Definitely, and I've used it all and still do, daily. The slogan for PS4 should be "it only does a third of what the PS3 did, but you get a lot of great games and hundreds of indie titles". The slogan for PS5 is "it barely does anything of what the PS3 can, and only half of what the PS4 does, and all you can play is remastered PS4 titles that look the same. Oh, and you won't own anything, because everything is a subscription now. Oh, and we jacked up those prices and removed the bonus cashback program, because 4% is too much.". And now, introducing the PS5 Pro, the most unwanted abomination in PS history, starting as low as $800.
Shout out to the Nokia N95 that also came out around that time and was like the mobile pocket counterpart of PS3. Its slogan was "It's what computers have become"
For many years the PS3 functioned as a DVR for us. The Play TV accessory was really neat. When you consider everything the PS3 could do, it is a really amazing console and well ahead of its time.
That feature actually came in clutch for me in college back in the day. My computer died, and I had no other way to get my essay printed (I used other internet workarounds to accomplish even typing it).
It's pretty hilarious how the PS3, or at least its early models, could do literally anything, more than most PCs in some cases, while the PS4 axed almost everything in the name of cost cutting and gaming first. It can't even play audio CDs.
I remember back in the day that their PS3 slogan would say "It only does everything!" They didn't lie up until they axed the whole install other OS thing and it went downhill from there
@@SA1NT53 except that they started using that slogan when the PS3 Slim arrived so... by that time it could not play PS2 games (only some selected PS2 classics by emulation from the PlayStation store or via jailbreak) nor had Super Audio CD's support.
you could even say the ps3 is a bridge for old to new, given it has features that supports old tech like CRT... you can do a lot with the ps3 at this point in time that isn't relatively focus on gaming... which is really neat and very forward thinking
Yup, it still uses the same connector as PS1 and PS2 to be able to use it on old televisions, composite and component. It has an HDMI port built in. The PS4 became the first PlayStation to drop the legacy connector.
@@dapperfan44 I knew the PS3 has the same display output port as the PS1 and PS2 have but I never realized this means it can be hooked up to a CRT! definitely going to do this to play my PlayStation games. Wonder if it looks the same or worse than playing PS1 on PS2, and how much better do PS1 games look over component than composite.
They look pretty identical between PS1, PS2, and PS3. And component is often significantly better if your CRT supports it. Mostly the colors like red and blue pop a lot more which is awesome, and you should also get less fuzz between color changes making stuff like text much easier to read. If you need good and affordable component cables check out HDRetrovision. All cables they make are great. However, the PS1 emulation on the PS3 isn't perfect, I'd recommend to check online first if the games you'd like to play are actually properly compatible on your model. As that compatibility also changes between models and revisions.
@@webbedshadow2601 All facts, man. My sister refused to upgrade from a CRT to HD until a lightning strike killed her old TV. When I would house sit for her, I'd pack my PS3, but I'd take the opportunity to only play PS1 and PS2 games whether they were physical, digital, or PS2 collections, since they would look great on her TV while the PS3 games didn't look quite so good. There's also Vanquish for PS3/Xbox360, which was famous at that time for including an SDTV mode for gamers who couldn't get an HDTV yet.
I will alway love and cherish The PS3. It's a must have system for anyone who is a fan of Stereoscopic 3D. Playing Resistance 3 in Stereoscopic 3D with the Playstation Move Sharp Shooter was a very memorable experience to me. It was one of those "The Future is Now" type of experiences.
@@oni2662 Yes. There is so much misinformation about PS3. Many think the newer systems were the only ones capable of doing the 'hard' stuff, but this was always a lie. The original models were actually the best ones with four USB ports and a combo memory card reader plus native HW support for PS2 games. The original launch models still ran 3D games with the PS3 Eye and PS Move Sharpshooter, no problem.
@@oni2662 There is so much misinformation about PS3. Yes, the original models did everything the later models did, and they actually did more than the later models. The original models were actually the best ones with four USB ports and a combo memory card reader plus native HW support for PS2 games.
@@oni2662 There are so many wrong things circulating about PS3. Yes, the original models did everything the later models did, and they actually did more than the later models. The originals were actually the best units with 4 USB ports and a memory card reader plus HW support for PS2 games.
It's a large part of why I won't be buying any more new systems from them. I got the PS3 as a present and didn't know that I needed to tell my parents to make sure that it had the original set of features because they'd just be dropped without any real indication of it on the packaging.
The sixaxis controller can move the particles on the home screen by wiggling the controller. All versions of the PS3 are backwards compatable with PS1 games. The ps3 can rip audio CDs. I put every ps1 and saturn game that i owned on my hard drive. Some games like Jojo's bizarre adventure all star battle let you use your saved music in certain scenarios. For that game you have the option to replace the music that plays during battles with whatever you had saved. The ps3 also had a lot of cool accessories, like the ps2 memory card reader, all the ports on the original fat model (the ones that had 4 usb ports on the front) This console is truly wonderful, and as a kid i never understood why people preferred the 360 over it
Another feature of PS3 lineup is MP3 surround support. PS3 is almost only media device supporting this sub-format for MP3. You of course need surround music that is ripped somehow to 5.1 surround and very old tools to create surround MP3's, but at 320kbps you can have very small OK quality collection of surround music on PS3 hard drive.
@@zenvultra If PS3 would play them back. PS3 will not even play surround AAC's even though it will play the same audio in surround if it is in a video file. The only storable surround music format that PS3 does it MP3 surround, and only lossless audio format for PS3 is good ol' WAV. That is what you just do if you are committed to PS3 as a media center. Converting fifty surround albums into MP3 surround with command line.
@@zenvultra I'm re-encoding my entire CD catalog as I type this. Even when the PS3 was new, there were already programs that could take an entire catalog of CDs and encode it while you stepped away to do other things, so long as you had disc images to cover the discs and didn't have to keep swapping discs.
Yeah I had a bunch of SACDs (still have) and I bought an SACD player but also had the 'fat PS3'.... SACDs were awesome - huge boost in sound quality! I was one of those people that wanted the SACD and Blueray functionality when I bought my PS3 on launch day and i still love it. Also, being able to load Linux on it was a bonus.
"huge boost in sound quality!" That's not correct. CD audio is already capable of perfect sound reproduction, and if anything, increased sampling frequencies can actually introduce distortion caused by inaudible ultrasonics. I'm not familiar enough with the technical differences of the 1-bit 2.8224MHz sampling process used in SACDs, but assuming it's at least capable of matching CD audio quality (which I'm sure it is), any discernible difference in sound you may have heard would have been due to differences in mastering when bringing it to the format. SACD's main advantages were longer playing time and multi-channel audio, and while I admit that multi-channel audio can sound great with the right speaker setup _and_ properly recorded source material, my experience with SACD was hit-or-miss. Live performances with multi-channel audio recorded properly could sound amazing, but stereo recordings sounded the same or just slightly different, with "better" being chalked up to whichever format's mastering I subjectively preferred.
@@6reen6uy this is false. PS3 pads, both sixaxis (non-dualshock) and dualshock use potentiometers, though they are far better quality potentiometers than what's used today.
The dual layer SACDs were not meant to double their capacity, it was so that they would remain compatible with regular CD players. The first layer could be read by regular lasers in normal CD players and would offer the regular 16-bit / 44.1 kHz audio quality from Red Book CDs, and the second layer would contain the high-fidelity audio / surround sound mix encoded in DSD format that was only compatible with SACD players (which used the same lasers as DVD players) It is this feature that made SACDs a lot more popular than their competitor (the DVD-Audio format) which was only compatible with dedicated DVD/DVD-A players.
You are referring to hybrid SACDs. However, there were in fact dual-layer SACDs with two SACD layers that were completely incompatible with standard CD players.
