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The Year of the Universal Player

Universal players appear to have come of age, with announcements at CES of new universals by at least 8 high end manufacturers, and rumors of 'in progress' from several others....Bel Canto, Linn, McCormack, MBL,Audio Aero, MSB, Lexicon, Teac, (Krell?, Goldmund?). And in addition, a majority of Japanese makers have them, and even at multiple price points.

This is excellent news for high resolution, as it follows on a general industry consensus, expressed by S. Rochlin at enjoythemusic.com, that both SACD and DVD-A are here to stay. That, together with the success of SACD disc sales, the availability of appropriate chip sets, and the fact that the majority of high end audio shops are now heavily involved in home theater and multichannel sales.

Universal players by high end makers are clearly aimed at that 75% of the audiophile market that is still fence-sitting because of the format war.

Will the presence of higher quality universals now affect your decision to buy into these formats?
flex
thsalmon
348 posts
 
I'm really happy that the universal disk players are finally coming out. However, I have little or no interest in video playback, and the higher end units will incorporate several thousand dollars' worth of video circuitry for which I have no use. I was very interested in the Linn Unidisk, but I understand it's price went from around $5000 to $9000 so that it would include state of the art video capabilities. I therefore went to a Tri-Vista SACD (stunning, review to follow), and I'll incorporate a middle of the road, possibly modded DVD-A player for occasional playback of those disks.
thinkat
63 posts
 
absolutely,

i'm one of those fence sitters that has been leaning toward sacd. this makes the decision a lot easier (especially on the wallet).
bomarc
501 posts
 
Absolutely not. The issue isn't hardware; it's software. When new releases start to come out regularly one or the other format, then I'll buy in. Not until.
thedautch
329 posts
 
I might consider the MSB model, which lists for $8000. It sounded out of my price range at first, but I think it's a receiver, DVD-A, SACD, CD player all built into one. So if I take what I'd want to spend on a universal player, and I add that to what I'd spend on 5-channel amplification that's meant for hi-rez audio, and if I could get the MSB unit at a discount of some sort ($6,999 or something), it might be something I'd look into. I mean, just think of the savings on cables alone...there's nothing to run your SACD/DVD-A/CD player into, because it's all built into that one unit. Taken together, seven grand might be a very reasonable deal.
flex OP
292 posts
 
On the point about software, there should be a snowball effect. More hardware creates more demand for good software. If I were a hi-rez indie, I think I'd be pretty happy right now.
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