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There are increasing numbers of computers being used for music playback. What do they mean for sacds

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Norm

(A)

VRS and others use disk drives for loading hard drives and allowing playback from a computer. I have not heard of any computer disk drive that reads sacds or storage of sacds on hard drives. What would this development portend for sacds?
On a related matter, I have several cds with scratches that either do not allow my universal player to play or cause disruptions in replay. In all cases I was able to copy them to a CD-R on my computer allowing these CD-Rs to be replayed on the universal players. Why can disk drives read what player drives cannot?

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Re: There are increasing numbers of computers being used for music playback. What do they mean for sacds - tunenut 09:17:45 12/17/04 (4)
"Why can disk drives read what player drives cannot?"
It is not quite as simple as disk drives versus player drives. Given a defective disk (most likely these are disk problems), some drives will work and others will not.
But the big reason is the copying software. A program like Exact Audio Copy will try reading bits multiple times, and I would assume other programs use similar methods. If the disk is too messed up, a copy will also fail, but in general EAC or the equivalent will do a better job of pulling bits from a disk than simple CD playing software.
- Temporal issues - pburant 10:32:15 12/17/04 (3)
  On top of what you said, CDPs also have the constraint of working in real time - not only this, but they must preserve the timing with which bits are read not merely the order, which is a task from which computers are free. This can make disc defects tougher for CDPs to deal with than for PCs.
  -Pete
  - So this may be why cds played from hard drives sound better? A better read. nt - Norm 15:08:25 12/17/04 (2)
    a
    - Has that been your experience? - pburant 16:11:36 12/17/04 (1)
      The potential is there. Additional problems are there as well (lots of RFI, and you still need a very precise clock to arrange the samples with respect to time).
      -Pete
      - It has NOT been my experience, but others who I respect report it. nt - Norm 20:39:33 12/17/04 (0)
        
        In Reply to: Has that been your experience? posted by pburant on December 17, 2004 at 16:11:36:
        
        a
Re: There are increasing numbers of computers being used for music playback. What do they mean for sacds - Michi 07:44:49 12/17/04 (0)
Well the reason SACDs can't be read in DVD-ROM drives is because of pit signal processing, which needs to be read to decrypt the signal.
Beyond that, part of the spec is not allowing SACD to be played on PCs to avoid compying. Whether that's a good thing or not, I don't know... The PC is still a bad environment for audio, though it is getting better, with new designs.
DSD is not impossible on the PC; the actual SACD format is rendered impossible however though hardware and software roadblocks put there intentionally.

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