I have the Sony and an EMM CDSA with the X upgrade, and although the Sony is competitive (which says a lot), the EMM does a lot better job of curing some of the digital evils, like the annoying glare of some lesser-quality CDs and even SACDs in the midrange (especially some vocals).
This makes the difference in many older CDs with music I love between being painful/unlistenable and being, well, just fine.
My intuition is that the EMM is playing skillfully with the digital processing in some kind of miraculous way, not just playing with frequency response or equalization.
The Sony and other players I have owned just don't seem to do this like EMM. Every CD I have tried with this EMM is free of fatal flaws, and some previously bad ones are now spectacular.
Having said that, on not-so-bad or even mediocre recordings, the Sony really does a great job of eliminating hardness, especially in the boundaries of images, which are silky and detailed, a very nice combination, and image saturation is great. Piano is very well handled in the Sony with impact and no annoying digital bite. And percussion is also great, also with impact and detail but again without hardness.
If the CD does not have an inherent "shout factor", which I feel is the one of the main problems of a number of CDs,
the Sony acquits itself very nicely. Instruments sound life size and just swing without piercing pain, and I get lost in the music. I think the images are even a bit bigger than the EMM, and I like that. And again, the overall signature is silkiness with evident but not overbearing impact.
Thanks for reading.
This makes the difference in many older CDs with music I love between being painful/unlistenable and being, well, just fine.
My intuition is that the EMM is playing skillfully with the digital processing in some kind of miraculous way, not just playing with frequency response or equalization.
The Sony and other players I have owned just don't seem to do this like EMM. Every CD I have tried with this EMM is free of fatal flaws, and some previously bad ones are now spectacular.
Having said that, on not-so-bad or even mediocre recordings, the Sony really does a great job of eliminating hardness, especially in the boundaries of images, which are silky and detailed, a very nice combination, and image saturation is great. Piano is very well handled in the Sony with impact and no annoying digital bite. And percussion is also great, also with impact and detail but again without hardness.
If the CD does not have an inherent "shout factor", which I feel is the one of the main problems of a number of CDs,
the Sony acquits itself very nicely. Instruments sound life size and just swing without piercing pain, and I get lost in the music. I think the images are even a bit bigger than the EMM, and I like that. And again, the overall signature is silkiness with evident but not overbearing impact.
Thanks for reading.