SACD/Redbook one-box solution?

not any stock players no.

My guess is that it takes BIG BUCKS to get the redbook performance of your CD-308 standard from a one box SACD/CD player.

I own a Cary CD-308 and I previously owned a Sony DVP-9000ES SACD/DVD/CD player. The Sony is regularly praised for its redbook performance, however, IMS the Sony was not even close to the Cary in overall performance. I even tryed using the Sony as a transport for redbook playback using a well reviewed DAC. Even in this setup, the Cary spanked the Sony/DAC setup.

Maybe a non-DVD based unit would be a better pick, but I don't know which one would get you there. Maybe the Accuphase, Shandling or Consonance, but I have not heard any of them.

Enjoy,

TIC

The Cary's are Philip's transport based, maybe the Philips 963SA would fill the bill, with upsampling to boot.

jeff

There have been a couple of players that were excellent in both sacd and redbook cd in the past: the classe and accuphase. I heard the musical fidelity tube sacd/cd player at he2003 and was very impressed. if you have $6000+ for a unit, there is nothing that comes close unless you listened to the 2 mentioned above for over twice the price. a new kid in town that does both sacd and sacd very good for little money if the philips dvd963sa. I have the sony 9000es and have listened to the scd-1, 777es, the marantz sa-1 and model 14 sacd/cd players, and the new philips sounds much better in redbook cd playback than any of these mentioned players and does a very good job at sacd also, all for $500.

I agree with Rbstehno on the MF Tri-Vista and the new Accuphase 77. I did not think that the Phillips beat my Sony 777ES in redbook playback in my system anyway.