SACD/CD Drive Mechanism Replacement

Don I have two good analog set up as well.I fell in love with vynil. But sacd with good sacp player is very close. I play sacd when I like convenience.Nowadays is the best time to collect sacd there is so much to choose from.

You can buy Ruby marantz open box at Music Direct and see if you have a tech who can install the lens just in case. The parts is available . If your player broke under warranty MD more like replace it. Because Marantz has horrible support when your player is out of warranty.The Ruby is equal to my SA10 in rca mode. They only differ on xlr.

I found what the Joseph Audio/Doshi room was using at the AXPONA shows for their digital streaming....

• Aurender N30A 8TB Music Server $25,000
• Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC Reference 3 $28,000
• Berkeley Audio Design Alpha USB $2,275

For that kind of money, it darn well sound pretty good, am I right??? Well, it did and it impressed the heck out of me!

So, my initial thought was to buy a very nice, but used SACD/CD player so that I could take advantage of my admittedly small cd collection of roughly 100 cd's.  I would then slowly but surely add to that as well as begin my SACD collecting.  It's good to hear that "now" is the best time to start collecting SACD's.

However, if I go the route of streaming, then I can't use my existing CD's, but it would eliminate the worry of a transport mechanism dying.  I just don't understand how the process of streaming works, etc.  I guess I'm showing my age, lol!

I guess another thought would be to get the used SACD/CD player and when the transport finally dies, then get a streamer and plug it into the DAC section of the player via USB, AES/EBU, Coaxial, or TOS Inputs.

Best wishes,

Don

Streaming is just like analog… the more you invest the better it sounds (subject to choosing wisely). Analog and digital sound and cost the same on my system. That can be accomplished at different price levels. See my systems.

A SACD player is a one box: transport, streamer (dedicated to the transport) and a DAC.

To stream, you need a Streamer and DAC. I own and recommend Aurrender streamers The lowest level sounds great and each higher tier sounds better. I have their flagship (recently discontinued, W20SE) and have had the Berkely DAC of which you heard… although surprisingly I prefer the sound of the Audio Research Reference DAC 9.

Once you have equivalent sound quality on streaming your world of music will change. Suddenly your library has over ten million albums. On Qobuz over half a million are high resolution. The world of music opens up. I have a collection of 2,000 albums and a great $45K analog end that I never listen to now.

I have a relatively inexpensive Denon DCD-1700NE sacd player.  For around $1500, I think it's a really nice sounding player.  I only have a few sacd, but a ton of cds that I've collected over the years.

I had been playing cds almost exclusively, but I recently purchased an Innuous Zen Mk3 streamer.  It's not their top model, but it does pretty well when fed into my Gustard R26 dac (via a U18).  It has a cd drive built into it that can be used to rip really good copies of cds to it's internal storage.  I didn't buy it for that feature, but I now find it pretty useful. 

I have a Marantz TT-15S1 turntable with a Hana ML moving cartridge and Sutherland TZ Vibe phono stage.  Not super high end, but it sounds nice.  I don't use it a lot because streaming is so convenient and I'm discovering a lot of new music through streaming (Qobuz).