Is there an SACD that can play cds well?

I find it funny that no one has mentioned the relatively dismal quality of the Sony SCD-1's analogue output stage. Compared with the rest of the player, the components used for this stage are surprisingly pedestrian. I have the Marantz SA-1, because I felt it had slightly more transparency and tonal accuracy compared to the SCD-1, but a friend had his SCD-1's analogue output stage replaced with high grade components and I don't think I've ever heard anything sound so real.

Globalquest...

For the good of the order, could you mention who did the upgrade of your friends SCD-1? I have heard from other sources that such an upgrade does, indeed, improve CD playback.

Now both of you have me interested, I just hope you are not going to tell me that the upgrade cost more than the original price of the player.

My friend lives in London and he had the work done by a company called audiocom (www.audiocom-uk.com), which is a company founded by former Trichord people. . It isn't expensive just to replace the analogue stage (my friend paid $500 I think), but apparently even an SCD-1 can use some component upgrades to make it sound better, although the gains in performance are subtle compared to the analogue stage upgrade.

Albert, since you expressed an interest, there are some additional upgrades around to improve the analog stages of these players which have been discussed in various threads-- Stan Warren does some for the 9000ES which Simontju had done (not sure if his player is back yet), and Jerry Ozment has a mod where he bypasses the Sony's analog stage completely and attaches a box to the side with his Audio Logic tubed analog stage (separate power supply for the analog stage as well), which I have had done to my 777ES and think is superb, but costs about $1450 these days, probably more than you paid for the 9000ES. I'm sure there are others available as well. If you don't care about voiding the warranty, there is probably plenty of room for improvement in the analog stages and power supplies of these units. The nice thing is, as is evident from the posts, even in stock form Sony appears to have come up with a decent sounding product.