@@ian_5184this isn't entirely correct. Dual layer SACDs had nothing to do with storage capacity, such as giving more storage space for a longer stereo album. They were to support having both multichannel and stereo versions on the same disc. The question is whether or not the disc is a hybrid disc to also contain a redbook CD version which could be played on any old CD player. Dual disc more commonly refers to DVD-Audios
SACDs were truly ahead of their time, the technology still offers the best sound quality you can get your hands on today. The difference between SACD and DVD-Audio is not the disc or even the lasers required to read the discs, it's the actual encoding of the music. DVD/Bluray use the same encoding as good old CDs, just at higher bitrates (24-bit bit depth instead of 16, and 48/96/192 kHz sample rates instead of 44.1). SACD produces sound in a completely different manner, its DSD audio format encodes music at only 1-bit, but does so at a staggering 2.8224 MHz sample rate (2.82 million samples per second!) Your entire audio setup needs to support DSD if you truly want to hear the difference, otherwise it will convert to PCM and you'll lose what makes DSD truly unique. Audiophile online music stores now sell digital files encoded in DSD, so the SACD optical disc medium is dead but long live DSD!
DSD definitely is unique and somewhat mind boggling. I've read that the ultra-high 1-bit sample rate digital bitstream is actually somewhat coherent to the ear without any processing or filtering. I'm not even sure how you'd accomplish this - perhaps by probing an HDMI output for the DSD bitstream and feeding it into a phono preamp or something... Regardless, that's a whole different animal from linear PCM.
@@koozmusic what you're talking about is the fact that DSD is so much like analog that you don't need a digital to analog converter to hear DSD. That being said the PS3 isn't that great of an SACD player since it converts the DSD to a PCM signal to be played through HDMI. If you want the truest way to listen to DSD you need a player with analog outputs. and SACD isn't dead there's still merits to owning the discs and not just the files!!!
@@Pepsidud32 Yes, that is indeed what I was getting at. 😏 I also agree that the PS3 isn't the best SACD _player_ and analog out is definitely the traditionally "correct" way of listening to SACDs. But a viable (and arguably better) way is to bitstream over HDMI to a receiver capable of decoding DSD. I don't believe the PS3 is able to do this, but you certainly can using a PC. This is a relatively new feature for receivers and/or standalone DACs; DSD decoding used to be inherently necessary as a function of the _player_ as it was never intended to be "extracted" from SACDs in the first place. Maybe some modern or more "feature-rich" players are able to do this, but in essence that would reduce them to the equivalent of a DVD-ROM drive with modified firmware. DSD editing software exists in the professional recording market, but I've heard it is extremely difficult to work with and lacking many of the capabilities you would expect from a DAW. Very few individuals would have the means to generate and/or author original DSD files, let alone distribute them over the internet. The advent of software-based DSD decoding (i.e. fb2k/winamp, etc plugins), and the fact that modern, well-featured receivers and standalone DACs are able to decode a DSD bitstream at all is probably a testament to the reality that raw SACD image rips exist in the first place.
Let's be honest here; 16bit 44.1khz playback is plenty for human's abilities in hearing. SACD/DVD Audio's only real benefit is the extra channels, but not many have that kind of setup. Hearing a difference between a CD and SACD is usually down to better mastering or simply a placebo effect.
I actually still listen to my small collection of music cds because of my ps3. Now that cars barely include cd players anymore, it is my only (and honestly great) way to experience my physical music collection.
I have a couple or so SACDs but for a Sony 4K Bluray player... I remember all these weird audio formats from back in the 2000's from DVD Audio to SACD to SHM and so on. I am not an audiophile but I sometimes wanna dip my toe in that despite my hearing is probably getting worse due to aging
SHM is snake oil. The technology hinges on creating a higher quality disc for more "accurate playback". You know, regular CDs and how infamous they are for being... inaccurate?
no way ive been waiting for someone to talk about SACD on the PS3 for forever!!!!! if anyone wants more on the subject I did an SACD retrospective on my channel but didnt even touch SACD on PS3 since that video was already long enough lol but still great effort hoping more people can discuss about this weird format that I love!!!
Not just that but PS3 can play MP3 CD's too! I hope more people start to see how powerful optical media really is. look at the newest generation of optical media, it's said it can hold up to 14,000 4k videos. I do love how a lot of the new portable cd players support MP3 CD's having one CD holding over 100 tracks feels so awesome.
I had a launch ps3 and definitely sought out some SACDs to make use of that feature. The console died about 5 years ago, but I happened upon a stand-alone SACD player for $5 at a goodwill that just needed a little recalibration. Immersive audio is still a pretty steady niche market with Dolby Atmos mixes coming out on Blu-Ray Pure Audio format discs.
PlayStation 3 really was an amazing piece of technology, it’s still so amazing how even 20 years later, they still haven’t hit the power limit of the console
Man I had The Downward Spiral SACD and would play it on my 5.1 setup and just bask in it. NIN in 5.1 was like rediscovering the album. Trent really worked with that spatial element and the songs felt even more dynamic and enveloping. I also liked the little hidden easter eggs on some albums where if you reversed past the beginning of the first track there would be another hidden track. Sometimes another song or sometimes a joke. Queens of the Stone Age Songs for the Deaf comes to mind. The "-1 track" was the _real_ song for the deaf -- low, deep, bass-y sounds you could crank and up and feel. Kind of neat.
I actually sought out a CECHA01 back in 2008-2009 specifically because of SACD support and the full backwards compatibility. I still remember the 3 hour drive to go get one from the only GameStop that had one. SACDs are awesome; I had Dark Side of the Moon and The Downward Spiral, and a dedicated 5.1 mix changes everything. This winter, I’m getting my YLOD CECHA01 fixed, and I’m getting back to enjoying all the cool features, especially the SACD part.
I placed a Skynet 3.0 disc into my fat PS3. It sent me backwards compatible to the year of '98 where I played King's Field, Ridge Racer, and Resident Evil.
Awesome video. It might seems like discs are dead, but in reality people still have their collections of music CDs, DVD and Blu-rays. If selling a PS4 to buy a PS5 Pro means they loose their ability to play their beloved media collections, people will be a lot less inclined to do it.
Looking at the release date of the Super Audio CD, it looks like something that was released because they were too far along to abort. It wasn't released until 1999, which is after the first commercially viable MP3 player was released and after DVDs were released, making it a bit of a headscratcher as to why bother.
3:57 That's actually the only album I own in SACD. My dad likely bought it thinking it was just a plain old CD, and it does work as one. I only have one device that can play the SACD layer and no it's not a ps3, it's an old DVD player.
Honestly, PS3 phat was Sony at its best. If they ever made a new all-in-one box that plays PS1-PS5 games, I would drop an easy $700 without even thinking about it... To a lot of consumers, that would be a HUGE selling point. I don't see why they don't do that for their "pro" consoles and have the normal consoles only play current gen.
Sony would rather sell you a new console and then ask you to pay for older titles as digital downloads again. They've seen Nintendo make bank with it and are now starting to dip their hand into the same pot.
Wow I’ve never even heard of super audio CD before. With premium digital audio I’ve only ever heard of FLAC format. I think I’d just stick with FLAC since a lot more players support that and doesn’t require buying expensive hardware.
if you don't wanna buy a player you should be able to find DSD files of albums being sold (DSD is the file format that SACD is) but if not there are waaaayyy cheaper options than $250 that Spawn Wave said. Just look around but then again you're mileage will vary on how much you can take advantage of SACD if you don't have a surround setup.
If I remember right, the PS3 only did PCM output for multichannel SACD. It couldnt do DSD directly over HDMI to take advantage of Sony's native DSD receivers like the DA7100ES. My back compat PS3s are the only SACD players I have that still work - I'm not sure why but all my dedicated audio players stopped reading SACDs a few years back..
