AMR / EMM / PLAYBACK Designs

Suteetat,

With regard to your earlier point, the issue with the SACD and switching inputs appears to be resolved. And you haven't heard anything yet. The upcoming firmware update (just a few small issues left to iron out) takes the XDS1 to another level; it is subtle but significant if your system is resolving enough (and I thought it was impressive when I bought it back in November).

Bar81, thanks for the information, I will let my friend knows since I was at his place a couple of weeks ago, he still did not know about any fix on switching input problem between high rez and SACD. Also, do you know if the new firmware will make XDS1 accept 24/176 and 24/192 input?

I am under the impression that this update is a sound quality enhancement (again, it has been described as "subtle" so owners should temper their expectations, but, in my system, the enhancement was significant) and bug fix. I know that, mechanically, the inputs are capable of 24/192 and I understand that this feature will be enabled in the future but I do not have any more information than that. In any case, given the dearth of music available at that quality imo emm should be commended for focusing on the core sound quality of the player and bug fixes prior to adding checklist features that are currently not particularly useful to the great majority of owners.

I tried the PD in my home with various headphones w/tube & solid state amps as a possible 1-box alternative to my EMM SE separates(CDSD-SE + DCC2-SE). I liked the tonality and ease of the PD, and actually thought the SACD on the PD was, well, perfect. But the PD on redbook lost control of the lower mids, upper bass and vocals and sounded, for lack of a better adjective, squirmy or wormy and kind of hurt my ears. The contrast with the EMM showed the EMM's wonderful control of all sounds, with a balanced presentation that is just plain truthful-- not warm, not edgy, not syrupy, but still liquid, with very solid, well-articulated bass.
EMM just gives the music a great foundation. To repeat, it is very controlled (I think that factor appeared earlier here). The PD highs were a bit sweeter even on badly recorded discs. I think that is why I liked the PD SACD sound just a trifle better than EMM, but not enough to matter much.

So, call me addicted to the EMM take on things.
(I just wish the CDSD transport wasn't so noisy, but it varies with each disc. It's not just my CDSD, I've heard a few. The noise varies from sample to sample.)
But it's worth it to me for that wonderful sound.
I really love EMM...

Hi Rgs92. I too was a long time EMM fan. I just loved the clarity of the EMM units but they tended to be edgy in the highs. The SE version cured that to some extent. My last EMM gear was the DCC2 SE and CDSD SE like you have. I traded mine in for the Playback Designs player which I liked better because to me it still had the clariety but with more weight to the images making it a little more organic or less edgy on a wider variety of discs.

I don't understand your impressions of the upper bass/lower mids as I don't hear that at all. Maybe it's a matter of different associated equipment. I run mine throught an Ear 868 tubed preamp to Lamm 1.2 Ref. monos to Talon Firebirds with diamond tweeter. It's a very resolving system and the PD sounds wonderful in it. I also run an APL NWO4.0 SE direct to the Lamms which is also wonderful.

I would love to hear the XDS 1 in my system sometime.

Frank