Seal - Seal (88.2/24 stereo 96/24 5.1)
Crystal Method - Legion of Boom (48/24 5.1 48/24 DTS:ES 6.1)
Porcupine Tree - In Absentia (48/24 5.1 48/24 DTS)

Also on DVD-Video I have Peter Gabriel - Play : The Videos which features a really nice DTS 96/24 track, one of the few DVD-Videos I know of that does.

I will choose either Dire Straits or Elton's Madman from SACD or REM's Out of Time on DVD-Audio to show off my system. Most of the time it will be an SACD though.

The DSD process gives SACD the ability to follow the original waveform of the music you're recording so closely with it's sampling rate. If you took a wave from SACD's DSD and compared it with a CD's PCM you'd see that the CD has no chance of being able to follow the SACD.

|||| on SACD would be

/\/\ on CD.

You can see how the CD can't keep up. Once you get to 192/24 though the difference is practically negligible. I believe though that with Blu Ray they have no plans to implement what can and can't be done, which means you'll still get recordings that are 48/24 and nowhere near as good as SACD, then you'll get 5.1 recordings that are 192/24 and will be stunning. That's why I'm hopeful that Sony will have the SACD support on PS3, and your pic suggests it will, as the SACD is a set format which audiophiles love. There's no guessing with it. Most often with DVD-A titles you have to search, search and search before you find out what the sampling rate is.

If there's a title available on both SACD and DVD-A and one is not twice the amount of the other then the SACD is your best bet. Having said that though a $1000 CD player with Martin Logan Summit speakers and Blue HEaven cables is no doubt going to sound better than a $199 SACD player through $200 Yamaha speakers.

[Monkey]

think of a set of stairs. Or think of SD television compared to HD television. That is exactly what the differenc is..

Lots of smaller steps instead of bigger steps which leads to a smoother more accurate sound (smoother more accurate picture with HDTV.

You'll notice this if use music software as well and analyze the wavelengths.. At some point if you zoom in far enough it will no longer look smooth but instead stairs.... Going to higher resolutions willl let you smooth out those steps. Leads to better sound.

Going to the bigger steps degrades the sound, think going from PS2 graphics to Atari graphics (ok the difference isn't that extreme but used to explained the difference in how smooth the sound wave will be)

[Casey]

my dvd player has a sacd player in it, but requires the use of multi-channel audio cables (one cable for each speaker) Do all sacd players need these cables?

The PS3 does not have multi-channel audio outs, just hdmi and optical, so i'm not sure how this will work. maybe it will work over hdmi, but then you'd need a receiver with hdmi input, or some sort of crazy adapter

[partridge]

Surely optical can carry this signal?

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by Casey

my dvd player has a sacd player in it, but requires the use of multi-channel audio cables (one cable for each speaker) Do all sacd players need these cables?
The PS3 does not have multi-channel audio outs, just hdmi and optical, so i'm not sure how this will work. maybe it will work over hdmi, but then you'd need a receiver with hdmi input, or some sort of crazy adapter

DVD-A and SACD required you to use the analog cables (Phono RCA jacks) to get the full high resolution I think because of that great boogieman copyright. (I believe that if you connected it through the SPDIF, you might get the sound, but downsampled to more mortal parameters? But I wouldn't know, as I have mine connected through the analog all the way to the speakers so I never looked into it). This I know: There are players and audio receivers that can connect the full high resolution digital signal through i.Link/Firewire/IEEE 1394 (for example, Denon Link?). And HDMI 1.2 works too I think.

dobyblue, I have the Floyd, the Police, and the Elton discs from you list. I shouldn't post my list of SACDs/DVD-As/DTS-CDs and HDADs as it would be as long as my Apocalistic Redux BD list, so I'll just mention some of the artists I have in SACD: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, The Rolling Stones, Beck, The Who, George Harrison, Journey, Aerosmith, Bob Dylan, Miami Sound Machine, The Carpenters, Meatloaf, Boston, David Bowie, classical recodings by Telarc, RCA Living Stereo, Mercury Living Presence. And many more.

