From the code snippers I've seen, these SACD players have a linux-based system inside, so assuming you would get ie. iSCSI running, you could make the optical drive remotely accessible from anywhere (your PC, the FDAC, etc.). Looking at the ripper code, all of the decoding is done by the drive firmware - the "ripper" then simply reads the drive and that's it. Basically the "ripping" to iso could be as simple asRune, ripping does work fine indeed, and I'm happy with the solution as it stands. Some other folks may not have a proper NAS/Server set up, and may be lured to the MDAC2 by its rare ability to be an audiophile SACD deck with this combo... but this is just dreaming and far from necessary for me.
I presume clock-locking would not be an issue between the player and the DAC (in this 'idea' clock locking would take place within the DAC and its 'streamer' board).
Code:
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=file.iso bs=8M
So all you need on the PC/FDAC/MDAC2 is some software that can decode the track metadata on-the-fly and play the raw DSD bits. Basically any player able to play a ripped ISO directly would be able to do this.
No clock-locking needed, the data path is fully controlled by the player software.