niari

We have also tried the Playback Designs CD/SACD player and separate DAC driving the tube crossover and there is no problem.

It's an Esoteric Grandioso K1X

We’re experiencing noise when playing SACDs. The noise is like frying eggs and bacon or heavy rain and makes all our SACDs unlistenable. I’ve read that DSD noise-shaping moves quantisation noise from the audio band above the audio band. I’ve also read that “this is well-known for sigma-delta based modulators like that used for DSD, and if there is insufficient low-pass filtering at the output of the player, the HF noise can cause problems with some amplifiers, especially tube ones” from what I gather are intermodulation effects. The high-end CD/SACD player is indeed driving a tube analogue crossover. Why are tube amplifiers or crossovers susceptible to this problem? We had the same problem with an earlier version of the high-end CD/SACD player and the manufacturer fixed it by implementing a brick-wall filter. With this new model the manufacturer (or their local representatives) either won’t or are unable to implement such a fix. Current plan is to do an FFT on the output of the player. If we can capture noise outside the audio band and present it to the manufacturer maybe we can get some action. Has anyone else had a problem with SACD/DSD playback?

I thought I'd post this to save others time and potentially, money. taobao sellers have no unmodified Pioneer DBP-160s left despite sites saying they have. You can only go so far on taobao using Google Chrome and it's translation capability. Ultimately you need to talk to sellers and the chat app is only in Chinese and there's no way to copy and paste into a translation site. Eventually I tried using a taobao agent. This was when I found that despite many sellers indicating that they had many unmodified Pioneer BDP-160s available, when you actually came to purchase one, there were none available. Shame because I really wanted to get the SACD layer of a bunch of my CDs onto my music server.

None so far. The heat sink to which the heat pipes are connected gets slightly warm to the touch but that's it.

Managed to solve the problems myself! When using Remote Desktop 2 things are needed: 1. Tell Remote Desktop to play audio on the remote computer In the Remote Desktop window click Show Options and display the Local Resources tab. In the Remote audio area click Settings and select Play on remote computer. 2. Allow Remote Desktop access to the remote Optical Drive. Start the Group Policy editor as Administrator. Either from Start type gpedit.msc into the search dialog and select "Run as Administrator" or open a command prompt as Administrator and type in gpedit.msc. Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > ‘System’ > Removable Storage Access then look for "All Removable Storage: Allow direct access in remote sessions" and set to Enable.

I've just completed my Pipeline. I'm currently accessing it remotely using Windows Remote Desktop, logging in as an Admin user. Neither dbPowerAmp nor JRiver will recognise the DVD drive unless I start them as Administrator. JRiver won't play files unless I run it as Administrator. Worse still, when I log in remotely my Juli@ DAC card is not recognised as a Playback device. Has anyone else run into these problems and developed a solution please? Thanks!

I've just got my Pipeline up-and-running and I'd be interested in that too. Only doing OS updates so far and the Intel Xeon E3-1241 v3 has peaked at 56°C. The HDPLEX 100W Linear Power Supply gets quite warm but from earlier posts that's to be expected.

Thanks. Now to order the extended pipes! That's what I get for going straight to the parts list!

I've just started my Pipeline build. For anyone else doing the same, nowhere have I seen mentioned that in addition to the FC10 case you need to purchase the HT4 Thermal Riser to ensure that the heat pipes can rise above the RAM boards to connect to the heat sink.

Applause indeed!

Thanks for a great overview of what's out there! I'm intrigued by the possibility of preforming crossover filtering in the digital domain. A question for Channel D I guess but how would a piece of software do that on it's own? The hardware only has left and right outputs and you'd need outputs for each frequency range.

With many new, cheap SACD-capable players around, would cannibalizing one of those be a better option than a PS3? I'm guessing that a different EEPROM/code mods would be required.