Latest SACD News - Very Interesting.

Interesting.

Especially in that I've been thinking about the same eventuality. I remember what happened to LPs when CDs came out: shops found they could put much more inventory in less space, so gradually---and suddenly, in some cases---there were no more LPs. I imagine the record companies see the hybrids as a big cash cow to be slaughtered. Hybrids probably cost the same to make, but retail prices go up by 50-100%. Everyone makes out like a bandit, with the notable exception of the consumer, of course.

For this very reason, I've been considering the purchase of
one of the two Sony players (SCD-CE775 or SCD-DVP-500V) reviewed, favorably, in the current TAS. I say "favorably"
with reservations, since I get the feeling TAS is going the way of Stereophile: liking everything they review; or, perhaps, not reviewing anything they don't like (?), to the extent that the reader comes away from their reviews not really knowing what to think. At any rate, I've been wondering how SACDs played on either of these inexpensive players stack up against the CD layer played on my current combo of CEC TL-1X/Chord DAC-64. If I thought there would be some favorable comparison, I'd feel better about shelling out the additional price for hybrids.

It's hard for me to imagine that either of these players
in SACD mode can match my present CD playback, however,
even in view of that puzzling recent thread on the Forum about the SCD-DVP-500V being better than the SCD-1.

My present problem is the fact that, as stated by many people on the Forum, there's not much of interest to me on SACD, hybrid or otherwise. I enjoy almost exclusively classical, and even within classical, my tastes have narrowed to string quartets, piano trios, piano quartets, piano quintets, small chamber orchestras, etc., so I have difficulty finding new material available even on standard CDs, not to mention the very limited selection on SACD. I presently own three hybrids, and only one of those has any interest to me. The highly-touted Water Lily "Nature's Realm", with which R.E. Greene is so proud to have been involved, sounds like a mono recording to me, unless the speakers are repositioned in the weird configuration required by the Blunheim technique. Even then the sound is nothing to write home about, IMHO. The other one not worth hearing is the Vanguard "Plow That Broke the Plains"---a remastered Stokowski recording from ancient stereo history. The one that I do enjoy is on Hyperion---piano trios of Ravel/Debussy/Faure. Admittedly, I have only heard these in CD mode, but seriously doubt that the SACD layer would correct the deficiencies to which I object, namely the unorthodox mike technique of the Water Lily, and the tubby, laborious, stale sound of the Vanguard (I suppose I'm simply not a fan of anything remastered!).

The other alternative to buying a hybrid player now is to simply wait. Wait until there's more software available, and until player prices bottom out. Problem with this is that, if history repeats itself, prices for truly high end SACD players will start rising again, just as happened with CD players: who would ever have imagined that there would be CD players selling in five figures? Those $200 Yamahas
were supposed to be "as good as it gets", right? Perfect sound forever, for next to nothing. Then came upsampling, oversampling, jitter filtering, on and on.

I would be interested in reading of any other comparisons between high end CD players and these two inexpensive Sony SACD players.

Jim

Correction: I realized as soon as I posted the previous message that I should have said "Blumlein", not "Blunheim", in reference to the mike technique. Please excuse. (I suppose this was a symptom of my absolute lack of interest in, even my disdain for, this method of recording!)

Jim

The rotel 855 is very easy to listen to. I owned one and a later model that Bruce Armstrong[peak audio] did mods on. Then he tore the analogue section out of a Kenwood[handfuls of cheap parts, and completely rebuilt itthe way he thought it would sound most analogue. He actually did a lot of listening to changes he made [he sold 4 of them and built one for himself....they are all still working fine and are making good music to this day..the new gear is better but I'm waiting to see where all this lands. My nephew is still using my rotel 855 and he was surprised when his new panasonic dvd did not sound nearly as good on cds....maybe Bruce will mod a sacd player for me someday when I feel safe with their reliabilty.

Let me get this straight. Universal/Sony is going to produce all SACD's with only on pressing plant. Doesn't sound like they have the capacity to produce very many disc. And, in the mean time they are going to screw all those consumers with standard cd/dvd players. Sounds like suicide to me.

So, how many cd (dvd/cd) players have consumers purchased since cd became available? A hell of a lot more than 1 million units. Personally, I own 7 cd,dvd players (2 person household, including cdrom and car unit). So, universal is going to forget about all those hundreds of millions of cd players to concentrate on 1 million sacd players. Again, the numbers don't add up.

Universal is hoping to charge about $23 per disc. Key word is hoping. A bet anybody that those disc hit the shelves for $30-$40. So , let me get this straight; I go out and buy a $300 sacd/dvd/cd player and have to pay $30-$40 to buy one disc. In my professional opinion (27 years in the audio industry) a customer that comes in and buys a bargain cd/sacd player is not looking to spend even $23 on a cd. The only customers who buy bargain cd/dvd players fall into the "I don't care how it sounds-I just don't want to see it and make it easy to use crowd" commonly refered to as custom installation.

Finally, Sony says that they are committed to high quality audio. In the last 6 months I have purchased 4 cd's distributed by Sony that had nothing but MP3's on them. When I called to bitch at Sony they told me this is a way for them to control illegal copying. So, you put the CD label on a disc (which means that it has to conform to red book cd audio) and fill it with MP3's and pass it off as a real CD. Looks to me that Sony is really interested in quality audio. BTW Sony did replace them with real CD's.

Phillips has said they would no longer let anyone use that "CD" label on non-redbook CDs. There are some already out there has Prpixel notes.

I agree that 1 million is not a lot of SACD players (even 13 million). Since we all have different taste, no SACD is going platinum on billboard anytime soon. I count Ten CD players we own when you add in boomboxes, walkmans, and the cars; not even counting the computer's CD (2 more, plus work). And there are 290 million people in the USA alone. The number of CD/DVD players must be in the multiple billions worldwide.