Backup SACD with iTunes or Disk Utility?

AFAIK no way to access the SACD part with any computer - only the "standard" CDDA part (if it cames as dual disk).

In theory Toast or Dragon Burn should be able to make an exact duplicate of the disk. Even the partitions that can't necessarily be seen by Mac OS X. I've done this with game discs before, and when I used my copies in either Windows or Mac OS X they showed up just as they should. I don't know why it wouldn't work for an audio disc either. But I've never done it so I could be mistaken.

Michael,

The SACD layer simply can't be accessed, thanks to Sony.

I guess that would make my suggestion not a very good one then. Rats. 🙂

Michael

Might be of interest: http://audiotools.com/sacd.html

It's really copyproof.

Nevertheless your tip is a real good one, as it will work in 99% of all cases - except SACD 🙂

Disk Utility can't do a copy of CDDAs! Toast will do the job quite well, for best results: xACT http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21952 is a nice multi-tool including cdda2wav (with paranoia support)

CDDA is a standard red book audio disc: "Compact disc digital audio!" You will find that logo on most discs

There are many kinds of "audiophile" discs, so this all just depends. As already discussed in this thread, SACDs can't be copied (apart from the normal CD audio layer, if present). HDCD is yet another in a long list of better-sounding CDs. These contain 20-bit audio, and the best that iTunes can handle is 16-bit.

What's really the most important thing, in my opinion, is to make a normal CD audio backup (a standard audio CD) of these discs when possible, and keep the original disc in perfect condition. It would be highly unlikely that a person would even have stereo playback equipment of playing back most of these special format discs, so most of the time, consumers get zero extra benefit from them, and they just play back like regular audio CDs anyway.

Those kinds of discs are NOT MEANT for computer optical drives, but for high end component CD players. If a computer's optical drive can't read the data properly, how can you make an identical copy?

The questions in this thread were answered long ago by Kay.

Not knowing if the above mentioned xAct will work on non CDDA / enhanced disks you may give it a try