[HeresJohnny]

A request with a sidewise glance at the upcoming AE engine:

Would love to see SACD ISO and DSDIFF playback in XBMC. Code can be found here:

http://code.google.com/p/sacd-ripper/
http://sacddecoder.sourceforge.net

Thanks for considering it!

[samuelyung]

I would love to have it too!
I'm trying to get around it by adding an external player (foobar2000) but because the tracks are in cuesheet (cue/dff) the album will then played multiple times if I select the first track...

[haden]

Thanks for considering it!

[Turrican2]

This would be amazing, but I understand that there is no much demand.

[DDDamian]

Hi there. About a two weeks ago I e-mailed the creator (Maxim Anisiutkin) of the foo_sacd.dll code asking if I could port it to XBMC as part of the AE sub-system. I have not received an answer yet. I have a very strong interest in this as well.

DSD, especially DST multi-channel playback is very CPU-intensive, and even on a decent rig it can stutter with other processes running, so I have my doubts as to whether visualizations can still run. But to have the code ported/adapted would be great as horsepower keeps increasing.

He has released his code, so it's open-source, but it's still also copyrighted material. For that reason I wanted his permission to proceed.

I'll try again to contact him - I have around 60 SACD's ripped to ISO, and prefer not to convert them all to FLAC.

With AE we can get 24-bit audio, so conversion to FLAC becomes feasible, but if I can get permission to port the code all the better.

[Ned Scott]

He has released his code, so it's open-source, but it's still also copyrighted material. For that reason I wanted his permission to proceed.

Both are already released under an open source license? sacddecoder is LGPL and sacd-ripper is GPL v2

[DDDamian]

Both are already released under an open source license? sacddecoder is LGPL and sacd-ripper is GPL v2

Yep. Whatcha think? I've been through the code at a glance and with AE it's gonna sound pretty sweet at 24/88.2 or 24/176.4. It transcodes to PCM so it's an easy enough mesh. In Foobar they sound outstanding. I can pass floats straight to AE.

There'll be some work probing the .ISO file to determine that it's an SACD as opposed to a DVD image, the rest is adhering to the XBMC decoder API, but the gist of it is already done.

I figured with AE it's worth doing. I e-mailed him again today, but I guess it's cool license-wise.

EDIT: One other bit of fun will be integrating the "inside view" of the .iso. Most people keep the full iso as opposed to seperating out the various tracks. The foobar plugin looks inside the iso and returns the track list, so this will take some work to integrate into XBMC's list functions.

[DDDamian]

Pls see attached:

Code:

[i]
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2012 23:03:55 +0400
Subject: Re: Hoping to port/adapt foo_sacd
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]


Hi Damian,

Yes, sure. Use the code at your discretion. [/i]


On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 9:29 PM, Damian Huckle <[email protected]> wrote:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hoping to port/adapt foo_sacd
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 14:46:31 -0500



Hi there,

Wonderful job on the SACD decoder. I help out a little on a free, open-source media player called XBMC, available here: http://xbmc.org/

I was thinking that SACD playback would be a great addition to this multi-codec, multi-platform player.
  
I wondered if you would allow me to use some of your code to make this happen!

Cheers,
Damian

[pike]

you know Im no dev, but maybe it's worth looking into (if possible) offloading the decoding to cuda or the alternatives ?

[DanielaE]

GPU offloading is one possible solution to the decoding problem, but it might turn out a better idea to take advantage of modern CPU's SIMD and vectorize the filter code instead. It depends on the algorithmic structure - more FIR or more IIR like - which hardware is more up to the task.

[Turrican2]

Hi there. About a two weeks ago I e-mailed the creator (Maxim Anisiutkin) of the foo_sacd.dll code asking if I could port it to XBMC as part of the AE sub-system. I have not received an answer yet. I have a very strong interest in this as well.

DSD, especially DST multi-channel playback is very CPU-intensive, and even on a decent rig it can stutter with other processes running, so I have my doubts as to whether visualizations can still run. But to have the code ported/adapted would be great as horsepower keeps increasing.

He has released his code, so it's open-source, but it's still also copyrighted material. For that reason I wanted his permission to proceed.

I'll try again to contact him - I have around 60 SACD's ripped to ISO, and prefer not to convert them all to FLAC.

With AE we can get 24-bit audio, so conversion to FLAC becomes feasible, but if I can get permission to port the code all the better.

Wow, sounds intriguing. Do you think converting them to FLAC decreases the sound quality? In the end it is a PCM conversion after all.

