SACD Players Under $2000 With Best Redbook Sound

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by DennisF, Mar 28, 2017.

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  1. Bill Mac

    Bill Mac Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Have you tried F1nut's suggestion to clean the optical pickup lens? Hopefully that'll work and you'll be all set :).
     
  2. Bill Mac

    Bill Mac Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    I don't understand that mindset either. A lot of opinions but no facts that I've seen that say multi-format players can't output excellent sound.
     
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  3. DennisF

    DennisF Forum Resident Thread Starter

    I have been using Audioquest balanced XLR cables more recently than the black mambas. The last couple days, I have been listening to my old Rotel 1072 with them, and to me the redbook sounds much much better on it than on the Marantz 8004. I even played a few SACDs (redbook layer) on the Rotel and I thought that sounded pretty damn good too.
     
  4. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    Not that many speakers do play all types of music well. IME
     
  5. johnot

    johnot Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto Ontario
    I just purchased an Arcam cds27 SACD player for $1300.00 and am very impressed with the quality of sound for both sacds and regular cds especially if both are well mastered.
     
  6. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    I would not assume. Most dealers I go to either do sell at least one machine capable of SACD replay or brought them in and didn't care for them and booted them.. I think the latter is the wrong move because whether I like a format or not if I were running an audio store I would want to carry products that the people wanted. Whether people wanted SACD or not is arguable based on the current sales of SACD and the current sales of CD. SACD had enough time in the market to take-over and it did not.

    The question is about the mechanism. CD player makers have the choice to buy mechanisms from anyone so a CD manufacturer could choose to buy a multi-reader or a CD only reader. The costs of these things are not all that different since you can get a multi-reader SACD/CD in a $299 player and pay $10,000 for a CD player that only plays CD. And they choose the CD only mechanism because they think it sounds better.

    I can't really argue against that because I judge based on my hearing of SACD versus CD and when I compared the same albums the CD won every single time. Now I was using a very good CD player but I was comparing the top of the line Marantz and Sony ES machines. Now playing the SACD with the dual layer in those two machines the SACD always sounded much better BUT comparing it to CD players like the Audio Note CD 2.1 and 3.1 playing CD back against those Marantz and Sony - the CD sounded better. This is either because the multi-reader stinks at playing CD, Sony and Marantz deliberately make the CD sound lousy to make SACD sound great in comparison (which if you are trying to sell SACD actually makes a ton of sense), or the output stages are poor in those big makers. These machines were in the $5k range so not chump change. They were more expensive than the AN CD player by about double.

    Before you say there I go again with AN - it's simply what I hear. And I am not the only one - back in 2003 their CD replay was compared directly against SACD by another reviewer audionote

    And Martin Colloms recently noted that CD sounded better on one of their players than ANY other digital going (SACD included). And since then several other copycats have come out like Zanden and some out of China following the no oversampling R2R approach.

    I have nothing against any format because to me it comes down mostly to the recording and mastering and if there is enough music on a format that I like then that format becomes relevant to me. I LOVE tape - the sound quality of Reel to Reel is astonishing but it's not worth the massive investment in the playback if I can't get any of my say 100 favorite artists on that format. Plus it has to actually sound better than the current formats.

    I find most all SS CD players to sound pretty poor over long sessions. And many tube CD players sound poor for other reasons.

    Having said ALL that above I have been tempted myself to buy an OPPO unit because for the money - it does everything and it's a damn fine BluRay player. The fact that it does everything else under the sun is an additional bonus. But I read too many people with firmware problems and this or that issue that keeps steering me away from them.
     
  7. scobb

    scobb Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    I think there is a mismatch in your experience to finding an SACD player for under 2k? I can't think of a tube CD player/DAC that you could buy for that money, let alone have money left over to buy an SACD player. Esoteric make a 9k player that reviewed very well Esoteric K-05 CD/SACD Player & USB DAC Review just 3 years ago on Dagogo but this is still way out of the budget. It should be noted that the new Marantz/Yamaha's etc now have to make their own drives as dedicated CD and CD/SACD drives are apparently becoming harder to source (my understanding is that this is why Ayre have or are stopping making a CD player). You may find these "home made" drives actually improve their performance from when you reviewed these products?

