Why is Sony Digital sound more like vinyl?

This is one of greatest post !!!
Base on my experience, so many of us are biased with name brand, and we can tell through reading this post.
If you come to a house/dealer... for an audition and without knowing namebrand of gears, how many of you can confidently distinguish SCD-XA777ES from others mentioned above ?????????

The industry has to sell gear...money makes the world go around last time I checked...and there is alot of tasty treats to be had but I say again..(I've owned most of the names mentioned or at least demo'd the others extensively at home)...the Sony sounds more natural or unhyped when carefully set up...the others make great initial demonstration gear because they grab your attention quickly!

The Sony draws you in unexpectadely upon extended listening...it is no way near perfect but it gets the essentials right..I didn't want to sell my $18k Levinson rig f or fun or the Wadia 861 or anything else...they just sounded wrong over time to the point I considered giving up this hobby!!!

Such an interesting thread. I continue to audition my new, (used) Sony XA777ES and the word that comes to mind is honesty. The dynamic range is very honest. When a solo violin plays, it's rather smallish, though when the orchestra roars, there's quite a bit of inertia behind the volume; the mark of a excellent CD player. Symphony practice just started up again and during pieces in which I don't play, I got a chance to sit in the hall and listen critically. It was, in fact, similar to Sony's presentation--at least the XA. There's no playing to the peanut gallery with the Sony--no hyper-realism--stings are in their place, bells sound like bells without splitting atoms, etc. I don't find the player harsh at all, though my Musical Fidelity A308 and Vandy 3a sigs are very friendly in that respect.

Jdaniel has the hall experience even more than I it appears and He understands a bit about what is special in the Sony XA presentation or rendering if you will. IMHO I believe the parallel DAC arrays remove the digital (subliminal at times) nature of even the redbook stuff more so than most other gear. The rest of the processing is also interesting and unique...24bitVC filter with 2.something Mhz processing power; add to that 8x oversampling (upsampling equivelent ala Mark Levinson) and a 1 bit downconversion scheme and you get something less digital sounding with few drawbacks...not that it can't be improved or beat..just that it amazes me that Sony has done it so well!!

Tqn999- You are wrong. These guys can, and have, heard the difference. Piano is especially good to A/B cd players, because we all know what it is supposed to sound like. I had a rega planet 2000, but I bought a Pioneer elite DVD and a french tubed DAC. Price- wise this combo was about 4 times the cost of the rega. It was obvious to both me and my wife that the rega was better. Trust me, Katherine has never read a review. Now I don't know a hoot about the sony's except what I have read. They are built well and sound great on SACDs- not surprising, considering who invented SACD. I have no doubt they'd be a good transport for a mod. Wonder why units sound different? check out http://www.modwright.com/ for all da bitchin' things you can do to these machines. While we're at it, here's a list of websites I have found to be handy. http://spazioinwind.libero.it/themagicsound/_private/links_home.htm