[DDDamian]

Wow, sounds intriguing. Do you think converting them to FLAC decreases the sound quality? In the end it is a PCM conversion after all.

I think there are two options: direct DSD stream (gonna now be limited to fewer playback devices) or PCM conversion.

There's certainly loss in any conversion, and many DSD discs have already been through one PCM->DSD conversion as most DAWs are PCM. DSD DSPs are unwieldy and uncommon.

Likewise there's debate on the quality of the Foobar plugin's conversion quality compared to the Korg or Saracon conversions. Weiss Saracon is $1500 and people do object to the hard roll-off above 20khz.

By all accounts the later versions of the Foobar plugin have improved the conversion to near-transparancy with the big guys. I can attest that it sounds fantastic at 24/172.4 and at 24/88.2. As good as DSD via Denon Link 3 (proprietary in any case)? Not quite, but very very close.

Given that many cannot playback a pure DSD stream, and given that many who can will have receiver options enabled that require a PCM conversion I for one think that with AE's 24bit capabilities the PCM conversion is a good thing - it'll bring SACD playback to more people.

[DDDamian]

@pike - best....avatar....ever

@pike, DanielaE - thanks for the input! Foobar is as minimalist a player as can be, and or one might be called a mid-level machine multi-channel DST is going to be the challange as most users will have visualization running, and XBMC has a much different stream processing structure than the normal sequential playback model. More threads running, multiple streams possible, etc.

There's simply higher overhead. This will be the challenge for sure.

[fat-tony]

@DDDamian - Having just read through the 80 pages of Daniela's thread on HD audio support and having seen your link to this thread on the possibility of SACD ISO file support, it makes an old audiophile very happy to be using xbmc!

I started out with the openelec version of xbmc, but got frustrated by the lack of PCM multichannel support (HDMI) on the Fusion platform under linux. I am right in saying that currently there is no capability on the linux platform for uncompressed multichannel audio in xbmc on the Fusion platform? I've had no issues with DD or DTS 5.1 playing over HDMI, but no luck whatsoever with my DVD-Audio collection which I have ripped to FLAC multichannel. I saw the AE branch postings here some weeks ago and it's great to see that real audiophile quality support (inc. 24bit) will be available in the medium term. Even more exciting to me is the possibility of playing SACD images at some point. I have quite a collection of SACDs, but picqued at your postings on support in xbmc, can I ask if there is a method of transferring those to ISO format other than that of using hacked old PS3s to rip the disks? I have quite an expensive Marantz universal player, plus an older Pioneer player which I use for playback currently.

I have been experimenting with a version of xbmc on win 7 just to get my FLAC multichannel rips working. Good success, but obviously only with 16 bit support. I will install the patched Eden RC to check out the passthrough options also. But what I really want is the tight, linux based version which supports PVR and HD audio! Short of grabbing the sources and building it myself (the wife'll kill me if I clutter up the study with even more kit!), what are the possibilities of seeing a linux binary with AE and PVR support within the next month or so?

Keep up the good work - audophile sound matters

[DDDamian]

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

It sounds like you have a good handle on what's going on, and have done some research. You bring up a few points: I'll try to address them.

1) DSD/Diff - there are a few ways to playback DSD/DST/DSDiff from a PC, but they are all to my knowledge on Windows. Foobar with an add-on for SACD playback and an addon for WASAPI output make this possible and near-perfect. We have opened a ticket with the developers of FFMpeg, which does a lot of the decoding work for XBMC and is the best place to have the decoder added. Whether that comes to fruition is really up to them. There are some potential licensing concerns with portions of the Foobar plugin code that may make extensive work necessary.

As for ripping there is no "easy" solution to date. There are currently two methods: the older-firmware PS3 hack and modified (usually Oppo) players.

2) FLAC - you are correct, FLAC is currently limited to 16bit in mainline XBMC. There are two initiatives underway to correct that, the further advanced being AE. You can build it and get 24bit playback as it stands now, but it is not ready yet for merging with the master XBMC code and distribution. As you have found, that is a near-term solution. For mainline integration I doubt the timeframe is one month, but it's not far-off either.

3) Hardware - no matter the OS, playback will depend on hardware. Currently the best solution is Win7 and HDMI, but you'll want capable HDMI audio no matter the platform. High bitrates are not possible via SPDIF, not in the range of DVD-A/SACD/BR audio. The Fusion platform is not really up to snuff, but there are relatively cheap options from newer ATI/nVidia cards. Obviously your AVR must support HDMI and multi-channel LPCM as well.

Hope that covers all you've asked. The future for hi-def audio on XBMC is bright indeed, but some patience will be necessary.