Stereo SACD vs. digital

Are you sure your listening to the SACD layer? If the SACD layer is selected, you will not get any output from the digital out on the Sony, therefore, no sound from the digital in on the Proceed.

I read this post differntly.

"I can select analog pass-through or digital processing from the remote."

This seems to me to be only an option on an analog input. Witch would of course mean that the Sony could be playing the DSD layer.

Most good pre/pro's have the ability to do an analog pass thru (read as an all analog path) or a analog path that runs thru dsp's.

Older units refer to the analog pass thru as "stereo direct or tone defeat.

The reason for this is there is no bass management for DSD. If you want to implicate bass management you most convert to pcm and run the dsp's, hence the option for digital processing. This is also true for bass management inside of the player. (if you use base management on sacd, somewher ds has to become pcm)

The problem you have here is the proceed. You are used to the sound of the dsp proceed. When you switch to the analog pass thru you are now relying on the anlog pre-amp in the proceed only. Something they were never very good at.

The bottom line is that only digital data is on the disk, and it needs to go through digital to analog conversion at some point. SACD predisposes that conversion be at the SACD player. Except for very high-end players, I suspect the DACs in a good processor are superior.

db