I can only second astrotoy's words of thanks to Ted and Mr_Wicked for all their work.
I just got my SACD-compatible PS3 tonight and had my first SACD ripped within an hour. Very easy setup thanks to the detailed instructions. Now I have work ahead to go through my SACD collection...
My DSD DAC (Chordette QuteHD) is at the office right now, so my first listen is using conversion to 96/24 PCM - the real listening will be tomorrow. I'll see if the QuteHD works as well in DSD as it does in PCM.
As to the DSD logo on SACDs, I do not believe it refers to the method used for initial recording, it just indicates that DSD is used to encode the SACD layer [as if there was another choice :-)]. It is quite unusual for SACDs to describe precisely the recording chain...
Almost all recordings are edited/modified/improved during production, and all that work is essentially done in PCM. DSD is excellent as a storage and distribution technique due to its higher quality than PCM for a given bit rate, but it is often more convenient to do the initial recording in very high quality PCM and convert to DSD as the final production step. Going direct-to-DSD means the only production changes have to done live during the recording process - very challenging.
Of course, corners have been cut and SACDs released from a master that was CD-quality. That is unacceptable. But deriving SACDs from high-quality PCM masters (192/24 or 384/24) is perfectly reasonable in my view. High-quality PCM files are quite large, both for download and for distribution on silver discs. DSD coding is a good tradeoff for now.
