SACD

@krell_fan1 "I am in the camp that is in disbelief that anyone could NOT affirm that a well produced SACD doesn't sound sound SIGNIFICANTLY better than it's CD counterpart."

I share your opinion.

My best friend is a musician, does a lot of recording and production, and skirts with the idea of becoming an audiophile.  He often tells me about how the conversion down to 16/44 is like driving on a smooth as silk superhighway, and turning off onto a dirt road.  He considers it the most depressing part of his work.

Several years ago, he wanted to hear a piece he found in my collection.  I told him it was an SACD, and we talked for a few minutes about it.  Like so many outside this world, he asked a technical / spec question, as that's what they focus on, "How many bits?"  I answered, "1 bit."  The look of scorn on his face was something I wish I captured.  Anyway, I told him Philips and Sony introduced SACD to replace the CD, with the goal of better replicating the music's analog waveform.  The spec of a sampling rate 64X higher still didn't impress him.  Anyway, pop the disc in, begin playing, and within a second or three the look on his face became just as priceless as the previous one.  For the next year or so, he kept talking to me about the absurdity of this format never taking off, no one even hearing about it, and how massive a sonic improvement it represented as he heard it himself

Good morning all.  I'll start with a simple truth:  the more "revealing" in nature your rig, the more noticeable the sound difference will be between formats; via items such as quality of the source component; slew rate of amp; neutrality of interconnects, transparency of wires, and finally, SPEED of speaker drivers.  There are many highly regarded speakers and amps that do not give huge detail, which makes them 'forgiving'. I own and have bought a good number of albums in all formats for the very specific purpose of carefully comparing the difference. And I refer back to them now and again, sometimes just to enjoy the strength of a particular format.   In almost every case, taking all the elements of music/sound into consideration, that we out here discuss, I find SACD ultimately to be superior on the whole.  As a caveot to that, I do find that Sacd hybrids suffer huge variances in quality, and relegate to reviews before purchasing them anymore.  Blu ray Audio has its strengths, but I find many of the recordingsvto sound thin in comparison to sacd, especially in surround mode.  My Rig: Oppo UDP205, Silnote M1 Orion XLR, , Parasound Halo JC1, Audio Magic Liquid Air (mid/tweeters) w/ Analysis Plus Black 8 (woofers), Paradigm Tribute 30th Anniversary with Paradigm Signature V3 surrounds via Parasound Halo A51, Silnote Poseidon II and Morpheus II Ser II RCA interconnects, and a combination of MIT 3 and Jenvings Supra 3.4S Wires, with Paradigm SUB 15.

Hello, and I too am sorry for your loss. Funny, we say that for a death in the family, but somehow the loss of a good hifi system can be very painful. I also agree that it's certainly worth buying a SACD player, but no one has mentioned Marantz and their players are exceptional for the money. I own an older DV 6500, which is a cd/dvd SACD player. It was well known, originally, that the DAC of the SACD player has to be of higher quality and bits so as to take advantage of the surround processing engineering in the SACD. So, even normal cds and dvds have a better timber or lack of instrument coloration (especially stringed instruments such as piano, acoustic guitar, etc.) and sound better than a plain cd/dvd player. It is true that this is why we own good analogue, as in turntable. So, having said all of this, if I were you I would focus upon a good turntable and vinyl, while getting a cd/dvd player that accepts SACD as secondary, for movies and music.

Sorry for your loss. Like other comments read, it depends on the SACD. Sound quality varies depending on how they were made just like cd's, but the good ones are excellent. As far as XRCD, I always found them too bright and unlistenable, but that's to my ears. I know some people like them. I have an OPPO 105 which is to me is an affordable way to listen to any format. A really good CD player can better the OPPO on some CDs, but then you loose the versatility.