Brand B

I think for that album, it is the same one.

Agreed on reliability. I've had my launch 60GB PS3 since they came out, and it has seen moderate game, blu-ray, CD and SACD use for that entire 5 years with no issues. Unfortunately my firmware gets upgraded regularly for game compatibility, so I missed the DSD ripping boat. But I keep the thing cleaned out and on an open shelf, and it rarely kicks into high fan mode. After at least several thousand hours of use, I don't think that's too bad. If you read through the AVS thread, the guys who see failures are mostly the game several hours a day guys, who probably put 5-10000 hours on the thing in a couple of years. And may or may not have them in ideal situations as far as ventilation.

I was attempting to get all the files off my new copy of Crimson's Starless and Bible Black 40th anniversary edition and into iTunes, and again ran into the problem that some files are in the DVD-A portion of the disk and recoverable with a version of DVDAExplorer that works under Snow Leopard, but some of the files are 24/48 files in the DVD-video portion and no so readily recoverable. I was able to extract the raw PCM using Mac the Ripper, but was having no luck using Audacity to convert them to AIFF. The OS X Hints forum lead me to a $.99 utility in the Mac App Store called "PCM to AIFF" which performed the task for me (had to check the swap bytes option). Anyone looking for a quick way to perform this action should check it out.

Haven't heard the DAC Magic, but I got a Duet 2 a few weeks ago and am extremely pleased with it. Great low end.

Apple has opened up their lossless codec. Could lead to some interesting developments: http://alac.macosforge.org/

"The box will have the SACD logo on it if it originally had compatibility. That is no guarantee that a subsequent firmware upgrade didn't remove it." There is no firmware update that removes the ability of a PS3 to play SACDs. If a PS3 has SACD playback hardware, it continues to play them. Recent firmware only renders the ripper package unusable. Not SACDs themselves.

I have had as many as 5 external HDDs in my house in the last 6-7 years and have not had any failures. Most are on 24/7, and are used for constant backups, music service, streaming video, etc. My question would be, what are the ones you are using? Prepackaged external drives can be of reasonable quality, but some are not. Western Digital, for instance, had a product run in the early "MyBook" drives with terrible failure rates. However, every bare drive I've have ever bought has been a WD, so it is not a reflection on all their products. The prepackaged electronics store type drives like the mybook, however, are often built using the cheaper type drives, low cost chipsets, and designed to appeal to typical consumers, and turn a decent profit at that point. Picking your own model drive from the more reliable enterprise class of drives and then a higher quality enclosure might give you better reliability, if you were not already doing that. What kind of notebook are you using?

Did you account for the factor of 2 for stereo? Seems like it should be double that: 2,800,000*60*2/8 = 42,000,000

I had sent an email with similar problems to Russel earlier today. I had not gotten all the way to his post in the thread before I emailed you. I will disable Max buffer size and see if it solves my issues.

One other note for those in a similar situation to you. I have read that for some reason the thunderbolt/mini displayport port on the new thunderbolt display will NOT properly pass on the signal for a second video monitor to a normal displayport monitor. If that port, however, is connected to an additional thunderbolt device (say a HDD array) with its own daisy-chaining thunderbolt port, the second display WILL work correctly if connected to that. In other words, if you were to plug your old cinema display (which I assume uses mini displayport as its connection), into your new thunderbolt display, you would not be able to configure it as a second display. Not a limitation of your mini but rather your new display. Some tech sites have been able to get a second displayport monitor working while daisy chaining through the new monitor, but only by chaining in another thunderbolt device between the monitors. So the conclusion (IMO) is there are a few bugs to be worked out with this unit.

Maybe a "testing the waters" scenario.

Oh, and check "add to iTunes library" under the File menu to import stuff.

Did you go into the audio settings and make sure the audio is going out USB and not out the HDMI or audio out ports?

With the SACD capable PS3, you can go either route. Used mine to do some 24/96 rips of some of my SACDs with the monoprice box.. As for finding an older SACD capable one, there is a thread over at AVS in the playstation area with people worrying about their old original 60GB (SACD capable) PS3s failing on them, and complaining about the low trade in value towards the new slim models ($75). If you are willing to offer them more than that, you might find someone interested in selling there.

This will do part of what you want: http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=101&cp_id=10110&cs_id=1011002&p_id=5557&seq=1&format=2 I've used one to strip the hirez audio from blu-rays and SACDs and send it separately out over optical, with the video continuing on to my TV. You would then need a DAC to take the optical or coax output.