2012-03-02, 19:46
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.
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.