Sometimes I use as first demo for SACD "virgins", the Henry Mancini Pink Panther theme
Their usual reaction is just: "Wow"

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by partridge

Surely optical can carry this signal?

For SACD only HDMI and multi-channel analog cables will work, much the same as advanced resolution DVD-Audio. You will also need to see the DVD-Audio symbol or SACD symbol on your player, otherwise with DVD-A you're probably listening to the Dolby Digital or DTS part of the disc.
I was unaware of the Denon link doing it too, that's good to know.

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

dobyblue, I have the Floyd, the Police, and the Elton discs from you list. I shouldn't post my list of SACDs/DVD-As/DTS-CDs and HDADs as it would be as long as my Apocalistic Redux BD list, so I'll just mention some of the artists I have in SACD: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, The Rolling Stones, Beck, The Who, George Harrison, Journey, Aerosmith, Bob Dylan, Miami Sound Machine, The Carpenters, Meatloaf, Boston, David Bowie, classical recodings by Telarc, RCA Living Stereo, Mercury Living Presence. And many more.
Sometimes I use as first demo for SACD "virgins", the Henry Mancini Pink Panther theme
Their usual reaction is just: "Wow"

Yeah I've always gotten the same reaction too! Love it to pieces.
I'm interested in the Rolling Stones SACDs, particularly Hot Rocks, and Meatloaf's Bat Out Of Hell.
Can you shed any light on whether or not these are good purchases?
Also what would be a good Miles Davis SACD to start with?
I have Sting's Brand New Day on DTS-CD - do you know whether or not the DVD-A version is worth upgrading to?

[Deciazulado]

Well the classic Mile Davis recording that's always used for any new format introduction is Kind Of Blue so I think that would be a good place to start. There are a few SACD variations of it I think. The multichannel one is made from the 3-track master, plus has the stereo. If you need it to have a CD layer there's a Hybrid of it too, but overseas.

You can use sa-cd.net to track it, and if you like it, go to the other extreme and buy the Japanese only *****es' Brew (Stereo SACD only) that'll probably wreck your brain


The Stones SACDs all include the CD layer and are in original Stereo or Mono only (they said they were trying to be "historically accurate" ). There have been a couple audiophile complaints about some technical issues (slight NR in a handful of songs mostly) but the general consensus is that they're an improvement over most other versions, and definitively a great improvement over the US abcko CDs. The Hot Rocks tracks are digitally the same (clones) as the individual SACDs tracks, but check the internet (there's even a highfidelityreview cheat table) that gives you which version is where (mono, stereo, alternate version, etc). There's also alternative ways to get most of the Hot Rocks tracks (like the Big Hits and Fazed Coookies Greatest Hits, etc) so if you plan to get more titles later or looking for a particular song list you might want to carefully check what tracks you want and where they are (there's a Rolling Stones SACD FAQ by Pacholski and Goodwin that explains this much better than I can!) Just be aware that the Satisfaction in the Hot Rocks is a recent remix to Stereo (sounds good tho) so if you want the original Mono mix it's on some of the others SACDs. But if you just want to sample the Stones SACDs, Hot Rocks is fine. One individual album SACD that seems to have a general "great upgrade to the sound" rating is Beggar's Banquet. You have to be careful when ordering the Stones SACDs online tho. Abcko has released non SACD versions that have the same UPC code! If it's a digipack it's a SACD Hybrid. If it's a jewel case it's a plain CD. So make certain!

There' is one exception for the Stones SACD digipack cases and mono/stereo only mixes. The Sympathy For the Devil SACD maxi single. It comes in a jewel case with various modern remixes of the song, but it also has the song in 6 channel surround! A trip hearing the congas coming from behind you. (It has the original Stereo mix too).

