rbienstock42

This looks like such a great unit, but it appears to fall short in one respect: exaSound's other processor, the e32 also uses an 8 channel ESS SABRE chip, but it is stereo-only and merges the 8 channels into 2 which improves sound quality. But the e28, which can do both stereo and 8-channel, uses only 2 channels of its SABRE chip in stereo mode instead of merging them like the e32 does. Note that merging the 8 to 2 for stereo while maintaining the ability to do multichannel is definitely possible as the $11,000 Merging+NADAC does that. But the NADAC uses a SABRE 9008 chip while the exaSound uses the superior 9018S. If it only merged the 8 channels like the NADAC, it would be a world beater at 1/3 the price of the NADAC. I'm so torn, because the e28/PlayPoint makes so much sense to me, but 85% of my listening is in 2-channel, so I'm sorely tempted by the NADAC.

To clarify again, what you are saying that once you set the output setting of ISO2DSD to RAW ISO, it doesn't matter what you set the channel mode to, because you'll always get an ISO with both layers. But then you have run ISO2DSD again to extract either the stereo or multichannel layer. Is that right?

Got it. But to clarify, I read in another part of this thread that with ISO2DSD you can rip a 2-channel ISO or a multi-channel ISO but not an ISO with both. Is there another tool that can do both at once?

This is the one part of the instructions I don't understand. If I want to end up with a DSF file, why wouldn't I select DSF as the output format? Or do I have to run the raw ISO through ISO2DSD a second time to do that?