What differences should I be hearing as my new system breaks in?

skyscraper,

DSD is closely associated with SACDs. For simplicity, you could think of it as SACD equals DSD although it is not quite like that. Your Marantz player will play/decode SACDs just like it plays/decodes CDs and you have nothing to think about there. DSD, as the name of the file (it is actually .dsf, or .dff, but do not bother yourself with that) becomes important if you have such a file and you want to play it through some DAC (digital-analog converter). If you ripped a SACD and wanted to play it as a file, and not as a physical rotating disc, you would end up with DSD form of it.

Your Marantz SA-8005 can actually be used as a DAC only and it does support/play DSD files (2.8 and 5.6 MHz). It opens a world of possibilities for trying and time wasting. To do that, you need a DSD file and to figure out how to do it which should not be too complicated. If you are willing to dip your toes in that, I believe that those two albums we have been talking about exist as DSD downloads on some of the "high definition" websites/stores.

If you have not heard your Marantz play SACDs yet, I would like to urge you to try it soon. It is usually quite a difference from a regular CD. You will have to decide if it is big and worthwhile difference, but it is definitely worth trying.

You have to make sure it is set to read SACD layer of the disc. Some players can be adjusted to preference so yours may be a regular CD layer which would be missing a point. Page 30 of the manual explains what to do...

https://www.us.marantz.com/us/products/pages/ProductDetails.aspx?CatId=hificomponents&ProductId=...

Glupson, thanks for the explanation and the link.  I'll read through the explanation on how to play the SACD on the Marantz link you provided. Am I to understand the DSD material is not sold in a disc format, but only as a file download?  I'd like to try out a SACD. At the time I bought the Marantz it appeared  the only content available in SACD  was primarily classical music, and pricey at that, so I never bothered with it.  

If I recall correctly from when setting it up, I think I use the DAC portion of the CD player to play the audio content coming from my Samsung Smart TV. I've yet to reconnect that since I moved all my equipment, so you've reminded me to get that done.

Millercarbon, Thanks for your time in writing that long explanation. After reading though your post twice, I will have to study your explanations some more and learn from them. 

Mike

You have a turntable. Right. Get the harvest version of Pink Floyd. Music Direct sells a very good vinyl Pink Cloyd for about 50 bucks. Is it as good as my 7.95 harvest  no! But close. Read reports   It is best test record in existence. Few months back I was in Walgreens. An audio magazine caught my eye. ( 500 records to die for ) No 1? Harvest Pink Floyd. Sorry but I do not want to part with my two sealed ones. Tea for the Tillerman has great midrange and base. 

Jepatey, I do have a number of earlier Pink Floyd albums on Harvest. I’m giving Obscured by Clouds a listen right now. I unfortunately might have given my brother the original Harvest Dark Side of the Moon when I thought I was upgrading to the original Mobile Fidelity version back then. Next time I’m up on Long Island visiting I’ll have to rummage through his stuff. It’s probably long gone though.

By coincidence I just happened to receive the new Music Direct Summer 2019 catalog in the mail a few minutes ago. I’ll take a look through it to see what Pink Floyd material they have in it. Their asking prices for vinyl records are always appalling though. I purchased most of my 1960’s and 70’s rock albums for $4 when they first came out. Since these companies use their old masters to press new vinyl their cost can’t be more than a few pennies per copy.

Mike

Skyscraper:

 Thus far some records or CD’s sound very different form what I’ve been used to listening to over the years. ...

 Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon on Mobile Fidelity sounded like a muddy mess and super crackly to boot, although an almost brand new pressing. ...

Paul Desmond’s alto sax practically jumped out of the speakers on the Brubeck’s Take Five album, which had previously left me non-plussed, but now was quite enjoyable. ...

Okay so here's the thing, or my view on it anyway: what you are shooting for is not a system that sounds any way in particular, but a system that sounds like nothing at all. The perfect system has no sound of its own. It disappears. If perfect it would literally disappear. But we will settle for when you turn the lights off and the music on then all you have is the music.

When that is the case then yes sorry to say but you will sometimes find yourself playing recordings that used to sound great and ought to sound great but instead sound like crap. There's a lot that goes into this and its not an easy thing to understand so let me try and explain.

DSOTM, I have four or five copies (just of the LP). One original issue from about 1972, two MoFi reissues, one remastered reissue. I pulled the virtually brand new and supposedly audiophile reissue out recently. Even though I hadn't played DSOTM in years it was immediately obvious this version was crap. Absolute crap. Congealed, smothered, obnoxiously hard edged flat yet grainy crap. Could only stand a few minutes. Pulled out the others to compare. The original was much more open, detailed and dynamic. The MoFi (both of them) were close to the original, with just a hair of presence smoothed off, enough that a lot would probably prefer it as more quiet if they never heard them side by side.

In this case it would seem the crap reissue was ruined in mastering, while MoFi probably just did better mastering and took more care in the pressing, yet even with all of that still didn't quite match the original. 

Listen to all of these however and then put on the Brubeck. Which is a whole different story. Both have some pretty fine sax, but the Brubeck is far more viscerally present and there in the room. In fact the difference is much more than that. Its more like when playing that recording the whole room is different. Your room is the same. But the room you hear is different. As your system gets better you will better appreciate what I'm talking about. But listen, you should be able to get some sense of it even now.

This is the goal and the better your system gets the bigger the difference you will hear between recordings, and even between different pressings of the same recording. 

A friend listening to Terry Evans Putting it Down one time said he thought one track sounded better than another. We looked and sure enough, that one track had been recorded live to two-track. The others were mixdowns. So even that small a difference can be heard- when your system is good enough to reveal that small a difference.

The usual metaphor is one of looking through a lot of panes of glass. The amp is one pane of glass, speakers another, and it turns out there's a lot of em, everything from the power cords right down to the individual diodes and caps is a pane of glass. Some panes are thick, some thin, some clear, some colored, some flat, some curved and distorted, some cracked, chipped, smoked, etched, clean, dirty, on and on.

The goal with upgrades is pull out the etched glass replace it with clear. Only thing, turns out there is no clear glass. Even if it is, guess what? Its still glass! What you want is no glass, not even air- no such thing.

Right now you got a much cleaner window than you had before. Looking out, some scenes look dramatically better. Others, like your DSOTM, you can't understand why they look worse. Because they were ugly to begin with. You just didn't know it, looking at it through your beer goggles, as it were. Now though when you do find a really good pressing- magic. Gonna sound better than you ever imagined.

That's the way it is. Sometimes your system getting better will make some recordings sound worse. Oh well. Other recordings though.... buried treasure.