Are You Happy With 2 Channel SACD?

I am having a VERY hard time hearing the difference between the CD and the stereo SACD layers of my classical Hybrid discs played on my Philips 963sa. My hearing is fine (I am a professional musician), but my pre-amp is admittedly lower-mid-fi, a Yamaha dsp-e492.
If there really is a huge difference between the two, shouldn't I be able to detect it even on modest equipment?

Boldstrummer:

In all candor, in this hobby, just about every "huge difference" that someone claims that they can hear is typically nothing more than something that is casually discernable and a function of how much they let it bother them. With that said, I find that the difference between the redbook and hybrid levels may be discernable, but is not "huge" on first listen. With hybrids/SACD, I find that the overall sound is less fatiguing over time and I can listen to my system for longer.

Regards, Rich

I think part of the problem is that it takes awhile for the SACD player to break in, but a lot of the time, when people buy a CD/SACD player, they don't have any SACD's to play, so they buy one or two, A/B the SACD layer against the CD track, have a hard time telling the difference, and give up. If you listen to SACD's for awhile, let your player break in, then go back to redbook CD's, I would bet you'll miss the air, the natural-ness of the detail, the lack of digital glare, the increased dynamic range, and the ambient information of the SACD. CD will sound slightly compressed after you get used to SACD. They *do* need to open the floodgates on SACD releases, though -- that would help.

>

I bought a Sony XA777ES a couple of years ago as an upgrade to my year-old Sony 333ES. I was so uninterested in the multichannel capabilities of the new player that when Ric Schultz was about to do his magic on it and he told me that it would not be able to play m/c discs after the mods, I said go ahead. That was a $2000 player I castrated - no loss, in my opinion.

Regards,

A couple of years ago I bought really good speakers for the rear and a Sony XA9000ES this spring. Eventually I'll get a pre-pro with analog bypass that will allow me to listen to MC. However, in the mean time I'm perfectly happy to listen in 2ch via my SF Line 3 SE pre-amp.

I've listened to a couple DVD-As (the DD/DTS layers) and they don't really thrill me with the insturments all around. I think ambient sound field information would be a whole lot more convincing. Rememeber how long it took recording engineers to get over the ping-pong effect when stereo first was introduced?