If you still have a the players you might be able to replace the lasers in them to give them new life. The laser diodes only have a very limited life span before they drift too far out of calibration and either have to be manually recalibrated or replaced with a new one. Sadly recalibrating them yourself is pretty expensive as the tool needed isn't the cheapest, but maybe a repair shop for DVD or CD players offers that service locally. Or, you know, just swap out the entire laser assembly with a new one, many are off the shelf parts that you can still find as old new stock.
"If you had a PS2 there was no reason to buy a DVD Player in your Entertainment setup". Well, in theory, yes. But in reality the PS2 wasn't that good of a DVD Player and often didn't correctly output the correct aspect ratio in some movies...
There's also the issue that DVD players were, and are, a lot less expensive and the PS series, like most other optical media devices, has a laser that will eventually fail and wasting that time on DVDs was kind of dumb.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade when the PS2 first launched, it was one of the cheapest DVD players on the market. Most players were $50-$100 more expensive, the PS2 forced other players to get more competitively priced. Eventually DVD players would be consistently cheaper than a PS2, but that took a couple years.
The sony UBP-x700m bd player is good for SACD playback, which is handy because that player is commonly available with the region-free mod for DVD/BD playback too
In hindsight, the PS3 was super cheap at launch. I picked the fat 80GB model and still have mine but SACD really only became part of my reality because I have heard about it from others on TH-cam talking about the format.
I occasionally see people mentioning updates for Blu-ray encryption keys. I have a profile 1.0 player from 2012 without the ability to connect to the internet. All of the new BD disc's I have that were made in 2024 work fine. What is this talk about the keys?
I have a small collection of SACDs, and I initially bought an SACD rig when I was in college, for one specific album; El Cielo, by Dredg. In your configuration, the PlayStation is actually re-encoding the audio as PCM. It’s still of good quality, and you get the full surround experience, but it’s not the full resolution on the disc. A modern player (I have a Sony DVD player) can have DSD Transport, which will send the full DSD signal to your receiver, which then decodes it. Your receiver though, could also be converting to PCM. If you use any room correction or time alignment, your receiver is likely converting to PCM to run the DSP. Ideally, you’d want a player that does DSD Transport, directly connected to a receiver via HDMI (optical is not supported for full DSD), and your receiver set to pure direct, which bypasses any room correction stuff. My first rig was PCM, and it was still awesome. Now though, it is incredibly lifelike. It can almost fool your mind into thinking you’re in the studio room if you close your eyes, even though you know you’re in your living room. I just wish there were more new content coming out on it, but since streaming platforms started including Atmos (a compressed, lossy version) there’s less of a market for a disc-based hi-res format. The SACD 5.1 mix for Dark Side of the Moon is the same mix that is in Atmos on streaming platforms, and they both sound great.
Still the best console from Sony by far, has the best audio in video games, the best game libraries (PS1/PS2/PS3/PSP/PSN/PSMinis), has stellar BR playback quality, SACD and normal CD playback quality, can play media files from most formats, can do sub 2ms gameplay via analogue outputs, don't make them like that anymore.
Like, I completely understand the initial backlash to the PS3's original price but god damn, it was so fucking warranted compared to the absolute absurdity that is the PS5 Pro.
They’re not focusing on backwards compatibility any time soon. Modern Playstation is all about graphics, 6th and 7th gen just don’t cut it compared to hyperrealistic $70 9th gen games (in their eyes). It’s not something that would benefit them either, they’re not selling PS1 or PS2 discs anymore and anyone wanting to play one most likely already has/can find something to run them. And this isn’t even getting into the nightmare of accurately and efficiently emulating the PS3’s CELL…
In case anyone is curious and interested in a multi-channel audio disc, a handful of albums are available as Blu-ray discs, many of which have full Dolby Atmos versions. No special player required, should work in any device that plays Blu-rays. I personally only own Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours", but it's a great disc.
I can't remember specifically, but one of the issues with super audio CDs is that they came out after DVDs and DVDs could manage 5.1 sound as well as video. So, there wasn't really much point in having the CD format which really only seems to bring with it the option of having a layer that's compatible with regular CDs, which by that point, were just about to be hit by a bunch of MP3 players with the first viable one already being on the market.
It's weird how every PlayStation system had their only happening and I still remember that some CDs have music videos or a image so when you play them on a PS1 you got more then just music but for whatever reason it's rarely talked about.
There also exist cds called enhanced cd which is mostly made for pc. Its are a regular music cd, but if you put in a computer you get videos, pictures, downloadables and more.
I've gotten damn lucky with my PS3 consoles. Picked up 60 gig 1 year after release. When Sony dropped price to $500 and discontinunation while saying the successor would have features removed I had to get it. It's still connected to my TV. Years later I found another 60 gig model at a Flea market in great condition for $20. Yes. My 3rd PS3 is a slim along a xbox 360 I found in trash while walking my dog. The 360 red ringed while the slim was in good shape and had a jammed NBA 2k in the drive. I've sinced cleaned them all up and new thermal paste with a simple SSD.
The problem with run in audio through the TV initially is likely due to a very common factor of TV audio pass through. Most TV audio pass through will only send a basic 2 channel audio signal to the amplifier itself connected to, unless the surround audio it’s sending to the audio system is from a built-in app. Some higher end TVs will have limited pass through of surround sound, and it’s becoming more common these days for a tv to have at least 1 full audio pass through port, usually labeled eArc. But you gotta be careful which port it’s using to get that.
wow lol i thought it was an upside-down disc in the thumbnail and someone was finally mentioning the OTHER thing that for REAL nobody talks about - the claimed "disc cleaning/repair" feature - that supposedly fixed small scratches
For ripping sacd's on windows, I use dp power amp to rip my sacd's to the dsf format and it even includes the album artwork and the metadata from the sacd.
About the only media formats the OG PS3 didn't handle was DVD Audio and HDDVD. A lot of people forget that it handled ATRAC3 and AAC, or that it had Compact Flash, SD and Memory Stick readers.
Another feature that some of those disc based 90's consoles (I don't remember exactly which ones) had that only a very select few of us in the west know about is the ability to play Video CD's. They were a precursor to DVD's created by Phillip's in 1993. They were extremely popular in Asia, and I believe they remained so for quite some time even after DVD's hit the market mostly due to them being a lot cheaper. Although they were apparently released in North America, they didn't make even the slightest dent in the market. I've never even seen one before, and I doubt anyone reading this has either unless they live, have lived, or have visited an eastern country. As for how they compare to DVD, I think it's mostly the same kind of thing with the major differences being lower quality and less storage. A disc can hold only about 30 minutes of video, which even in the 90's was not very good at all. However, many were double sided so you could flip it and get 30 more minutes, and you could always use multiple discs of course. So really, not to bad for the 90's although having to flip or switch a disc out every 30 minutes would be somewhat annoying. Anyone reading this with more knowledge of VCD's can feel free to jump in and give more info. I'd be very curious to learn more about this extremely obscure (for us in the west) format.
That’s very true but another saving grace of theirs was for even as terrible as that issue was, the Xbox 360 Red Ring Of Death took a bit of the attention off of Sony. Once the Slim came out, they definitely had enough of a resurgence to give the console the better reputation it does have today.
I remember in the UK when the PS3 released it was around the £500 mark from memory but if you wanted a Blu-ray player the cheapest was £1000 at the time so it made sense to just buy a PS3
it's not every day you're able to legitimately surprise me with retro gaming information that I was here to forth not privy to, this is a great example of something I did not know about! 😮
One of my favourite features of the 360, was its ability to properly mix in your own music CD's and files into the game you were playing, it sounded so good that it might as well have been part of the native game audio, it faded when needed, had just the right levels. Was so cool, now you can't even play music in modern console video games lol.
He hit the nail on the head about consumers going for the convenience of digital downloads over the superior quality of physical media. Stands true even today for audio and video. Physical media is KING
I have eyeballed fat boy PS3s for SACD ripping and playback for a while. Indeed a weird niche piece of technology for audiophiles that is incredibly overlooked. Thanks for bringing this to light- there is such little info about this online.
