Sony SACD Owners: Anyone Use a DAC for Redbook?

While adding a very good DAC is a common practice, I tend to agree with Sean, as long as you're willing to forego the Sony warranty. As Aaronm points out, the Sony's analog stage is OK but not as good as the better DACs out there, and that's where you can reap a lot of benefits through mods. The big advantage to going this route is that you will also improve the SACD playback and get a much better picture of what makes that format so special compared to redbook. Your main problem is you've got 6 channels to upgrade, as opposed to the two in my modded SCD 777ES, but there are modifiers out there who can work on it.

The warranty on my ES9000 expires on Thanksgiving and you-all have inspired me into thinking about an internal mod upgrade. For the sake of this thread, could some of you list the available craftsmen who perform this work? -Along with their relative merit and cost? It will be interesting to compare the mod to my Philips 963 SA's 24/192 upsampling.
Thanks,
Ken

SCD1 with Kora hermes tube DAC... Huge soundstage and analog like sounding. love it!!!!

Ken: Check the AA Hi-Rez forums. The modifiers I know of are Stan Warren, Richard Kern, Dan Wright and Allen (?) Wright (one of the Wrights is a tube mod), and I'm sure there are others. There are various levels of mods and improvements from each of them, depending on how much you want to spend--I think Stan Warren's start in at a couple of hundred, and Kern's full monty can run $2500-3000 or so. My mod was done by Jerry Ozment of Audio Logic, who doesn't do them anymore, but after my latest transformer upgrade from him I'd say I have yet to hear any commercially available unit that sounds better than my 777ES on redbook, and SACD is absolutely stunning, easily better than the Accuphase and dCS SACD playback I've heard at my dealer (bear in mind I'm a big fan of the Audio Logic); I know people who have had the Kern upgrades feel the same way about their players.

This reminds me a lot of the early days of CD players, when various folks like Scott Nixon, Mod Squad, Musical Concepts and the like would modify and greatly improve stock Magnavox players, often doing their own brands based on the stock chasis (Magnavoxes were easy to work on because they had a lot of empty space inside them). Remember, everything available commercially is built to a price point, and therefore can be improved on; this is particularly true with the Sony players and players from other mass-market manufacturers. Nothing particularly wrong with them in stock form, but they can really shine with a good person upgrading the right parts in the signal path and power supplies. Elizabeth is absolutely correct about the warranties, though, and that is not a small consideration.