How can I tell if a PS3 plays SACD?

N8Nagel

AK Subscriber
Subscriber
So my girlfriend and all her kids are gamer nerds and she'd made some offhand comment about wanting a PS3 so they could play online with each other... well her son shows up with one and a whole stack of games :)

It's one of the older, big ones, but how can I tell if it has SACD capability or not? It does not have the logo on the front if that matters. I couldn't tell from the menus.

Same kid brought me a new 180g pressing of Wish You Were Here (and is taking a turntable and a cassette deck home with him) so he might turn out all right. He already has a Luxman receiver and a pair of big Genesis speakers.

Sad thing is that WYWH isn't getting played as I did the Breaking of the Seal and it turns out to have some serious pressing flaws on the lead in and into Track 1 of one side which makes me sad.
 
So my girlfriend and all her kids are gamer nerds and she'd made some offhand comment about wanting a PS3 so they could play online with each other... well her son shows up with one and a whole stack of games :)

It's one of the older, big ones, but how can I tell if it has SACD capability or not? It does not have the logo on the front if that matters. I couldn't tell from the menus.

Same kid brought me a new 180g pressing of Wish You Were Here (and is taking a turntable and a cassette deck home with him) so he might turn out all right. He already has a Luxman receiver and a pair of big Genesis speakers.

Sad thing is that WYWH isn't getting played as I did the Breaking of the Seal and it turns out to have some serious pressing flaws on the lead in and into Track 1 of one side which makes me sad.
Pop a SACD in the drawer?
 
The obvious answer, but I don't actually have one handy.
My son bought a used PS3 years ago. I researched it at the time and discovered it didn’t support SACD. You can determine that by serial number.
 
I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that all PS3s played SACDs. Perhaps they eliminated it in later production units?
PS3s below a certain firmware level allowed Linux to be installed and somebody came up with some software to extract DSD files from SACDs
 
Most of my memory about the PS3 relates to the "early" days. The BluRay player, support for SACD and support for alternate operating systems - it was quite impressive. People were daisy-chaining the PS3s to make "super" computers and then the whole SACD ripping thing. I did know at some point, the firmware removed support for alt operating systems, but not that Sony removed SACD support. Strange that newer production would strip that capability - guess it was a cost saving measure since the price got reduced.
Thanks for the link.
 
well after some research it looks like this one never had SACD capability or PS/2 backwards compatibility... oh well

I'm surprised that a firmware or BIOS upgrade would remove the ability to PLAY a format that was previously supported, especially one that was developed by Sony. Is this really the case? I can see why they'd close the loophole that allowed ripping, but playback..?
 
I'm surprised that a firmware or BIOS upgrade would remove the ability to PLAY a format that was previously supported, especially one that was developed by Sony. Is this really the case? I can see why they'd close the loophole that allowed ripping, but playback..?

No, it’s not the case.
 
So, today I got super lucky and got my hands on a PS3 that is an 80GB model CECH~ brand new in box, never booted. Took a couple of hours to hunt down jail broken update to 3.55 but that’s now done. I’m ready to install a ripping package and back up me SACD collection! I’m going to take a break and watch the Knick game, but if anyone has any advice for the next steps I’m open to ideas. I’ll check back before I proceed!

Thanks
 
You can rip on several BluRay players these days. I use an Oppo 103.

As for the PS3, give the machine breaks between every few hours. They're prone to overheating and some have poor solder on the BGAs.
 
Well, I already have it, for cheap, and it’s brand new and won’t be used for anything but ripping. I just thought maybe someone who has used this system might have some advice to help avoid issues. It does sound great despite converting to pcm. I may do the Oppo at some point. I have older Oppo for DVDA but I mostly listen to my server, I just want it all on the server.
 
Figured it all out. Beauty is the PS3 will rip an .iso file and foobar2000 will play that directly. Having some issue figuring out how best to configure the output of my laptop to go DSD to my receiver, which is DSD capable, but even the PCM conversion sounds really nice. Can convert to flac too, no problem. I’m just happy to have it up and running!
 
You can rip on several BluRay players these days. I use an Oppo 103.

As for the PS3, give the machine breaks between every few hours. They're prone to overheating and some have poor solder on the BGAs.

This issue is easily solved by changing out all the thermal compound to higher quality stuff. But it's not really a job for the faint of heart, the PS3 needs to be nearly completely disassembled to complete.
 
If I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure that only the fat Playstations with the spider man logo and the 4 USB ports on the front played SACD's. I have one and it plays SACD's, but it never sounded as nice as my dedicated CD player. Most of them don't rip SACD's anymore since the firmware no longer supports it. I believe you need a fancy program for that, or one of the better Oppo CD players.
 
They never supported ripping SACD, people just figured out how to do it by jailbreaking the ps3, and running unsigned code. The PS3 can still do it, long as you can downgrade the firmware to a version that can be jailbroken.
 
Back
Top Bottom