Neat video on what a multimedia beast PS3 was, but there's one problem. SACD's don't work over optical SDIF on PS3!!! 6:47 I don't know how you got the sound to work but it wasn't with optical, that's for sure. I can't make sense of your settings and the claim you got sound to work...the only explanation I can think of is if you had HDMI and SPDIF connected at the same time and triggered the analogue signal of the HDMI whilst messing with SPDIF settings🤔 (the PS4 behaves in this way so that might be what's happening here). It would be interesting if you tried again while unplugging SPDIF cable, you should still get sound if my theory is correct. The problem here is SACDs use 1-Bit 2.8224 MHz DSD format, which is not supported by SPDIF standard, optical or coax. Max sample rate for PCM is 192 kHz; SPDIF can be used by PCM to carry DSD using integer multiples of 44.1kHz but the PS3 isn't anywhere that sophisticated with it's SACD implementation. I use SPDIF to carry DSD from PC to DAC using a sample rate of 176kHz and Foobar with SACD and DSD plugins, works well. If you want a good DAC that supports this, RME is a great choice. If you must use PS3 for SACDs, don't bother with multichannel PCM and just use the analogue out for stereo albums. That is the best way to experience SACDs using a PS3 hooked up to a good receiver. You can play multichannel DSDs providing your PS3 has the right firmware over HDMI but this transcodes to PCM so you might as well not bother with SACD format as you won't get the pure DSD experience. DSD was developed by Sony and Phillips to preserve mastering tapes. Sony Phillips engineers were using DSD to preserve master tapes so that the DSD recordings could be used in remasters and such instead of playing the tapes over and over, because they degrade after each play. The Sony marketing team caught wind of this and then came the SACD. DSD is superior to PCM, up to a point. At any rate, it's neat PS3 can play SACDs but I wouldn't be going out of my way to get PS3 as SACD player, much better looking at an Oppo if on lower end of the price scale. If you are going down this rabbit hole, don't waste your time with anything that transcodes to PCM, you want DSD to analogue with no conversion.
Oh wow. I have a Fat PS3 and some Super Audio CDs that I bought just for collectability. Had no idea I could actually listen to them on the thing. Hell yeah.
I'm someone who tried to put a CD in my PS5 and was so disappointed. There's music I have in my CD collection that's not currently on streaming services and I was hoping PS5 could serve as a hub for my old DVD's and CD's.
Even the low end Sony 4K blu ray players still support SACD. Not a lot of music was released for the format, but if you are int certain genres of music (especially classical), you can find some really nice recordings.
Optical downsamples to CD (or worse)... Analog out (using the original ps3 special AV adapter) is the only way to hear the ACTUAL SACD audio... the optical/hdmi* would be 24bit/352khz out if it did full DSD/PCM conversion (which it is not, just 16/44.1 or compressed dolby surround) --> copy protection on the output also. *hdmi out needs a DAC with decryption hdmi in
I don't have any SACD discs but i knew it was an option. I have used DVD-A, and I still buy Blu-ray music discs for surround sound. I actually bought the Dark Side of the Moon on Blu-ray. I may actually have that Sony Blu-ray player too. Never heard anything about it ripping SACD discs though.
You can use your Dualsense controllers (and others, like DS4, Swirch Pro, Xbox Series/One, Wii U Pro) on PS3, PS4, Switch and PC with the Brook Wingman XE2. You also have a Xbox variant (Brook Wingman XB2) that works with Xbox 360 and OG Xbox. (It also worked with Xbox Series and Xbox One until M$ pushed a update to block 3th party controllers and adapters)
Interesting. I’ve been playing DVD-A (audio discs) in my car stock player and it also has that surround sound effect. I wonder if that’s the same thing, or just similar technology.
The old slogan was “PS3 only does everything” and it definitely did
Definitely, and I've used it all and still do, daily. The slogan for PS4 should be "it only does a third of what the PS3 did, but you get a lot of great games and hundreds of indie titles". The slogan for PS5 is "it barely does anything of what the PS3 can, and only half of what the PS4 does, and all you can play is remastered PS4 titles that look the same. Oh, and you won't own anything, because everything is a subscription now. Oh, and we jacked up those prices and removed the bonus cashback program, because 4% is too much.". And now, introducing the PS5 Pro, the most unwanted abomination in PS history, starting as low as $800.
@@SA1NT53 The Web browser was pretty sus.
Shout out to the Nokia N95 that also came out around that time and was like the mobile pocket counterpart of PS3. Its slogan was "It's what computers have become"
But it couldn’t do cross game chat or music playback while gaming… and so on. But the 360 could 🤦🏻♂️
@ At least PS3 online was free and I didn’t need to buy a disc player for CDs…
For many years the PS3 functioned as a DVR for us. The Play TV accessory was really neat. When you consider everything the PS3 could do, it is a really amazing console and well ahead of its time.
PS3's insane amount of features will always be humorous, like the printing feature. Why does it even have that?
you've never printed your tax return from your ps3?
That feature actually came in clutch for me in college back in the day. My computer died, and I had no other way to get my essay printed (I used other internet workarounds to accomplish even typing it).
Gran Turismo Pictures
@@TheOfficialChannelOfChannels That was PS2, actually.
@dapperfan44 i did it on ps3 also i forgot how but I gave pics of my friends honda civic to him that I took in game
Also, you can connect a PS5 controller, in case someone gets one PS3 without controllers.
What?!
Also ps4 controllers but the ps button doesnt work for whatever reason
yeah the bluetooth isn't that great, better off with the brookwin DS2 adapter
@@Skyler30000 It's cos the ds4 and dualsense connect as generic bluetooth controllers
@@uknighted213 and ps1 ps2 & ps4
It's pretty hilarious how the PS3, or at least its early models, could do literally anything, more than most PCs in some cases, while the PS4 axed almost everything in the name of cost cutting and gaming first. It can't even play audio CDs.
Their old slogan was “it only does everything”
@@Alias_Anybody It should play CD's. They're just DVD's with less information.
I remember back in the day that their PS3 slogan would say "It only does everything!" They didn't lie up until they axed the whole install other OS thing and it went downhill from there
@@SA1NT53 except that they started using that slogan when the PS3 Slim arrived so... by that time it could not play PS2 games (only some selected PS2 classics by emulation from the PlayStation store or via jailbreak) nor had Super Audio CD's support.
Well. You gotta give the PS4 something: It can play HD Blurays while the PS5 can't...
you could even say the ps3 is a bridge for old to new, given it has features that supports old tech like CRT... you can do a lot with the ps3 at this point in time that isn't relatively focus on gaming... which is really neat and very forward thinking
Yup, it still uses the same connector as PS1 and PS2 to be able to use it on old televisions, composite and component. It has an HDMI port built in. The PS4 became the first PlayStation to drop the legacy connector.
@@dapperfan44 I knew the PS3 has the same display output port as the PS1 and PS2 have but I never realized this means it can be hooked up to a CRT! definitely going to do this to play my PlayStation games. Wonder if it looks the same or worse than playing PS1 on PS2, and how much better do PS1 games look over component than composite.
They look pretty identical between PS1, PS2, and PS3. And component is often significantly better if your CRT supports it. Mostly the colors like red and blue pop a lot more which is awesome, and you should also get less fuzz between color changes making stuff like text much easier to read. If you need good and affordable component cables check out HDRetrovision. All cables they make are great.
However, the PS1 emulation on the PS3 isn't perfect, I'd recommend to check online first if the games you'd like to play are actually properly compatible on your model. As that compatibility also changes between models and revisions.
