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Importing SACD Players from Japan

I'm pretty handy with fixing up electronics. I have fixed up a lot of hifi equipment over the last year for friends/family and even did some refurbs to sell (mostly cassette decks). I've been in the market for an SACD/CD player over the last year and looked to Japan due to the prolific availability of good SACD players there compared to the US.
I ended up buying a high-end Denon unit in excellent condition that needed minor laser calibration for a fraction of what I could find in the US market. I used a third-party service that handles repackaging specifically to the US market. Anyone else out there look at Japanese auctions and such for deals on hifi equipment, especially SACD players due to the popularity there compared to the west.
128x128firenze
m-db's avatar
m-db
984 posts
 
I have a Denon/Modwright DVD 5900 that's not reading SACD's.
Is the calibration a difficult procedure?   
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
Importing SACD Players from Japan
Don't if you want to play RedBook as well, as SACD players are all Delta Sigma converters, which only give a facsimile of PCM Redbook 16/44 24/96 or DXD
Only R2R conversion gives true "bit perfect" reproduction of PCM RedBook.

Cheers George
firenze's avatar
firenze OP
12 posts
 
Hi Everyone, thought I'd give some more information on what I bought.

I ended up with a Denon DCD-1650AE player. Yes it is 100V only, but I have a step-down transformer that's very small up to 50W (player reports 24W). I ended up buying it for about $300 equivalent. On US ebay this exact model sells for about $1k.


This model is pretty high-quality and has separate output transformers for audio and circutry, which is nice. Also seems there are two DACs one each for DSD and CD.


@georgehifi - Decent point, but if I want I could use the digital out to my Ares II R2R for CDs too. I haven't done any listening tests back and forth but am going to soon! SACDs sound phenomenal so far.

I have a Denon/Modwright DVD 5900 that's not reading SACD's.
Is the calibration a difficult procedure?  
There is a calibration procedure, but it requires correct tools and some knowledge. The service manual in mine showed the points to attach an oscilloscope to to measure output levels and what the waveform should look like. In my case SACDs played fine, but some CDs did not. The laser assembly had two pots to adjust, one for the CD laser and one for the DVD laser used for SACDs. I adjusted the CD laser to get it to produce the voltage noted in the manual and it works just fine now! The only problem here is that increased power to the laser (as I adjusted) will reduce its life. I bought a spare laser assembly to keep on hand to replace if it breaks eventually.
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