I thought the 963 to be a lightly polished turd sonically. No bass, lacks prat, upsampling was gimmicky and synthetic sounding, build quality not something I could live with. Great for the $360? Sure, nothing to brag about in the grand scheme of things, however. The SACD1000 isn't a gem either, redbook can be summed up in one word: Blah. Very uninvolving, boring, even in my system although SACD was much, much better. I would give both machines a C+ rating. SACD/CD machines from Marantz I feel walk all over the Philips and Sony offerings on all fronts. It stumps me that people get excited about products from sony and philips when a company like Marantz is making machines that are of consistent higher quality yet never get any press for whatever reason.
If you have to have a DVD/SACD/CD player with a focus on 2ch music, go for a Sony 9000ES with an external dac, it makes a much better transport then the 999es, and from the horses mouth, is a better transport then the PS Audio Lambda dedicated transports. Just my experience, others experiences clearly vary....
If you have to have a DVD/SACD/CD player with a focus on 2ch music, go for a Sony 9000ES with an external dac, it makes a much better transport then the 999es, and from the horses mouth, is a better transport then the PS Audio Lambda dedicated transports. Just my experience, others experiences clearly vary....