SACD vs RBCD players

new Denon DCD-SX SACD player

if this isn't hi-end I don't know what is ;-)

Thank you all for your input. After reading this thread through several times I've decided to go with an SACD player. The purpose of my prior post is simply to get some kind of an idea of how much SACD use I'm going to get out of the player.

In the case of John, above, only 10% of John's digital collection are SACD, so it could be said of John "that the number of SACDs [he] would listen to on a regular basis might not be that many", however they occupy a large 40% of his digital listening time. That sounds very promising to me.

Out of curiosity, I would be interested in hearing others usage habits.

I've owned several SACD and universal players, with the current incumbent being Unidisk. I've also found that the quality of redbook CD playback on universal players is subpar. That somewhat dictated my listening habit before, as I mainly collected and listened to SACD as much as I can. I have maybe one hundred SACDs, and used to be 70% SACD vs 30% redbook.

Recently I've played with outboard DAC, and other disk players of more recent design. As you probably know already the digital technology has advanced quite a bit in the last several years. I was surprised to find that the redbook playback on a modern disk player is actually quite good. With my new XA5400ES I hear a lot of detail on redbook CD. I'm going through my old redbook CD collection and finding the amount of detail and ambiance usually associated with SACD that I've never heard on redbook CD before.

I think the SACD has peaked in mid 2000 when the redbook CD playback technology hasn't reached the today's level. Many of the labels have dropped supporting SACD since. Today I still buy SACD whenever I can, if there is no comparable CD release, or it's not much more expensive than CD release. But I no longer purchase SACD exclusively any more. The usage is no longer biased towards SACD. I pop in whatever I want to listen to at the time, whether SACD or redbook.

I have not measured my listening time to analog-RBCD-SACD/DVD-A, but my impression is that my listening time is close to 50/50 analog-digital (about half the time, I want to listen without the interference of jumping up to lift the arm at the end of an LP side). Some of my digital listening, however, is DVD-V concerts. I have about 700 LPs, 200 RBCDs, 50 SACDs, 10 DVD-As and 12 DVD-V concerts. The concerts I watch maybe 5% of the time, and I don't have a clue how the rest of my digital time is divided among RBCD, SACD & DVD-A. But if I have the same album in both RBCD and hi-res disc, I always go for the hi-res. Vinyl still rules (it is always so much richer sounding), but digital is closing the gap.

I was contemplating keeping my Exemplar Denon 5910 universal player and replacing my Ayre C-5xe with an RBCD only player like the ARC CD 8 because I thought the Ayre and the Exemplar, while different, were pretty close and the Exemplar is wonderful with my DVD-V concerts as well as movies. But then I sent the C-5xe back to Ayre for upgrading to the MP, and now I like it too much to part with it.