Beyond SACD with Redbook: Price No Object

As I said on the other thread, I believe that SACD is clearly better. This is not to say that you can't get good sound out of CD, but you have to use the interpolation methods of upsampling to "enhance" the sound with mathematical "fill ins" that were not recorded on the disc. It is much better to actually have the music info recorded from the performance or master recording, than to have to try to play "connect the dots" with an interpolation program. Of course, I know that many CD proponents on the other thread do not agree with my statements. They prefer "fill-ins, connect the dots, and interpolation programs". And if that's what they like, then that's fine for them. It's not fine for me, but can be acceptable if there is no alternative. Gladly, there are alternatives, and SACD is one of them. I guess I'm just one of those "wierdos from outer space" who believes that you can't improve the sound recorded on the source, you can only change it or degrade it on the way down the chain. This seems to be accepted practice on the analog page, but on the digital page, people seem to think that you can wave the "digital magic wand" and improve the source material. I don't buy this idea at all, if the goal is realistic reproduction of the original material. If the goal is to "airbrush" the sound like a Vargas Girl illustration, then maybe this is the answer. Not for me. If I want to play digital recordings, give me the most music info on the source disc possible. Don't sell me a $6000 airbrush in the form of upsampling DAC or other voodoo. I know this view is not popular, but it needs to be said by someone.

Good grief Twl, your post makes WAY too much sense. There is bound to be a fight break out any minute now.

For what it is worth, I do not doubt that the comments from A Sanctuary of Sound are honest and correct. Ultimately each of us must decide if the limited bandwidth of Redbook CD's are worthy of a 10K band aid.

I decided on the Sony ES 9000 SACD player because it has great Redbook playback and EXCELLENT SACD.

At it's current street price, this unit is worth buying for it's DVD playback alone.

The consensus is AudioNote DAC 5 and CEC TX0 transport

Note: I have tried Hybrid SACD/CD's and these disks have such a good redbook CD layer that the SACD layer doesn't seem to be all that much better - at least in terms of early pressings of CD's vs. those remastered to SACD. Has anyone else noticed this?

I can only speak from my experiences. I owned the Marantz SA-1 (after a brief comparison against the SCD-1) and purchased a couple dozen SACD discs with the intention of finally eliminating the need for my Goldmund separates. WRONG!
Though the price differential is substantial, the best redbook equipment is better, and by a noticeable margin compared to the relatively recent SACD playback equipment. Then I compared the SA-1 against the EMC-1 (without the 24/192 board), the redbook player again was preferrable.

I wanted SACD to be better. Maybe someday SACD/DVD-A will fulfill its promise (if it/they survives), but until then ....
Just one man's opinion.

What has always puzzled me, is many SACDs are remixes of old recordings; some dating back to the 1940s and 1950s. The original source can't be up to modern recording media, so are we really hearing the original recording, or has someone like George Lucas played with it, and what we hear is a perfect fake?? Just wondering?