The Meatloaf SACD is the best version there is of that title. (Stereo/Multichannel)
For the song Paradise By the Dashboard Light the multitrack overdubs were lost in a fire long ago, so some of the multitrack parts (basically the female vocal) had to be redubbed onto the multitrack's basic tracks to do the 6 chanel mix. But you are still gettting the original Stereo mix of the song too. This SACD is hard to find (it's not an Hybrid)

I don't have the Sting title so I can't help you with that one.

But what I can do is to recommend you Steve Hoffman's site for more info on SACD/DVD-A sound and music.

[GoldenRedux]

What am I doing that keeps making my replies end up editing other people's posts?

EDIT: Now I know.

[GoldenRedux]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

SACD = Super Audio Compact Disc

Instead of using PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) as CDs (and DVDs) use, where the audio signal is sampled 44,100 times per second and each sample given a value in a 16 bit word length, the SACD uses DSD which samples the signal 2 million,822,400 times a second (2.82 MHz, 64x CD) in 1-bit. This is supposed to give a sound that's closer to analog smoothness than anything else can achieve (DSD was designed as an archiving format to preserve recordings for the future) and according to many audiophiles, they agree. (Just ask GoldenRedux ). Even better than 192 kHz/24 bit PCM.

Did somebody call me?

Deci has summed it all up quite nicely.

[GoldenRedux]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

For SACD only HDMI and multi-channel analog cables will work,

Actually, FireWire (IEEE1394 aka i.Link) can also be used.

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by GoldenRedux

Actually, FireWire (IEEE1394 aka i.Link) can also be used.

Yes, I made note of that in post #13.

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

I have Sting's Brand New Day on DTS-CD - do you know whether or not the DVD-A version is worth upgrading to?

I've no access to the DTS-CD of BND (perhaps you could ISO one and send it to me ) but the DVD-A is miles better than the CD. Like most DVD-As, the bass information is just incredible, particularly on a few tracks like A Thousand Years, Big Lie Small World and Ghost Story.

I don't know if this is true for the CD releases of BND out there but remember the "Prelude to the End Of The Game"? At the end of Brand New Day, there is a hidden track which turns out to be End Of The Game.

The good thing about the DVD-A over SACD is that it can display lyrics of the song and get some videos out of it too. The good thing about SACD is that if your player is already configured, you just press play and not have to navigate to hear the first track.


fuad

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by WriteSimply

I've no access to the DTS-CD of BND (perhaps you could ISO one and send it to me ) but the DVD-A is miles better than the CD. Like most DVD-As, the bass information is just incredible, particularly on a few tracks like A Thousand Years, Big Lie Small World and Ghost Story.

I don't know if this is true for the CD releases of BND out there but remember the "Prelude to the End Of The Game"? At the end of Brand New Day, there is a hidden track which turns out to be End Of The Game.

The good thing about the DVD-A over SACD is that it can display lyrics of the song and get some videos out of it too. The good thing about SACD is that if your player is already configured, you just press play and not have to navigate to hear the first track.


fuad

It is cool that it can display pictures, which can have lyrics on them, but it's unfortunate that the bit rate on the DVD-Audio discs is not fixed. The only resolution on DVD-A that compares to SACD is two channel stereo when encoded at 192/24, but it can only handle 96/24 when in 5.1
Blu-ray though has the capacity to handle 192/24 into 5.1 with DTS-HD MA; should be sweet!

I'd be more than happy to hook you up with a copy of the DTS CD. Do you know about torrenting or b&p'ing? I can torrent it on Oink or can b&p a copy for you. I have Ten Summoners Tales and The Police Greatest Hits on DTS-CD as well, but The Police disc is nowhere near as good as the SACD.

(Yes the bass on A Thousand Years is very cool, on the DTS-CD as well. I particularly like the surround mix on that song and as Elliot Schreiner did both the DTS-CD and the DVD-A I'm sure you'll agree it's pretty enveloping)