@@webbedshadow2601 All facts, man. My sister refused to upgrade from a CRT to HD until a lightning strike killed her old TV. When I would house sit for her, I'd pack my PS3, but I'd take the opportunity to only play PS1 and PS2 games whether they were physical, digital, or PS2 collections, since they would look great on her TV while the PS3 games didn't look quite so good.
There's also Vanquish for PS3/Xbox360, which was famous at that time for including an SDTV mode for gamers who couldn't get an HDTV yet.
@@webbedshadow2601 when playing PS1. It's stuck at 480i
I will alway love and cherish The PS3. It's a must have system for anyone who is a fan of Stereoscopic 3D. Playing Resistance 3 in Stereoscopic 3D with the Playstation Move Sharp Shooter was a very memorable experience to me. It was one of those "The Future is Now" type of experiences.
all versions of ps3?
@@oni2662 You can't go wrong with any version, but the backwards compatible one is probably the best.
@@oni2662
Yes. There is so much misinformation about PS3. Many think the newer systems were the only ones capable of doing the 'hard' stuff, but this was always a lie. The original models were actually the best ones with four USB ports and a combo memory card reader plus native HW support for PS2 games. The original launch models still ran 3D games with the PS3 Eye and PS Move Sharpshooter, no problem.
@@oni2662
There is so much misinformation about PS3. Yes, the original models did everything the later models did, and they actually did more than the later models. The original models were actually the best ones with four USB ports and a combo memory card reader plus native HW support for PS2 games.
@@oni2662
There are so many wrong things circulating about PS3. Yes, the original models did everything the later models did, and they actually did more than the later models. The originals were actually the best units with 4 USB ports and a memory card reader plus HW support for PS2 games.
Sony supporting some obscure proprietary format, then dropping it. Well this must be the first and only time that's ever happened.
It's a large part of why I won't be buying any more new systems from them. I got the PS3 as a present and didn't know that I needed to tell my parents to make sure that it had the original set of features because they'd just be dropped without any real indication of it on the packaging.
the psp go and the ps vita are the bane of expensive external storage
A hacked original 'fat' PS3 is still the best/easiest way to rip SACDs today.
wow thats awesome.
I ripped normal CDs without the use of hacking.
I'll take it, SACDs do work this way as well.
@@Wesmoen Nope, you can only rip SACDs by jailbreaking
Somehow i thought compatibility was taken out via firmware. Read or heard it somewhere, i was wrong apparently.
@@Vict0rFrankenstein are SACDs DRM protected or something?
The sixaxis controller can move the particles on the home screen by wiggling the controller.
All versions of the PS3 are backwards compatable with PS1 games.
The ps3 can rip audio CDs. I put every ps1 and saturn game that i owned on my hard drive. Some games like Jojo's bizarre adventure all star battle let you use your saved music in certain scenarios. For that game you have the option to replace the music that plays during battles with whatever you had saved.
The ps3 also had a lot of cool accessories, like the ps2 memory card reader, all the ports on the original fat model (the ones that had 4 usb ports on the front)
This console is truly wonderful, and as a kid i never understood why people preferred the 360 over it
Another feature of PS3 lineup is MP3 surround support. PS3 is almost only media device supporting this sub-format for MP3. You of course need surround music that is ripped somehow to 5.1 surround and very old tools to create surround MP3's, but at 320kbps you can have very small OK quality collection of surround music on PS3 hard drive.
That’s too much work just to listen to compressed surround music, might as well just listen to surround FLACs at that point
@@zenvultra If PS3 would play them back. PS3 will not even play surround AAC's even though it will play the same audio in surround if it is in a video file. The only storable surround music format that PS3 does it MP3 surround, and only lossless audio format for PS3 is good ol' WAV.
That is what you just do if you are committed to PS3 as a media center. Converting fifty surround albums into MP3 surround with command line.
@@zenvultra I'm re-encoding my entire CD catalog as I type this. Even when the PS3 was new, there were already programs that could take an entire catalog of CDs and encode it while you stepped away to do other things, so long as you had disc images to cover the discs and didn't have to keep swapping discs.
Next you should teach the kids about PS2 firewire.
I had a PS3 and a 3D Bravia TV. Killzone in 3D was pretty epic for the time.
Yeah I had a bunch of SACDs (still have) and I bought an SACD player but also had the 'fat PS3'.... SACDs were awesome - huge boost in sound quality! I was one of those people that wanted the SACD and Blueray functionality when I bought my PS3 on launch day and i still love it. Also, being able to load Linux on it was a bonus.
Your phat ps3 still works? Mine has YLOD, revived it about 50 times until I quit, still have the corpse but it was a sad day...
@@olebermr you can probably get it frankied; or sell it to someone who wants to get it frankied
I have a standard slim, and it just crashes not too long after boot, even after taking it to a repair place
"huge boost in sound quality!"
That's not correct. CD audio is already capable of perfect sound reproduction, and if anything, increased sampling frequencies can actually introduce distortion caused by inaudible ultrasonics. I'm not familiar enough with the technical differences of the 1-bit 2.8224MHz sampling process used in SACDs, but assuming it's at least capable of matching CD audio quality (which I'm sure it is), any discernible difference in sound you may have heard would have been due to differences in mastering when bringing it to the format. SACD's main advantages were longer playing time and multi-channel audio, and while I admit that multi-channel audio can sound great with the right speaker setup _and_ properly recorded source material, my experience with SACD was hit-or-miss. Live performances with multi-channel audio recorded properly could sound amazing, but stereo recordings sounded the same or just slightly different, with "better" being chalked up to whichever format's mastering I subjectively preferred.
That one amv with Vegeta fighting Goku during the Buu saga, playing slipknots duality, was sick. wish I downloaded it ;/
should be on youtube somewhere lol
PS3 controller sticks also auto calibrate themselves on start up with the system, which us why it was rare that anyone ever experienced stick drift.
Why remove this feature? I only experience stick drift on current consoles and ive been playing since nes 😮
@@Astig_808planned obsolescence
They used Hal effect joysticks in certain DualShock3 models for awhile. Then realized their “mistake”.
@@6reen6uy this is false. PS3 pads, both sixaxis (non-dualshock) and dualshock use potentiometers, though they are far better quality potentiometers than what's used today.
Is that why I didn't get stick drift after all these years?
The dual layer SACDs were not meant to double their capacity, it was so that they would remain compatible with regular CD players. The first layer could be read by regular lasers in normal CD players and would offer the regular 16-bit / 44.1 kHz audio quality from Red Book CDs, and the second layer would contain the high-fidelity audio / surround sound mix encoded in DSD format that was only compatible with SACD players (which used the same lasers as DVD players)
It is this feature that made SACDs a lot more popular than their competitor (the DVD-Audio format) which was only compatible with dedicated DVD/DVD-A players.
You are referring to hybrid SACDs. However, there were in fact dual-layer SACDs with two SACD layers that were completely incompatible with standard CD players.
@@ian_5184this isn't entirely correct. Dual layer SACDs had nothing to do with storage capacity, such as giving more storage space for a longer stereo album. They were to support having both multichannel and stereo versions on the same disc. The question is whether or not the disc is a hybrid disc to also contain a redbook CD version which could be played on any old CD player.
Dual disc more commonly refers to DVD-Audios
SACDs were truly ahead of their time, the technology still offers the best sound quality you can get your hands on today.
The difference between SACD and DVD-Audio is not the disc or even the lasers required to read the discs, it's the actual encoding of the music. DVD/Bluray use the same encoding as good old CDs, just at higher bitrates (24-bit bit depth instead of 16, and 48/96/192 kHz sample rates instead of 44.1).
SACD produces sound in a completely different manner, its DSD audio format encodes music at only 1-bit, but does so at a staggering 2.8224 MHz sample rate (2.82 million samples per second!)
Your entire audio setup needs to support DSD if you truly want to hear the difference, otherwise it will convert to PCM and you'll lose what makes DSD truly unique.
