CD v. SACD

Nrchy, I wouldn't say CD cannot sound good, you may just not have heard it on a great CD player. We all have our opinions here, but I would not hestitate to put the a good CD player against your SACD player; I have owned the Sony SCD-1 player, it is a good player, but I am now using the EMC1-UP and there is no comparison. I want it clear that I am not bashing SACD, just making an observation.

I am not saying SACD VS Redbook VS DVD A audio.
What I am stating is that SONY ES777 is not a good redbook player and that a decent redbook player does red book better than any Sony SACD.
Nrchy Bound For Sound does not take 1 cent of Adverising money in. They do not make a magazine that for every page of add revenue it gets you get 1 page of content.
There is no bias and many MFGS wont send gear to BFS because they will poo poo bad gear.

Point is SONY make horrible sounding REDBOOK players that need 1K + of mods to sound good as red book players.

There is so much need for this service that there are a half dozen if not more companies out there who make a living out of moding Sony Gear.

Thats the point not SACD sound VS CD VS DVD A.

Brianmgrarcom
you hit it right on Nrchy thinks the SONY ES777 is a decent redbook player Its not Its got a Brutal Analog stage which requires a 1K plus mod to sound good.

If he where to listen to a real Cd Player
EMC-1
BAT-VK-5
Rega Jupiter and a Planet 2000
Musical Fidelity Nu vista or even an A3CD
Anything from Linn or NAIM

Then he might know what redbook is capable of.

I have missed 20 other player that smoke the ES777 as a REDBOOK player.

+ all the DAC's that are available.

Natalie, I certainly don't want to be in the argument between the two of you, but a further clarification; my reply to Nrchy was the fact that he believes that CD cannot sound good, I disagree and when I say it was no comparison when I switched from the SCD-1 to the EMC1-UP, I was including SACD on the Sony.

SONY's CD players (most of them) can sound bright. But there are not always bad things about SONY. Higher end SONY's transport actually last pretty long time in my experience. Therefore, I am confident in mod on a good SONY CD or DVD player. Because the transport is unlikely to die young!

Among my friends, I notice that SONY and PIONEER's high end DVD players usually have less problem of skipping marginal quality DVD or CD. This is a good sign for tracking and accurate reading of digital signals on disks. I have to agree that those mass production company invested enough to make sure these things work well.

Small company did lots of work on analog part, I think, that's why their output driver is usually better than mass production ones. There is not much room (money & technology) to develop a new digital processing format for a small company. DAC chips, everbody can buy better one when newer/better design come out, if you have $$.

For XA777ES, it is a quite warm sound player (unlike most of SONY). IMHO rega planar is not better this one (others can't comment, never compare them). Other good redbook players mentioned previously probably cost about the same as a high end SONY anyway. There is no excuse if they sound bad on their specialty: redbook. Eventually, small company will come out good SACD player if SACD do succeed. But you need big companies to drive DSP technology and market for their own profit and for serious audiophiles too.

Who else on this site once say "If you give up on SACD, then they will do MP3 for bigger market". Then later, you will hear some guys claim their MP3 player sounds better than mega $$ CD player. That would be a big mistake for audiophile.

From LP to CD, dynamic range is compressed, SACD pulled back to wider range to reach LP. If you go MP3, man!, we are going backward!