[fat-tony]

@DDDamian - thanks for the quick response. I'm running an MSI E350IA-E45 mobo and it seems pretty damn perfect on Win 7 OS running the stock ATI HDMI drivers. PCM multichannel at up to 192kHz from FLAC files no problem. Just doesn't work on openelec, though - I'm assuming driver issues in the linux environment?

I have an Onkyo SR875 which handles pretty much any bitstreaming format I care to throw at it. Seems somewhat humbling that a relatively cheap mobo can actually decode all the exotic HD audio formats to LPCM so well. I paid big money for my Onkyo about three years ago and I want to see the lights come on when I send it bitstreamed HD audio, so I'm danged if I want my cheap mobo decoding it I'm in the process of looking for an old PS3 with the right firmware so I can backup my SACDs to an archive format. Was hoping there might be an easier way! Foobar did a great job of ripping my DVD-As to FLAC and my CD collection was archived using EAC, so I haven't much further to go until all my stuff is on hard disk.

[DDDamian]

@fat-tony - Those few PS3's that will work trade pretty high on EBay

Re: ATI & Linux, yeah, by all accounts Linux is very much neglected by ATI.

[Turrican2]

Welcome to the forums. It's nice to see another audiophile around - we're a rare and often abused group around here

You made my day!

[HeresJohnny]

Hey, I never noticed this thread got some lovin'
Max, the programmer of the foobar2000 sacd plugin has already implemented various decoding optimizations which have made playback between 4-6 times faster than when the plugin was first written. If you people could work more wonders on the optimization part I guess he would be really happy seeing XBMC as having a synergy effect.

A problem that he couldn't tackle so far - and for me this is probably the holy grail - is DSD streaming via HDMI. Many newer universal players can do this, however, there seems to be no real standard. I'd LOVE to see the DSD indicator light up on my Yammy 3067, though... never seen that until now Oppo was going in that direction with DVD-A and Bluray ISOs, but they caved in and removed ISO playback support (I imagine due to legal pressure).

May I also point you guys to the sister thread of this one: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...=dvd-audio
DVD-A ISO playback should be just around the corner as MLP decoding is already present in XBMC. Again, Maxim's ISO code might be helpful there.

[salora]

hi there, so happy to find this thread!
yes another audiophile in here !

so if this will happen (sacd read possibility with xbmc) I guess the best way would be to decode dsd to pcm, even if I think we'll loose the specific and warm sound of sacd .
but it will be the easiest way for now

I have a few sacd's iso, and was searching a way to read it with xbmc, the way i found is to set foobar as an external player for sacd, with the foobar sacd plug-in.
I tried to stream dsd through my nvidia GT520 hdmi output, foobar is doing right but no sound
I bought an asus xonar hdav1.3 to try , but again no sound through hdmi, so the only way here is to decode to pcm and play with asio pilot, and with the analog quality of that soundcard the result is quite amazing, and my denon AVR love it ;-)

the only way to stream dsd I found is with a mytek 192 stéreo DAC but it's quite expensive!

hope they'll find a way to do it with hdmi someday!

[DDDamian]

Hi Salora - very few devices of any type handle DSD well. I understand completely what you mean by the "warm" or very natural sound of DSD vs PCM, but it's quite minimal when the conversion is done at high rates like 176.4khz.

Lucky for me I have two players which both handle SACD iso's burned to DVD-R, a Denon 5900 Universal Player (my god, what a machine!) and a much cheaper and more available Sony BDP-S580 Bluray player.

With serious listening the Denon trumps, but the downgrade using Foobar and a 24/176.4 pcm conversion is a fairly small trade-off for the ability to have these all archived and instantly accessible, and of course no chance of scratching the precious discs or exposing them to harm.

The holdup is that some of the Foobar plugin code is licensed by Philips Ltd, and the authors have replied, but bumped it over to their Intellectual Properties people, who have to date not responded. XBMC cannot include that code, as we publish under the GPL all software as open-source and free to copy, use, distribute, etc.

Still sorta hold out hope, even if at some point there's a binary addon hook introduced for audio codecs - then an unofficial patch may happen - never know

[salora]

hi dddamian, first of all congrats for the long expected AE !! ;-)
any chance of supporting asio drivers with it?

and I saw you had the authorisation to use Maxim Anisiutkin's foo_sacd.dll decoder, so will it be added too AE or I did not understand the whole thing?

[DDDamian]

Part of that code is is not GPL-compatible, so licensing issues exist. This includes with Foobar. Technically we cannot use/modify/distribute those components, which are essential for decoding DST (compressed DSD).

[HeresJohnny]

Did you ask Philips "if we don't hear from you within 1 month, we assume that we may use the code"?

[DDDamian]

heh - if I take your new Lexus and you can't find it in a month it's mine?

[HeresJohnny]

And that is why the content industry is having such a hard time with file sharing.. intellectual property is not the same as physical property... there's no theft

[salora]

Part of that code is is not GPL-compatible, so licensing issues exist. This includes with Foobar. Technically we cannot use/modify/distribute those components, which are essential for decoding DST (compressed DSD).

I was afraid you'd say that

so I guess Maxim A is using the code without the license.

I can use foobar as well but it would be nice to have it into xbmc

[DDDamian]

believe me, i would love to. I have a ton of SACDs too, and if I could do this without jeopardizing XBMC I would in a flash....

[salora]

well if we put the sacd's appart,
any chance to use the asio driver of the asus xonar Hdav13 with xbmc AE ?
because that sound card is doing miracles on flac files with foobar and asio, I even find flacs better that sacd iso (for exemple the shm-sacd of queen don't seem better than flac )

[DDDamian]

@salora - what OS are you running? There is no current ASIO sink for XBMC, and if you're running Win WASAPI will give you the same quality.

Comparing SACD and FLAC is apples and oranges, as is comparing two different masterings of a recording.