SNMoore

Have a look at A-Tech Fabrication: A-Tech Fabrication Home Page Great quality, but it comes at a price.

I'm using Squeezebox Touch as my player, with Logitech Media Server serving up FLAC files. Nice, simple and user-friendly... but sadly not capable of on the fly DSD conversion.

My main listening is done in my office/study. Speakers (Meridian DSP33) are either side of my computer monitor, hence in a near-field arrangement: 70cm (28in) between speakers, 85cm (34in) from speakers to listening position. Simon

For my SACD rips I'm using multiple formats. I'm keeping a *.iso copy to ensure future flexibility: I can extract a DSF or DSDIFF format file from this at a later time. Disk space is cheap and I don't want to have to go back and re-rip the physical SACD just to get it into another format. I made a mistake with the DVD-Audio discs in not extracting both the 5.1 and stereo mixes at the same time. If I ever want the 5.1 mixes I'll have to dig the physical discs out of storage. With SACDs I'm trying to avoid making the same mistakes, especially given the scarcity of suitable PS3s i.e. will any of ours still be working in a few years time? For daily use I convert them to 24-bit/88.2kHz PCM, which is then archived in FLAC. I don't currently have any kit that can handle native DSD playback, or PCM rates higher than 96kHz. A Mytek or similar is on my wish list...

I've only extracted a 5.1 mix from one of my DVD Audio discs, namely Count Basie's Basie Swings. This appears to be true 24-bit: simon$ ./fbits.sh "Count Basie - Basie Swings - 01 - Shiny Stockings.flac" 24/24 bits Count Basie - Basie Swings - 01 - Shiny Stockings.flac For all of my other DVD Audio discs I've extracted a stereo downmix using DVDA Explorer. These mostly appear to be 24-bit (or near enough), with the exception of Eric Clapton's Reptile (20-bit) and The Crystal Method's Legion of Boom (16-bit): simon$ ./fbits.sh *.flac 24/24 bits Alanis Morissette - Under Rug Swept - 01 - 21 Things I Want in a Lover.flac 24/24 bits BB King and Eric Clapton - Riding with the King - 01 - Riding with the King.flac 24/24 bits Barenaked Ladies - Maroon - 01 - Too Little Too Late.flac 24/24 bits Bjork - Vespertine - 01 - Hidden Place.flac 23/24 bits Count Basie - Basie Swings - 01 - Shiny Stockings.flac 22/24 bits Daniel Barenboim - Beethoven - Symphony No 1 - 01 - Adagio molto - Allegro con brio.flac 22/24 bits Daniel Barenboim - Beethoven - Symphony No 2 - 01 - Adagio molto - Allegro con brio.flac 22/24 bits Daniel Barenboim - Beethoven - Symphony No 3 - 01 - Allegro con brio.flac 20/24 bits Eric Clapton - Reptile - 01 - Reptile.flac 24/24 bits Faith Hill - Cry - 01 - Free.flac 23/24 bits Nikolaus Harnoncourt - Neujahrskonzert 2001 - 01 - Johann Strauss I - Opus 228.flac 24/24 bits Paul Simon - You're the One - 01 - That's Where I Belong.flac 24/24 bits REM - Reveal - 01 - The Lifting.flac 24/24 bits Stone Temple Pilots - Core - 01 - Dead and Bloated.flac 16/24 bits The Crystal Method - Legion of Boom - 01 - Starting Over.flac 24/24 bits The Doors - LA Woman - 01 - The Changeling.flac That said, the sound quality varies: Alanis Morissette's Under Rug Swept is distinctly underwhelming despite being 24-bit. And I think a number of my SACD rips are better: The Nat King Cole Story (CAPP 1613 SA) is fabulous given the age of the material; many of my DVD Audio extracts are less impressive. Note that I've only checked the first track in all of the albums above - it is possible that different tracks within an album will be different. Regards, Simon

I've been double checking my 24-bit 'stereo downmix' extracted from the Legion of Boom DVD-Audio, and sadly it appears that it really is 16-bit, masquerading as 24-bit. This was extracted using DVDA Explorer and the log file shows it as 24-bit: [32] ### MLP Stream (channels: 2, sample_rate: 48000, bits_per_sample: 24) ### Running the file command under OS X also confirms this as 24-bit: simon$ file "The Crystal Method - Legion of Boom - 01 - Starting Over.flac" The Crystal Method - Legion of Boom - 01 - Starting Over.flac: FLAC audio bitstream data, 24 bit, stereo, 48 kHz, 11834240 samples However, Julf started an interesting thread a while ago: When is 24 bits not 24 bits?. This links to a Hydrogen Audio post that provides a shell script fbits to identify the effective resolution of a FLAC file. Running the fbits script under OS X shows the effective resolution is really only 16-bit: simon$ ./fbits.sh "The Crystal Method - Legion of Boom - 01 - Starting Over.flac" 16/24 bits The Crystal Method - Legion of Boom - 01 - Starting Over.flac So a DVDA Explorer stereo downmix extracted from the Legion of Boom DVD-Audio is sadly only 16-bit/48kHz, not 24-bit/48kHz as I believed earlier. Which begs the question as to whether the 5.1 mix is really 24-bit or not? Sadly I cannot check this: I didn't extract the 5.1 mix at the time and I've since put the disc into storage. Note that I have checked my other DVDA Explorer stereo downmix extracts are really 24-bit; I've only found this problem with Legion of Boom so far.

The 5.1 DVD-Audio mix is actually 48kHz/24-bit, not 96kHz. And it has the appropriate content/settings to be able to extract a 'stereo downmix' from this, also at 48kHz/24-bit. The old DVDA Explorer tool can definitely do this, so I would hope that DVD Audio Extractor can do the same (I've not personally used it). Regards, Simon