An SACD question

hi dvb:

you made an interesting comment about the sacd medium, when you mentioned "all things being equal".

do you therefore acknowledge that given the population of sacd players, it may be possible to achieve better sound from the hybrid layer when using a particular redbook player or dac/transport combination ?

for example, my favorite cd playing device is the original zanden dac.

it may be possible that the zanden, with a suitable transport could produce better sound than an sacd disc with an sacd player.

i realize "better" is subjective, but perhaps, some redbook digital hardware can exceed the quality obtainable from an sacd disc.

I still buy them but wish the price would come down. I purchased a few from BMG music club before it closed for about $6 each. I assume BMG was not taking a huge loss on them so why do they usually cost $25 and up?

I've found quality of SACD's to be variable on much popular material. Enough so that I don't go out of my way to seek them out for anything but classical music. However, classical releases tend to have good to excellent recording engineering and clearly show the the benefits of SACD technology. Thankfully, SACD seems to be alive and well in the classical music market and I'll keep buying them as long as the medium remains viable.

I find I am buying a lot less of them since AudiogoN eliminated it's dedicated SACD section of the classifieds.

I own about 500 sacds and now have some on my music server in dsd. Getting this is a rather cumbersome process but is wonderful. It is like hearing master tapes. It also takes lots of space. I have a two Tb raid system, so this is no real problem.

I as yet have no 192/24 pcm download to compare with the dsd, but I have Diana Krall albums in both formats. The dsd is superior, even though the master tape was probably 192/24. I also have several direct to dsd from analog master tapes that are outstanding.

You can load dsd files to Itunes using Pure Music.