Any Experience with the Sony NS-500V?

Looking for a replacement for the APEX 7701 which just did not work. Anyone with any experience with this Sony with focus on its SACD playback.

 

Richard,
I like my NS-500V a lot. But it's the only SACD machine I've heard except at stores, so I can't compare its sound quality to any of the others.

It is a bargain any way you look at it, and I haven't had a speck of trouble with it.

 

NS-500V

Sounds interesting, what's the price range?

 

A more expensive Sony player from this range had a very positive review here.

 

Andrew,
The NS-500V was only $250 when I got it through oade.com in Georgia. They're a great place. They double box when shipping.
They also have all the other Sony SACD machines if you want to go for a more expensive model. They're an authorized Sony dealer.

 

I have a DVP NS-500V. I got it just under $250 through an ebay auction (new item).

 

I have this player. Got it from Music Direct for $299.99 with 3 free SACD's and 5 free DVD's. It was too good of a deal to pass up. I thought it was a cheap way to begin with SACD. However, I have really not been impressed with the sound of SACD's (stereo, I have no multichannel yet). I have heard it needs to be burned in a long time. Does anyone know how long it takes to burn in a component?

 

>>>>>richie, could you elaborate a little as to why the APEX unit did not work?

 

I went through 4 units. The first poped and snaped and cracked playing SACD and DVD-A disks. APEX told me to return it. The second would not recognize audio CD's. APEX told me to return it. The thrid would start to play video DVD's then freeze up the unit and display total video noise. APEX told me to return it. The last would also snap and crack in its audio output but every now and again emit a loud audio buzz, loud enough to wake the dead. APEX told me to return it. Any other questions?

 

Hmm, veddy interesting!

 

I've got the NS-500V. No problems here. The best $269 I've spent!
Grant

 

I've got one and am pretty happy with it, but the bass management in 5.1 mode is screwy. See here:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl730623608d&hl=en&[email protected]

I think the 500 behaves the same as this European model.

Everything sounds great in stereo (assuming your fronts are reasonably full range), but in multi mode things get goofy. If most of the bass goes to the fronts you're still in good shape. If there's a lot of bass in the center and your center is set to SMALL, the bass goes away. (Kind of Blue is a good example of this, since the bassist is in the center channel. In stereo, he's nice and clear, but in multi he's thin and trebly.) The LFE channel itself seems to have problems, too.

I've got mine set up:

Fronts: Large
Center: Small
Rear: Small
Sub: No

(My sub is connected speaker-level with the fronts.)

Stereo sound great this way, since I effectively have full-range fronts. Multi is a mixed bag. Miles I covered above. The two Billy Joel multis both sound great, with no apparent lack of bass. The Frankie Goes To Hollywood sounds terrible, with essentially no low bass (it sounds great in stereo, though).

I'm more into stereo anyway, so it's not a huge deal for me, but it's something to be aware of depending on your speaker setup.

Ryan

 

Consumer Reports just gave this and the DVD/SACD changer from Sony top marks, but they only remarked on SACD in passing and apparently did not even test that function. They only tested sub $400 DVD players and found all but one to give and excellent picture. No talk of chroma bugs, etc., or the fact that a DTV may do its own 3:2 pulldown making that function in the DVD player a mere duplication in function.

 

CR is good for testing products from a strictly utilitarian point of view, stuff like vacuum cleaners, microwaves and so forth.

With anything that has an "enthusiast" market, though, like A/V equipment, cameras, PCs, cars and so forth, the "enthusiasts" almost always treat CR with disdain. They probably give good advice for people that don't know and don't care about things like chroma bugs, 3:2 pulldown and the like, but their analysis doesn't go deep enough for more "enthusiast" customers.

Ryan

 

Yes, I can testify to Oade.com being a good place to shop online for this stuff.
I just recently purchased my SACD player from them, the Sony SACD-C555ES. Their price was only US$750, plus $25 S/H, so I paid $800 altogether. I couldn't find it at a better price than that ANYWHERE. J&R, Crutchfield, and Circuit City were all selling it at LIST PRICE, which is, I think, $1199! I saw one other place (I can't remember where now) online selling it for $875 plus like $30 or so S/H. And, yes, they double box with an overabundance of peanuts when they ship, which I really apreciated. When I purchased my multi-channel setup at the same time from HiFi.com , they just shipped the units in their original boxes with no extra precautions - not cool.

 

Burning in

Chris,

I have heard that at takes at least 150 hours for the ES players to burn in, and that one can continue to hear improvements at even 400 hours and beyond! So, I have been playing my new player a hell of a lot. I don't know if this is the same for the non-ES DVD/SACD players.

 

Ryan,

What kind of multi channel setup do you have? I have the mulitchannel settings set exactly the way you do on my C555ES and I have pretty much the same thoughts as you do on the Billy Joel and Miles multichannel mixes. I don't have the Frankie Goes to Hollywood, so I can't comment on that.

I have the Cambridge Soundworks Ensemble IV HT speakers w/ passive subwoofer and a Sony STR-DE475 Receiver/Decoder, which I only use for multichannel purposes. I listen to stereo stuff through my regular stereo setup, which is a lot better in quality anyhow than my multichannel stuff, but the multichannel still sounds pretty good. I was pleasently surprised by the Cambridge Soundworks speakers, as they are very small single driver units, but they really sound great for their size and price range (I paid US$199, but they are regularly $299) and even with a passive subwoofer their bass output is very good. But, like you, I am also more into the stereo stuff and look upon the multichannel mixes as an added benefit and a different experience to play with every now and again.

 

GoldenBoy,

Very interesting -- I've been wondering if the ES units behave the same way. Thanks for the input.

I'm using NHT SuperZeroes in the four corners, with a NHT SuperCenter center and a NHT SW1P powered sub. My receiver is a Sony DA333ES. The SZs and the center only go down to 85Hz, so some sort of bass management is a requirement for me. I've used this setup for over two years for DD and DTS 5.1 DVD with excellent results, with both Pioneer and Sony DVD players, so I'm confident everything is set up correctly.

I ran across a Usenet post:

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]&rnum=1

that describes what might be going on here. I'm going to try an experiment tonight -- hooking up the sub line-level, setting all speakers to SMALL and the sub to YES, and boosting the gain on the sub channel 10db in the player. I'll report back with any findings.

Ryan

 

All right, here's the scoop.

It's not perfect (I think the actual LFE and mixed bass from other channels are coming in at slightly different levels), but hooking up the sub line-level and boosting the sub output by 10db in the player does produce a multichannel mix with actual bass, after some tweaking of the sub's own gain control.

The catch is that the stereo output seems to ignore the sub channel, even with the front speakers set to SMALL. The CD/SACD combo machines have an explicit "2ch + sub" setting to cover this, but the DVD/SACD combos apparently don't. Even worse, the bass is dutifully trimmed from the fronts through the 5.1 outs in stereo mode when the fronts are SMALL!

So, I have created a true Frankenstein to make this thing function. I've got the sub hooked up both ways, line and speaker. When doing stereo SACD (and everything else), I turn the sub off in the receiver, shutting down the line-level sub out, and set the fronts in the player to LARGE.

For multi SACD, I turn the sub back on in the receiver. I'm not sure yet whether it sounds better with fronts set to LARGE or SMALL in the player. If it turns out SMALL is the winner, I'll probably end up hooking up the two-channel analog outputs from the player in addition to the 5.1, using that for stereo SACD.

Whew. What a mess. Sony really screwed the pooch on this one.

Ryan