    Anyway what I'm trying to say is; I bow to your superior experience and knowledge on high end gear but in relevance to this thread (sub 2k) I think your findings bare little relevance? I do agree that dedicated players generally have the edge over multi format players (especially when video is also included). Personally I like the tube sound you go for but I think you need a large budget to make it work well as in my limited experience they have been on the warm side of neutral.

    In my world (still irreverent to this thread) I went from an Ayre CX-7e (was 5k in AUD, I paid 2k) to a Yamaha CD S3000 (7k AUD I paid $2.5k (sale price) including a 1k trade in for the Ayre) and I found that the presentation of the music and the soundstage of CD on the Yamaha to be more to my liking, clearly, as I bought the Yamaha. In my, poor mans, world I think I would be hard pushed to find a great tube player and or DAC for that sort of money but would be keen to hear your opinion (I mean that as I am having reliability issues with the Yamaha and considering returning it for a refund as it was their last one and can't replace mine).
     
    Last edited: Mar 29, 2017
  8. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    Hi Scobb

    I think the issue is we're talking about sub $2k and frankly all $2k players and under won't be using a premium disc drive/laser pick-up. Indeed you will often see the same drive mechanism in the $300 unit AND the $2,000 unit.

    This is the main reason I suggested just buying a dedicated CD player and then a second unit for SACD. Or what I think you allude to is getting the SACD player and a dedicated DAC for the CD player. Something like the OPPO for $350-$550 and then a $1400-$1700 DAC.

    I own the $1500 Line Magnetic 215 which is a tube CD player, but I am currently reviewing a $700 CD player which is both Tube and SS. There are two sets of outputs on the back one for tube and one for SS. It also has a USB input to play your computer files (operates as a DAC but is Redbook limited). To be fair this is an unknown brand outside of Hong Kong but then so was Line Magnetic and I was the first to review them in North America.

    Line Magnetic sells the 502CA DAC for $1800 and Eastern Electric has one for less. Eastern Electric Audio - MiniMax Tube DAC Supreme

    Both have very good reviews. Audio Note also has the DAC 0.1X for $1800.
    MHDT Labs Havana DAC is under $1k and is a tube DAC. Can't vouch for this one though.


    The Sony Playstation 3 and some of their bluray machines play SACD for around and under $300.

    Of course not all the cheap SACD machines have RCA outputs just HDMI so it forces one to use a receiver. You really have to do a bunch of work to track a lot of this down AND get good sound from both formats under $2k.

    OPPO clearly saw the market well.
     
  9. Thesmellofvinyl

    Thesmellofvinyl Senior Member

    Location:
    Cohoes, NY USA
    I don't know this market at all but I'm curious; do you know the lowest price point that will deliver the sound quality you want? Just wondering what price range your new player might come from and how many models are in that range.
     
  10. bgiliberti

    bgiliberti Will You Be My Neighbor?

    Location:
    USA
    What other players in that price range did you compare it to?
     
    Last edited: Mar 29, 2017
  11. bgiliberti

    bgiliberti Will You Be My Neighbor?

    Location:
    USA
    Funny, I'm pretty happy with my crappy $1000 CD/SACD player. Coulda' fooled me. I think it sounds pretty cool.
     
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  12. Richard Austen

    Richard Austen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hong Kong
    Well part of this is just experience and what people compare things to. It's not always about price but about design.

    For instance back in the early 1990s B&W/PMC and Bryston and similar big power amps was what got me "into" high end audio but as I auditioned more gear by 2002 I wouldn't touch any of that with a barge pole. That's not to say it's bad - it's just bad for me.

    I am currently reviewing an $800 amplifier that is good enough to live with IMO while I have heard several $8,000+ amplifiers that I know would displease me over the long run. It's the same with other gear. The Wilson Grand Slamm are about 10 times more expensive than my speakers and I'll take my speakers all day over the Wilsons.

