wadia making mistake?

hello all ,i must say some great answers on wadia and sacd. I fill that there is so much more that can be obtained through red book mode with more R/D that to put to much effort into sacd when this format is technically [dead in the water] is just a waste ... steve huntley must be doing something right or i believe his backing concerning his expertise in gnsc modifications would not even be an issue ... bombaywalla you hit the nail on the head concerning wadias step into sacd waters... thanks...

In my opinion SACD (hybrid) is going to be around for awhile and if a manufacturer wants to compete in the digital arena they need to offer it on their players; which is probably the case with Wadia. It has been my experience that SACD sounds superior to redbook in the majority of CD's that I own. And if available I always purchase the hybrid disc over the redbook only counterpart. As far as XRCD they are far to expensive to even consider me buying them as well as to limited in the selection available. And with HDCD not enough players available to play the format and limited material avaialability. I would never consider purchasing a player that could not play SACD's. But again this my preference and others have theirs.

Chuck

SACD can sound VERY good, but too many of the discs available are miserably average in recording quality and can barely compete with high-quality standard CDs. Just as bad, the prices for SACDs are typically far too high. This is why I gave up on the format.

BMR3HC - I own a GNSC modified 850. I did not hasve it modified, but had an unmodified 830 before. The modified 850 wasa significant improvement over the 830 in terms of bass extension, image depth and 3 dimensionality (the sounds popped out more, making the 830 sound flat by comparison, and a slight improvemnet in naturalness and harmonic resolution. I have no way of knowing, though, how much of the improvement was du to the mods and how much was due to the change from 830 to 850. Steve said that most of the improvement was due to the mods, and that the main difference between the 850 naqnd the 830 was the 850s ability to better differentiate musical aprts on complex musical pieces.

Bmr3hc: I had an 850, got it modified by GNSC, and liked it so much that I later committed to buying a GNSC 861. IMO the GNSC mod is worth the price. BTW, I've tried a couple of top Sony SACD players for home audition of this format, and I still like the Wadia Redbook sound better. Perhaps I just didn't hear the best that SACD playback can offer. It will be interesting to hear how Wadia does SACD.....