Recently I discovered Audio Fidelity, an online store that sells high-quality audio versions (i.e., SACD) of select albums:
http://www.audiofidelity.net
It looks like many/most of the SACDs they have are "hybrid" discs, meaning they have both a SACD mix and a regular CD audio mix that can be read by standard CD players & drives. I've considered buying some of these SACD discs for their audio quality but there are a couple things I'm wondering about them, and I'm curious if anyone happens to know anything about these AudioFidelity SACD albums?

1. Is the standard CD audio on these hybrid SACDs entirely a creation of Audiofidelity? There are albums that have been re-released as remastered versions on CD (by whoever normally releases those albums), and I'm curious if these Audiofidelity SACDs contain that mix or if they're created by Audiofidelity.
2. I like having audio CDs for the audio quality, but I also like to rip my music to my computer for convenient access. I could buy a SACD player, but I'd like to be able to rip the music and play it anywhere. I was looking up how to rip SACD audio discs, and it looks like the best known way to do so is with an older-model Playstation 3 with SACD capability and a certain firmware version, hacking the device, and installing some SACD ripper software onto the device to rip the disc to an ISO, then reading the audio from the ISO file on a PC. That sounds more of a hassle than it's worth. Does anyone know if there's an easier way to rip SACD discs? I was hoping a standard optical drive for PC would be able to read SACD discs, but I'm guessing there is no such optical drive on the market.

Nightfox

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Re: Audiofidelity SACD albums
By: Nightfox to All on Sat Jul 26 2014 02:04 pm

What sample-rate and depth are SACDs? Like 24-bit samples at 48kHz?

I remember in Downbeat magazine there being SACD ads for various releases.

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Re: Audiofidelity SACD albums
By: Froggyme to Nightfox on Tue Jul 29 2014 14:50:59

What sample-rate and depth are SACDs? Like 24-bit samples at 48kHz?

I had to look this up.. Looks like the sampling frequency is 2.8224MHz, and instead of using 16-bit PCM like CDs do, it looks like SACDs use something called DSD (Direct Stream Digital) which uses 1 bit.. At least that's according to Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacd

Nightfox

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Re: Audiofidelity SACD albums
By: Nightfox to All on Sat Jul 26 2014 02:04 pm

Recently I discovered Audio Fidelity, an online store that sells high-quality audio versions (i.e., SACD) of select albums: http://www.audiofidelity.net

If you want to buy high-resolution digital audio, check out hdtracks.com.

digital man

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Re: Audiofidelity SACD albums
By: Digital Man to Nightfox on Wed Aug 20 2014 14:41:28

If you want to buy high-resolution digital audio, check out
hdtracks.com.

Thanks, I'll check them out.

Nightfox

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Re: Audiofidelity SACD albums
By: Nightfox to Froggyme on Tue Jul 29 2014 07:33 pm

What sample-rate and depth are SACDs? Like 24-bit samples at 48kHz?

I had to look this up.. Looks like the sampling frequency is 2.8224MHz, and instead of using 16-bit PCM like CDs do, it looks like SACDs use something called DSD (Direct Stream Digital) which uses 1 bit.. At least that's according to Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacd

Nightfox

So normal CDs process 705600 bits per second while SACDs process almost 3 million per second. neat!

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