    It's also about a willingness to be honest about what you are hearing. I went with the reviews and bought an Arcam Delta 290 even though back then I much preferred the Sugden A21a. But back then there wasn't internet access like today. I should have went with my ears since everything gets a good review. Posting a review is nearly worthless. Who is doing the review is what matters.
     
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  13. Classicrock

    Classicrock Senior Member

    Location:
    South West, UK.
    Why not spend half the money on a dedicated CD player or Transport/DAC and other half on a universal player that will do all hi res formats including SACD. I think that is best way to maximise sound v expenditure regarding CD.
     
    4thChoice likes this.
  14. bgiliberti

    bgiliberti Will You Be My Neighbor?

    Location:
    USA
    Where's the evidence that a multi-format player can't do redbook as well as a dedicated redbook player? Doesn't make sense to me, at least from an engineering standpoint.
     
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  15. Sondek

    Sondek Forum Resident

    You could pick one of these up around the 2 grand mark: CD5 XS
     
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  16. Bill Mac

    Bill Mac Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    I asked that question earlier in the thread. No evidence provided but a lot of opinions which could be correct or not. Seems to be more of a subjective thing than anything else.
     
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  17. bgiliberti

    bgiliberti Will You Be My Neighbor?

    Location:
    USA
    I think at worst when you buy a universal player/transport, you may be paying for some circuitry/functionality you may never use in your audio setup (eg., Blu-Ray video). However, a few folks here seem to think that a multi-function laser (ie., SACD, DVD, CD) is inherently inferior to redbook only laser/transport. Not only do I see no evidence for that, it could just as easily be the opposite -- I seem to recall that some of the early Mark Levinson gear used the universal transports for their redbook only players, simply because they felt they were better engineered than the CD rigs of the time. Who knows? But there's no reason at this point to favor one over the over IMO.
     
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  18. Flyquail56

    Flyquail56 Forum Resident

    At least one Yamaha universal player has a switchable CD mode, described in the BD-A-1060 owners manual as:

    Slows the disc rotation speed to reduce the negative effect of the electric current driving the motor to improve the sound quality (when playing back a music CD).

    That sounds like one manufacturers effort to address a known problem, Don't know whether or not that qualifies as evidence though :cool:




     
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  19. John1026

    John1026 Member

    Location:
    Valencia
    Don't spend anywhere near $2000 for an SACD player. Buy the new Sony Universal Disc player.
     
  20. Classicrock

    Classicrock Senior Member

    Location:
    South West, UK.
    Based on personal experience. A dedicate transport runs at the correct speed. Universal transports are optimised for faster speeds that DVD and SACD run at. Basically it does one job and that is to optimaly read a CD. Also dacs in hi-res / DVD type players don't appear to be optimised for CD (certainly at lower price levels). Try an outboard DAC with a universal player as transport and likely you will get better CD sound. So for the money ($2000) I would buy an Oppo or equivalent plus a Cambridge CXC plus $500 DAC (incl vintage 16 bit DACS) to get best sound for outlay with all formats.
     
  21. scobb

    scobb Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    The new Sony doesn't have analogue out and the op doesn't list a dac on his profile page! Why would you suggest the new Sony Blu Ray player?
     
  22. JediJoker

    JediJoker Audio Engineer/Enthusiast

    Location:
    Portland, OR, USA
    The UHP-H1 referenced does have analog stereo out:

    [​IMG]
     
  23. scobb

    scobb Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sydney, Australia
    I have assumed he means the new 4K Sony rather than the old one!
     
  24. Bill Mac

    Bill Mac Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Could you be more specific. Which Sony universal player? Why is it better than other universal players?
     
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  25. JediJoker

    JediJoker Audio Engineer/Enthusiast

    Location:
    Portland, OR, USA
    The UHP-H1 is the new 4K Sony, and it has analog stereo audio.
     
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