SACD or not

All the great and informative posts.

When it comes to buying used, remember that all these CD/SACD drives may fail after a certain number of hours played. Of course, anything can fail, but drives are a weak spot here.

If thinking of buying used, take a peek at SONY SCD-XA5400ES. It is a bit old and it still holds the price unusually high, but it may be for a reason. I have never compared it to any of the players mentioned in earlier posts, but it is a good one. There is one on US Audio Mart right now for $1100. (I am not affiliated with the seller in any way, just noticed the ad.)

Another vote for Marantz, I own the SA-KI Ruby SACD player for 2 channel and the UD7006 for HT/SACD multi-channel and DVD-Audio, I couldn't be happier.  

If you are interested in classical on SACD, jump right in. If not, do some research before you buy a player.

SACDs are more expensive than cds or hi-res streaming. You’re going to pay at least $20 for each SACD, most are $30 and up, and $50 and up for Japanese and out-of-print SACDs.

Selection is pretty limited. Mofi and AP put out a handful of SACDs a year and often those are delayed for a year to several years after an original release date is set. 

At this point, I recommend paying a few hundred dollars for a streamer and $15 to $20 a month for all the hi-res files you can stream or get a really good CD player and lots of currently very cheap CDs. You’ll have a much greater selection and sound that is as good as or better than SACD in many cases.

The best digital sound i have heard has been on SACD. 

Redbook standard is 16/44.1. What is hi-res Redbook??

Thing like the cd’s from the "Reference Recording" label, which is 25/96 redbook pcm also DXD.
And they do sound superb, if you have an R2R multibit dac that can do up to 24/96 decoding,
eg: any dac with PCM1704 nearly all discrete R2R multibit dacs like my MSB. Holo, Denafrips, ect ect

Cheers George