mcintosh MT10 turntable good or not.

When you're right, you're right John. I geuss I just wanted to see the SACD side of thing even though I'm sure a didn't give it a good test (not a great Player) but I just didn't want a reason to start buying another kind of cd now with the records and all. It seems a lot of the titles I see on SACD, I also see on LP.

Well, IMHO, SACD is a superior format compared to redbook, in general. Sure, I have heard some very well mastered redbook cd's, and a few poorly done SACD's. However, with a good copy of each, I find the SACD to sound closer to vinyl than redbook. I know I should never say never, but I can't see myself ever owning a redbook only cd player again. Yes, I know SACD is a dying format, but there are currently over 5000 titles and still more being made, though mostly in classical and jazz. Jazz happens to be my favorite genre though.

FWIW, redbook cd also appears to be a dying format. Maybe my next player will be a music server....no discs at all....

Cheers,
John

John, I listened to a music server and a good one I think. I also listened to the same Cd on the same system at same volume and the disc sounded better than the server. These just happened to be in the same cabinet togeter and I asked the store to let me hear the difference and they did. Ofcoarse they were pleasantly suprised that there was infact a difference although you wouldn't probably notice unless you tested that way. They were trying to get me to buy the server but after that I decided to buy the classe cdp202. (not the cd player used in this test) All cd's were put into this server with lostless download but its definately different.

John, also forgot to mention. I have a couple of xrcd's from music direct and I find them very nice even in my rotel player. Have you tryed these at all?

I'm not surprised at you findings regarding the disc sounding better than the server, much downloaded music is highly compressed at a lower bit rate. I still think the people will win, and downloaded music is much cheaper than buying and storing cd's. My wife would love to have a two walls back that are occupied with software. She knows she's not getting the LP wall back, but I can see the gleam in her eye about that cd wall.......in fact she just asked me nicely if I could go through my cd collection and clean out 'some that I haven't listened too for a few years'. Her point is I have 4 large storage cabinets that were starting to overflow. I did clean out about 100 cd's, enough to clear up the overflow/clutter. Now I just have to decide what to do with 'em. I don't even know if anyone buys used cd's anymore....

Yes, I have a few XRCD's, they are pretty good, but overpriced. If I recall correctly XRCD's were priced higher than SACD, and are not quite as good as SACD, IMHO.