SCD-1 can be purchased at 2850 new.

Steve (Siddh)-had compared the two SACD players for about a month before I made the purchase of the Marantz SA-1 over the Sony SCD-1. i have a personal friend that I do legal work for who's a Sony & Marantz dealer. Both machines were A & B in my system and the Marantz won flat out in head to head performance.
The Marantz regular CD playback is smooth and sweet sounding. Not bright or edgy like I heard in the Sony player. The Marantz SADCD playback is just incredible. It blew my $10K Wadia two piece front end (which I sold already).
Melhsu, I had many different and more expensive digital gear in my day. The Krell MD-10 & 64X. The Levinson 30 & 31 combo. The Wadia latest two piece setup. All very nice and excited when first installed in my system. But this Marantz...blows away the competition. Like I said before this Marantz for a retail of $7500 and average street price is $5500. It's worth every penny and you will definitely not need an outboard dac. I do not work for Marantz, just want to tell the Audiogon members on the good products. Marantz is the best of analogue sound in a digital box.
Happy listening.

Topkat, do you mean your Marantz SA-1 blew away your Wadia on both SACD and CD, or just SACD only ? Please clarify. Thanks.

Yes the Marantz is great, but be aware that it's just been discontinued. May find better prices than the $5500. I'm also not sure how long Sony will be selling the SCD-1. Sony appears to be going multichannel with all their SACD players. First the SCD-777 was discontinued and now I understand the SCD-333 will soon go. In the U.S., that leaves only the SCD-1 and the S9000ES DVD/CD/SACD as Sony's only stereo only SACD player. Soon people will be scrambling for SCD-1s, like they are 777's right now.

Tommart, that is true the Marantz SA-1 is discontinued in production. That was there statement piece, and believe it or not -Japanese companies don't make any money with these type of pieces. It's all for show, and this is what we can do , is there attitude. Early in my career I was a house counselor for a large Japanese company.

So buy them while you can, before they are all gone. There were only 250 pieces brought in to the USA.

Yes. The Marantz SA-1 sounds better than my Wadia in regular CD playback. And in SACD playback , the Marantz is in another world of quality playback of music.

I concur with Topkat. SA-1 is indeed better than SCD-1 in just about every aspect. Most of all, SA-1 simply sounded more natural than SCD-1.

The going price for a used SA-1 should be less than $4K. It is a steal at at that price since its redbook CD playback will rival most high end two pc equipment without feeling shameful. The SACD, in addition, will blow you away. I've A/B the Bruno Walter Beethovan 6 against the original Columbia release and a 1984 SONY 180gm re-issue, the SACD has far greater detail and bass definition (my analog frontend is TNT5/JMW12/Helikon) and won easily. The only concern of mine is, will SACD die like XRCD because it is too expensive with too few vendor supports?