Anyone has heard the Sony SACD Player

Yes. Very relaxed natural sound more like live music. But certainly not as dramatic difference as between cassette and cd was. Better than cd but not worth 5000.00. Honestly I must say that I have heard some cd players that were far behind the sony. My audio dealer who has been in the business 30 years felt the same.

This player when hooked up to top quality gear produces the closest thing to real I've ever heard. If this doesn''t revolutionize hi end audio nothing will. There ae cheaper players coming soon. Hopefully SACD will in fact become a standard. There is real danger it will go the route of Beta for those of you old enuf to remember that.

To be perfectly honest, I was not all that impressed with the new SACD format. I mean, like Spicy said, there was a noticeable difference, but not THAT noticeable to justify the cost. I've yet to hear anything that melts my room with warmth and "live" -ness like a good recording on vinyl does. For those not willing (as I once was) to cross back in time into the world of vinyl, I would recommend purchasing one of Rotel's single-disk CD Players utilizing the new HDCD decoding. Much cheaper in price as compared to the Sony SACD Player.

What´s the price for the new SACD players and SACD disks? Thanks, Hasse

I have found that it always comes down the recording quality being far, far more important than the digital technology being used. The Sony SACD did sound better than most players to me, but I have plenty of 16/44 recordings that absolutely blow away the sound of the new 24/96 recordings available so far.