Audiophile online music stores now sell digital files encoded in DSD, so the SACD optical disc medium is dead but long live DSD!
DSD definitely is unique and somewhat mind boggling. I've read that the ultra-high 1-bit sample rate digital bitstream is actually somewhat coherent to the ear without any processing or filtering. I'm not even sure how you'd accomplish this - perhaps by probing an HDMI output for the DSD bitstream and feeding it into a phono preamp or something... Regardless, that's a whole different animal from linear PCM.
@@koozmusic what you're talking about is the fact that DSD is so much like analog that you don't need a digital to analog converter to hear DSD. That being said the PS3 isn't that great of an SACD player since it converts the DSD to a PCM signal to be played through HDMI. If you want the truest way to listen to DSD you need a player with analog outputs.
and SACD isn't dead there's still merits to owning the discs and not just the files!!!
@@Pepsidud32 Yes, that is indeed what I was getting at. 😏
I also agree that the PS3 isn't the best SACD _player_ and analog out is definitely the traditionally "correct" way of listening to SACDs. But a viable (and arguably better) way is to bitstream over HDMI to a receiver capable of decoding DSD. I don't believe the PS3 is able to do this, but you certainly can using a PC.
This is a relatively new feature for receivers and/or standalone DACs; DSD decoding used to be inherently necessary as a function of the _player_ as it was never intended to be "extracted" from SACDs in the first place.
Maybe some modern or more "feature-rich" players are able to do this, but in essence that would reduce them to the equivalent of a DVD-ROM drive with modified firmware.
DSD editing software exists in the professional recording market, but I've heard it is extremely difficult to work with and lacking many of the capabilities you would expect from a DAW. Very few individuals would have the means to generate and/or author original DSD files, let alone distribute them over the internet.
The advent of software-based DSD decoding (i.e. fb2k/winamp, etc plugins), and the fact that modern, well-featured receivers and standalone DACs are able to decode a DSD bitstream at all is probably a testament to the reality that raw SACD image rips exist in the first place.
Let's be honest here; 16bit 44.1khz playback is plenty for human's abilities in hearing. SACD/DVD Audio's only real benefit is the extra channels, but not many have that kind of setup. Hearing a difference between a CD and SACD is usually down to better mastering or simply a placebo effect.
@@simonpreston You're not wrong, to my ears.
I actually still listen to my small collection of music cds because of my ps3. Now that cars barely include cd players anymore, it is my only (and honestly great) way to experience my physical music collection.
I have a couple or so SACDs but for a Sony 4K Bluray player... I remember all these weird audio formats from back in the 2000's from DVD Audio to SACD to SHM and so on. I am not an audiophile but I sometimes wanna dip my toe in that despite my hearing is probably getting worse due to aging
SHM is snake oil. The technology hinges on creating a higher quality disc for more "accurate playback". You know, regular CDs and how infamous they are for being... inaccurate?
They were definitely worth it for 5.1 surround mix albums
I am convinced in the future when space travel is as common as automotive travel, the PS3 will actually be the best machine for a DIY Nav computer...
Fleetwood Mac and Michael Jackson Thriller are the greatest two Super Audio CDs I have ever heard.
which album of Fleetwood? I wanna go check it out
Every media source on tech back when it came out down played sacd. I didn't pay it any attention bc of this.
Too bad it didn't catch on.
@@JavonHolland Rumors
I can't imagine how amazing SACD Thriller must be. I wanna get one now
Jeff Wayne´s War of the Worlds is also amazing, the 5.1 Mix on that is a pure joy.
Today I finally learned that the "SA-CD/CD" input on the stereo receiver we've had for a decade stands for Super Audio CD!
no way ive been waiting for someone to talk about SACD on the PS3 for forever!!!!!
if anyone wants more on the subject I did an SACD retrospective on my channel but didnt even touch SACD on PS3 since that video was already long enough lol but still great effort hoping more people can discuss about this weird format that I love!!!
Techmoan should be the one making a video on this 😊
came here to comment that I didn’t have Spawn Wave x Techmoan on my bingo card
Not just that but PS3 can play MP3 CD's too! I hope more people start to see how powerful optical media really is. look at the newest generation of optical media, it's said it can hold up to 14,000 4k videos. I do love how a lot of the new portable cd players support MP3 CD's having one CD holding over 100 tracks feels so awesome.
How ironic is it that Jon is excited by super audio CD when according to RGT Jon doesn't even listen to music
I had a launch ps3 and definitely sought out some SACDs to make use of that feature. The console died about 5 years ago, but I happened upon a stand-alone SACD player for $5 at a goodwill that just needed a little recalibration.
Immersive audio is still a pretty steady niche market with Dolby Atmos mixes coming out on Blu-Ray Pure Audio format discs.
PlayStation 3 really was an amazing piece of technology, it’s still so amazing how even 20 years later, they still haven’t hit the power limit of the console
Man I had The Downward Spiral SACD and would play it on my 5.1 setup and just bask in it.
NIN in 5.1 was like rediscovering the album. Trent really worked with that spatial element and the songs felt even more dynamic and enveloping.
I also liked the little hidden easter eggs on some albums where if you reversed past the beginning of the first track there would be another hidden track. Sometimes another song or sometimes a joke.
Queens of the Stone Age Songs for the Deaf comes to mind. The "-1 track" was the _real_ song for the deaf -- low, deep, bass-y sounds you could crank and up and feel. Kind of neat.
I actually sought out a CECHA01 back in 2008-2009 specifically because of SACD support and the full backwards compatibility. I still remember the 3 hour drive to go get one from the only GameStop that had one. SACDs are awesome; I had Dark Side of the Moon and The Downward Spiral, and a dedicated 5.1 mix changes everything. This winter, I’m getting my YLOD CECHA01 fixed, and I’m getting back to enjoying all the cool features, especially the SACD part.
I placed a Skynet 3.0 disc into my fat PS3. It sent me backwards compatible to the year of '98 where I played King's Field, Ridge Racer, and Resident Evil.
Did not expect a SACD vid I thought I was the only one who remembered this feature
Ah yes, Americans choosing convenience instead of quality is a tale as old as time.
Awesome video. It might seems like discs are dead, but in reality people still have their collections of music CDs, DVD and Blu-rays. If selling a PS4 to buy a PS5 Pro means they loose their ability to play their beloved media collections, people will be a lot less inclined to do it.
A more accessible format now is DVD/Blu Ray Audio.
Looking at the release date of the Super Audio CD, it looks like something that was released because they were too far along to abort. It wasn't released until 1999, which is after the first commercially viable MP3 player was released and after DVDs were released, making it a bit of a headscratcher as to why bother.
Before Roku, that's all I used, Netflix was on PS3, I loaded tons of music on it, love My PS3
3:57 That's actually the only album I own in SACD. My dad likely bought it thinking it was just a plain old CD, and it does work as one. I only have one device that can play the SACD layer and no it's not a ps3, it's an old DVD player.
Keep doing what you’re doing
Honestly, PS3 phat was Sony at its best. If they ever made a new all-in-one box that plays PS1-PS5 games, I would drop an easy $700 without even thinking about it... To a lot of consumers, that would be a HUGE selling point. I don't see why they don't do that for their "pro" consoles and have the normal consoles only play current gen.
Because it wouldn’t be $700. You’re looking at at least 12 for all of that probably more. And they’d still take a loss.
@@6reen6uy Still worth it.
Sony would rather sell you a new console and then ask you to pay for older titles as digital downloads again. They've seen Nintendo make bank with it and are now starting to dip their hand into the same pot.
I love that you used the dark side of the moon. It’s one of my favorite albums of all time. I’m sure I’m not alone lol
The Gundam Wing AMVs were awesome!
Wow I’ve never even heard of super audio CD before. With premium digital audio I’ve only ever heard of FLAC format. I think I’d just stick with FLAC since a lot more players support that and doesn’t require buying expensive hardware.
