Should I buy SACD's or Buy Quality Multi-Format CD player and use Old Digital CD's?

I have never found sacd's to sound better than redbook, and I have a Sony 5400ES. 99% of the time I stream from Tidal, the sound is great with over a million albums. and lots of MQA files, over 3000. They only list 500 but there are way more
Alan

Alan, really??  I find this amazing as to my ears SACD and DVD-A are several order of magnitudes better than redbook.

The problem with that observation is that SACD masterings are rarely the same as those for RedBook. I have a BD recording of Strawinsky ballets by Gergiev and the sound is indeed spectacular. Is that due to the HD format, or to the mastering that maintains the full dynamic range? The only way to decide this is to downsample the SACD recording to 16/44 and see if it sounds the same as the SACD, or not. There have been some efforts to do this under controlled conditions, and the results indicate that the 16/44 sounded just as good. But we need more experiments.

Both the Esoteric DV-50S or Krell SACD Standard Mk III can be found for under $1,500 and represent terrific performance for their cost.