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SACD... can you hear the difference?

I'm fairly new to SACD as it's only been a month since I purchased my first player that takes advantage of the format. Some say even on a good system which is set up properly that they can not notice a difference between SACD and standard CD.

For example my Wife is a huge James Taylor fan. A couple weeks ago I found 2 original master recording SACD disks from a company called Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs. Both James Taylor just as she has on CD. I dialed them in perfect and OH MAN! To me the difference was like night and day, but she couldn't tell the difference in sound quality.

So either I'm imagining things or I'm able to pick up on musical pitch and clarity much better than her. I'm sure of what I'm hearing with no doubt, but she thinks I'm crazy.

Can anyone here notice how much better SACD sounds on their system verses a standard CD.
pigchild

Showing 2 responses by dbphd

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dbphd
1,632 posts
 
I use an Ayre C-5xeMP, Oppo BDP-105, and Sony XA5400ES as disc players. It seems to me that the difference between CDs and SACDs depends to an extent on the player. Both CDs and DSD can be excellent when played on the Ayre; DSD is far superior to CDs when played on the Sony, and pretty much equivalent to DSD played on the Ayre. Only the Oppo does analog surround, and DTS on Blu-ray is superb. I prefer either the Ayre or Sony for CDs and SACDs, and strongly prefer the Ayre for CDs.

For stereo, all three go through a Parasound JC-2 that feeds a Proceed HPA 3 that drives a pair of KEF Reference 107/2s.

db
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dbphd
1,632 posts
 
I think the best vinyl of small groups, e.g., the 45 RPM of the Brubeck Quartet's Time Out, sounds a bit better than DSD, but I'm not sure that extends to large orchestrations.

Thorens TD124, SME Series III arm, Ortofon SME 30H cartridge, Parasound JC-3 phono stage.

db
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