FLAC is equivalent to a normal CD
@@ilusha88 FLAC can have different bit depths and sample rates. 16 bits / 44.1 khz is for CDs, SACD rips are done at 24 bits, 88.2khz.
@@Vict0rFrankenstein most times it's just used as a lossless format from a normal CD quality source
if you don't wanna buy a player you should be able to find DSD files of albums being sold (DSD is the file format that SACD is) but if not there are waaaayyy cheaper options than $250 that Spawn Wave said. Just look around but then again you're mileage will vary on how much you can take advantage of SACD if you don't have a surround setup.
If I remember right, the PS3 only did PCM output for multichannel SACD. It couldnt do DSD directly over HDMI to take advantage of Sony's native DSD receivers like the DA7100ES.
My back compat PS3s are the only SACD players I have that still work - I'm not sure why but all my dedicated audio players stopped reading SACDs a few years back..
If you still have a the players you might be able to replace the lasers in them to give them new life. The laser diodes only have a very limited life span before they drift too far out of calibration and either have to be manually recalibrated or replaced with a new one. Sadly recalibrating them yourself is pretty expensive as the tool needed isn't the cheapest, but maybe a repair shop for DVD or CD players offers that service locally.
Or, you know, just swap out the entire laser assembly with a new one, many are off the shelf parts that you can still find as old new stock.
Moreover, that PCM multichannel does not work over the optical cable used in the video, far as I know...
"If you had a PS2 there was no reason to buy a DVD Player in your Entertainment setup".
Well, in theory, yes. But in reality the PS2 wasn't that good of a DVD Player and often didn't correctly output the correct aspect ratio in some movies...
There's also the issue that DVD players were, and are, a lot less expensive and the PS series, like most other optical media devices, has a laser that will eventually fail and wasting that time on DVDs was kind of dumb.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade when the PS2 first launched, it was one of the cheapest DVD players on the market. Most players were $50-$100 more expensive, the PS2 forced other players to get more competitively priced. Eventually DVD players would be consistently cheaper than a PS2, but that took a couple years.
The sony UBP-x700m bd player is good for SACD playback, which is handy because that player is commonly available with the region-free mod for DVD/BD playback too
In hindsight, the PS3 was super cheap at launch.
I picked the fat 80GB model and still have mine but SACD really only became part of my reality because I have heard about it from others on TH-cam talking about the format.
Will need firmware updates for blu-ray keys
I occasionally see people mentioning updates for Blu-ray encryption keys. I have a profile 1.0 player from 2012 without the ability to connect to the internet. All of the new BD disc's I have that were made in 2024 work fine. What is this talk about the keys?
@@Ron2600_ The issue is for the folks that still have Other OS availalbe, updating means giving up that functionality.
9:48 PS4 CAN play Audio CDs! You just have to jailbreak the console. I don't understand why Sony blocked that feature
This is incorrect. This is a hardware limitation as in the PS4 doesn't even have the laser to do this.
I have a small collection of SACDs, and I initially bought an SACD rig when I was in college, for one specific album; El Cielo, by Dredg. In your configuration, the PlayStation is actually re-encoding the audio as PCM. It’s still of good quality, and you get the full surround experience, but it’s not the full resolution on the disc. A modern player (I have a Sony DVD player) can have DSD Transport, which will send the full DSD signal to your receiver, which then decodes it. Your receiver though, could also be converting to PCM. If you use any room correction or time alignment, your receiver is likely converting to PCM to run the DSP. Ideally, you’d want a player that does DSD Transport, directly connected to a receiver via HDMI (optical is not supported for full DSD), and your receiver set to pure direct, which bypasses any room correction stuff.
My first rig was PCM, and it was still awesome. Now though, it is incredibly lifelike. It can almost fool your mind into thinking you’re in the studio room if you close your eyes, even though you know you’re in your living room. I just wish there were more new content coming out on it, but since streaming platforms started including Atmos (a compressed, lossy version) there’s less of a market for a disc-based hi-res format. The SACD 5.1 mix for Dark Side of the Moon is the same mix that is in Atmos on streaming platforms, and they both sound great.
And you tested with the greatest album ever made… I still remember the first time I heard this album; it was a life-changing experience.
I just tweeted about the ps3 launch price last night. The 600 was justified. I hope the ps6 is fully backwards compatible with the entire PS library.
Still the best console from Sony by far, has the best audio in video games, the best game libraries (PS1/PS2/PS3/PSP/PSN/PSMinis), has stellar BR playback quality, SACD and normal CD playback quality, can play media files from most formats, can do sub 2ms gameplay via analogue outputs, don't make them like that anymore.
It was one of, if not the, cheapest way to get a Bluray player when it launched.
Like, I completely understand the initial backlash to the PS3's original price but god damn, it was so fucking warranted compared to the absolute absurdity that is the PS5 Pro.
They’re not focusing on backwards compatibility any time soon. Modern Playstation is all about graphics, 6th and 7th gen just don’t cut it compared to hyperrealistic $70 9th gen games (in their eyes). It’s not something that would benefit them either, they’re not selling PS1 or PS2 discs anymore and anyone wanting to play one most likely already has/can find something to run them. And this isn’t even getting into the nightmare of accurately and efficiently emulating the PS3’s CELL…
@@shny_scott Isn't there a pretty decent emulator already made for the PS3?
Definitely the first time hearing about it. Now I want to try it out. May get Dire Straits Brothers in Arms
In case anyone is curious and interested in a multi-channel audio disc, a handful of albums are available as Blu-ray discs, many of which have full Dolby Atmos versions. No special player required, should work in any device that plays Blu-rays. I personally only own Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours", but it's a great disc.
I can't remember specifically, but one of the issues with super audio CDs is that they came out after DVDs and DVDs could manage 5.1 sound as well as video. So, there wasn't really much point in having the CD format which really only seems to bring with it the option of having a layer that's compatible with regular CDs, which by that point, were just about to be hit by a bunch of MP3 players with the first viable one already being on the market.
To find a CD to buy, Spawn searched for "human music"
Super Audio CD's My Dad had a few of them
This thing was super impressive at the time and now looking back even more so
Didn’t think i would be hearing Linkin Park in a Spawn Wave video but here we are with In The End playing in this video.
It's weird how every PlayStation system had their only happening and I still remember that some CDs have music videos or a image so when you play them on a PS1 you got more then just music but for whatever reason it's rarely talked about.
There also exist cds called enhanced cd which is mostly made for pc. Its are a regular music cd, but if you put in a computer you get videos, pictures, downloadables and more.
Love the channel
The left channel or the right channel?
@@NoahSanchez im how many you got 👀
I've gotten damn lucky with my PS3 consoles. Picked up 60 gig 1 year after release. When Sony dropped price to $500 and discontinunation while saying the successor would have features removed I had to get it. It's still connected to my TV. Years later I found another 60 gig model at a Flea market in great condition for $20. Yes. My 3rd PS3 is a slim along a xbox 360 I found in trash while walking my dog. The 360 red ringed while the slim was in good shape and had a jammed NBA 2k in the drive. I've sinced cleaned them all up and new thermal paste with a simple SSD.
Does the 60gb ps3 still run?
PS3 is the GOAT console ✨🎮🐐✨
The problem with run in audio through the TV initially is likely due to a very common factor of TV audio pass through. Most TV audio pass through will only send a basic 2 channel audio signal to the amplifier itself connected to, unless the surround audio it’s sending to the audio system is from a built-in app. Some higher end TVs will have limited pass through of surround sound, and it’s becoming more common these days for a tv to have at least 1 full audio pass through port, usually labeled eArc. But you gotta be careful which port it’s using to get that.
The amv thing was so real lmao. Wasn’t expecting to see that on a spawn wave video
The album you used to demonstrate it was my favorite album of all time. Awesome choice!
