Philnick

"Ah, the old right-click trick. Thanks, Chief!" That worked, direct to FLAC, as I had found the codec pack after I made my prior post. I set it to use 88.2/24, since it was from DSD64. My test SACD was Mingus Ah Um, a "pure" stereo SACD (no multichannel tracks and no CD compatibility layer) and I compared playback through Foobar of the DSD file (and its FLAC, which sounded the same) with my FLAC of the original Redbook CD version of the same track. Night and day difference in clarity - the Redbook version sounded muffled and muddy by comparison.

I've installed these plugins - foo_input_sacd and foo_dsd_processor, that were contained in a zip file called foo_input_sacd1.0.5.zip, created by Maxim V.Anisiutkin. They work to let me play and listen to the DSDIFF files I ripped but I can't figure out how to have them write the PCM output to a file. That's what I'm asking for help with - there must be some setting either inside the plugin or foobar2000 itself that I haven't found which allows directing the PCM output into a file. Does anyone here know how to do that?

Ok, if I can't figure out how to convert to FLAC on my Windows PC - if I can convert, I'll use mp3tag to add tags, including album art, to FLAC files. How do I turn on FLAC or PCM file (not playback) output from foobar2000 with the SACD plugins?

Just getting started with this. Have gotten my Oppo 103 to send files to my Win 7 PC using AutoScript/SACD extract with the ISO2DSD java interface. I'm going to be ripping both stereo and multichannel tracks. (I've left it set at the default Phillips DSDIFF - is this the best choice?) I've installed the foo_input-SACD plugin for Foobar2000, which is doing fine playing my first test rip - the files from a non-hybrid stereo SACD - but I can't find any option to actually write them out as PCM files, though I've cruised all the menus. How do I turn on writing of file output as PCM?

PS The sound files are on an external firewire drive attached to my aging XP Pro SP3 machine, syndicated over my LAN by oShare, the smallest and simplest UPNP/DLNA server I've seen. My PC is on the second floor of my house, at my main router (an old blue Linksys WRT54G). An ethernet cable runs from a LAN jack on that to a LAN jack on a second-hand FiOS router, which is tied into my cable TV wiring and set to use the coax connection as an ethernet LAN jack. The same thing is set up in my theater, and the Oppo is plugged into that. (Ethernet over coax is called MoCA and has the advantage over powerline of a much quieter medium, since it doesn't have to deal with spikes from electric motors.)

I bought the HDtracks 88.2/24 download yesterday. I play it through an Oppo BDP-93, using its analog outputs into an old Yamaha RX-V457 pre-HDMI 5.1 receiver. I generally listen to stereo sources in either "car stereo" mode, putting the same thing out the side speakers as the fronts, or using the receiver's DTS Neo: Music setting, which is similar to the Dolby version but subtler, less harsh-sounding. I usually toggle between them to see which sounds better - sometimes Neo introduces unpleasant artifacts, but it makes Sunken Condos sound like one of Fagan's multichannel disks. The unprocessed stereo does sound a bit crowded by comparison, as Colin said, but it opens up through the matrix decoder. If your amp can do something of the sort, give it a try.