Handling Super Audio CDs (SACD)

[IanRTaylorUK]

In order to finish moving my library from MP3 to FLAC I am left with around 1500 tracks to "upgrade". This has sort of pushed me in the direction of SACDs. This is how I have handled - any suggestions / improvements appreciated:

My Notes
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Media Monkey 4 and 5 do not appear to directly support the Sony / Phillips Super Audio CDs and I am not aware of any add-in to provide this support.

Super Audio CDs typically contain audio tracks with a 2CH file extension with the ISO file. ISO is the disk image file system used with CDs. 2CH files are a two-channel direct stream digital audio (but can support up to 6 channels!). The encoding of these 2CH files is 16-Bit with 44.1 kHz sampling.

The files can be opened with either VLC or FooBar – in the case of Foobar additional components are needed. These are the foo_dsd_processor and foo_input_sacd that are not on the official components web site but can be found at Source Forge.net.

With FooBar the approach seems to work best by opening the ISO file and then converting the tracks using the default conversion to WAV format. Media Monkey can read the WAV files which can therefore be played, converted to your preferred format and tags edited etc. If converting to FLAC format from WAV, then 24-Bit / 16-Bit and 48000 Hz is adequate. Some tag editing may be better done after conversion as WAV does not support tagging a well as FLAC.

Initial indications are that this process works AND the quality is good.

I trust this might be useful to others who encounter SACDs and hope that it might provoke some feedback on ways to improve handling this older somewhat niche format!