SACDs sound soooo good. Dreamcast can't use the disc's but can also do the same kind of streaming
wow lol i thought it was an upside-down disc in the thumbnail and someone was finally mentioning the OTHER thing that for REAL nobody talks about - the claimed "disc cleaning/repair" feature - that supposedly fixed small scratches
For ripping sacd's on windows, I use dp power amp to rip my sacd's to the dsf format and it even includes the album artwork and the metadata from the sacd.
The PS3 can’t play the DSD audio on the SACD natively. It converts it to PCM audio.
About the only media formats the OG PS3 didn't handle was DVD Audio and HDDVD.
A lot of people forget that it handled ATRAC3 and AAC, or that it had Compact Flash, SD and Memory Stick readers.
Another feature that some of those disc based 90's consoles (I don't remember exactly which ones) had that only a very select few of us in the west know about is the ability to play Video CD's. They were a precursor to DVD's created by Phillip's in 1993. They were extremely popular in Asia, and I believe they remained so for quite some time even after DVD's hit the market mostly due to them being a lot cheaper. Although they were apparently released in North America, they didn't make even the slightest dent in the market. I've never even seen one before, and I doubt anyone reading this has either unless they live, have lived, or have visited an eastern country.
As for how they compare to DVD, I think it's mostly the same kind of thing with the major differences being lower quality and less storage. A disc can hold only about 30 minutes of video, which even in the 90's was not very good at all. However, many were double sided so you could flip it and get 30 more minutes, and you could always use multiple discs of course. So really, not to bad for the 90's although having to flip or switch a disc out every 30 minutes would be somewhat annoying.
Anyone reading this with more knowledge of VCD's can feel free to jump in and give more info. I'd be very curious to learn more about this extremely obscure (for us in the west) format.
Nice! I have the same PS3 Motor Storm set! 👍
If you enjoyed it you should pick up Bob Marley Greatest Hits really good I've had the discs for 20 years now no issues love my SACD
I bought some SACD’s back in the day. Really enjoyed them on my home theater system.
Imagine if these early models were not plagued by the YLOD due to defective chip manufacturing. The system would have been flawless.
That’s very true but another saving grace of theirs was for even as terrible as that issue was, the Xbox 360 Red Ring Of Death took a bit of the attention off of Sony.
Once the Slim came out, they definitely had enough of a resurgence to give the console the better reputation it does have today.
I guess I never knew what that symbol on the box was.
I remember in the UK when the PS3 released it was around the £500 mark from memory but if you wanted a Blu-ray player the cheapest was £1000 at the time so it made sense to just buy a PS3
I knew you were going to say SACD before you even got to it. As an Audiophile, it was a feature that I noticed right away.
it's not every day you're able to legitimately surprise me with retro gaming information that I was here to forth not privy to, this is a great example of something I did not know about! 😮
One of my favourite features of the 360, was its ability to properly mix in your own music CD's and files into the game you were playing, it sounded so good that it might as well have been part of the native game audio, it faded when needed, had just the right levels. Was so cool, now you can't even play music in modern console video games lol.
It was integrated SO well.
Even on the OG Xbox.
He hit the nail on the head about consumers going for the convenience of digital downloads over the superior quality of physical media.
Stands true even today for audio and video.
Physical media is KING
These segments are always good thanks again spawn wave 🌊
I have eyeballed fat boy PS3s for SACD ripping and playback for a while. Indeed a weird niche piece of technology for audiophiles that is incredibly overlooked. Thanks for bringing this to light- there is such little info about this online.
Super Audio CD was an underrated format, honestly, even in the audiophile space.
Is this the same as the DVD Audio discs? The 04 Acura TL could play them and the sound was amazing.
I never knew about this let alone SACDs. I am interested in collecting SACDs now.
Neat video on what a multimedia beast PS3 was, but there's one problem. SACD's don't work over optical SDIF on PS3!!! 6:47 I don't know how you got the sound to work but it wasn't with optical, that's for sure. I can't make sense of your settings and the claim you got sound to work...the only explanation I can think of is if you had HDMI and SPDIF connected at the same time and triggered the analogue signal of the HDMI whilst messing with SPDIF settings🤔 (the PS4 behaves in this way so that might be what's happening here). It would be interesting if you tried again while unplugging SPDIF cable, you should still get sound if my theory is correct.
The problem here is SACDs use 1-Bit 2.8224 MHz DSD format, which is not supported by SPDIF standard, optical or coax. Max sample rate for PCM is 192 kHz; SPDIF can be used by PCM to carry DSD using integer multiples of 44.1kHz but the PS3 isn't anywhere that sophisticated with it's SACD implementation. I use SPDIF to carry DSD from PC to DAC using a sample rate of 176kHz and Foobar with SACD and DSD plugins, works well. If you want a good DAC that supports this, RME is a great choice.
If you must use PS3 for SACDs, don't bother with multichannel PCM and just use the analogue out for stereo albums. That is the best way to experience SACDs using a PS3 hooked up to a good receiver. You can play multichannel DSDs providing your PS3 has the right firmware over HDMI but this transcodes to PCM so you might as well not bother with SACD format as you won't get the pure DSD experience.
DSD was developed by Sony and Phillips to preserve mastering tapes. Sony Phillips engineers were using DSD to preserve master tapes so that the DSD recordings could be used in remasters and such instead of playing the tapes over and over, because they degrade after each play. The Sony marketing team caught wind of this and then came the SACD.
DSD is superior to PCM, up to a point. At any rate, it's neat PS3 can play SACDs but I wouldn't be going out of my way to get PS3 as SACD player, much better looking at an Oppo if on lower end of the price scale.
If you are going down this rabbit hole, don't waste your time with anything that transcodes to PCM, you want DSD to analogue with no conversion.
Awesome video. I didn’t know this. Thank you.
Oh wow. I have a Fat PS3 and some Super Audio CDs that I bought just for collectability. Had no idea I could actually listen to them on the thing. Hell yeah.
SACD’S are great! I have several SACD’S to play on the PS3. A super audio CD is a digital format that has the warmth of vinyl records.
I'm someone who tried to put a CD in my PS5 and was so disappointed. There's music I have in my CD collection that's not currently on streaming services and I was hoping PS5 could serve as a hub for my old DVD's and CD's.
I'd pay 600 dollars for a new ps3 today.
Even the low end Sony 4K blu ray players still support SACD. Not a lot of music was released for the format, but if you are int certain genres of music (especially classical), you can find some really nice recordings.
Optical downsamples to CD (or worse)... Analog out (using the original ps3 special AV adapter) is the only way to hear the ACTUAL SACD audio... the optical/hdmi* would be 24bit/352khz out if it did full DSD/PCM conversion (which it is not, just 16/44.1 or compressed dolby surround) --> copy protection on the output also. *hdmi out needs a DAC with decryption hdmi in
I don't have any SACD discs but i knew it was an option. I have used DVD-A, and I still buy Blu-ray music discs for surround sound. I actually bought the Dark Side of the Moon on Blu-ray.
I may actually have that Sony Blu-ray player too. Never heard anything about it ripping SACD discs though.
I'm not going to lie, i didn't even know you could dump normal CD audio when i was a kid with a PS3
You can use your Dualsense controllers (and others, like DS4, Swirch Pro, Xbox Series/One, Wii U Pro) on PS3, PS4, Switch and PC with the Brook Wingman XE2.
You also have a Xbox variant (Brook Wingman XB2) that works with Xbox 360 and OG Xbox. (It also worked with Xbox Series and Xbox One until M$ pushed a update to block 3th party controllers and adapters)
Sonny Sharrock's 'Black Woman' is the most impressive SACD I own.
Interesting. I’ve been playing DVD-A (audio discs) in my car stock player and it also has that surround sound effect. I wonder if that’s the same thing, or just similar technology.