Sony scd-1 vs Ayre C5xe

Rugyboogie,

Options & costs vary considerably depending on whether you DIY or outsource mods. VSE has mostly cornered the market with its drop-in, productized, fully warrantied replacement analog stage, clock & lite mods to power (for $1500-3K depending on whether balanced or SE.) I took a DIY approach based initially on ideas & parts from Reference Audio Mods, and added various improvements of my own incrementally. In retrospect, for under $1500, the initial steps that make the greatest improvement are Audiocom Superclock 4, replacement of select op amps, surface mount resistors & caps in the analog section, and installation of Schottky rectifiers and several discrete DC regulators. For a further bump up the entire analog section can be replaced with a buffered transformer ouput and AC power can be replaced with batteries. RAM does such mods, or I can provide further info to the DIYer.

How good is it? After $5K in mods RBCD on this SCD-1 equals or surpasses a very good vinyl front end.

I own a modwright/Kern Sony SCD-777ES and the unit sounds amazing. I wonder how much better is the EMM gears than the modded Sony. What Sony was only very good is in redbook playback. However, my unit sound significant better in redbook and SACD playback.

Richard Kern was the first modder to dig into & mod the unit and work with the Audiocom Superclock. He posted his early findings to the forums circa Y2K, and was greeted by an ocean of skeptics who doubted that the stock player could be improved. Sound familiar? In casual listening at shows at least, I have found DCS, Burmester, Reimyo, Zanden all lacking relative to a well-modded SCD-1.

I have about 2K in mods on my scd-1 and the player is simply stunning. The soundstage is deep and wide and the texture and timbre of the instruments in the soundstage are much improved over stock.

The Ayre C5xe while a very good player can not compete with my sony (not even close).

Chuck

I had a modified 777ES, with Kern mods on the transport board, Superclock 2 and high quality resistors and a Jerry Ozment designed tubed/transformer coupled output stage (essentially the analog section of my Audio Logic DAC). The sound was, to my ears, better than most units I have heard from dCS, Esoteric, Accuphase and even the first version of the EMM Labs gear. I replaced it with the EMM Labs CDSD/DCC2SE combination. I lost a little warmth in the midbass region (which also muddied things up just a little there) and gained a little better resolution, dynamics and deep bass reproduction. My friend who bought my 777ES loves the sound of it, he has actually cut back a lot on his analog listening because of it.

You will not get your money back from any mods, and repair work on one may be a little hard to get (I believe many of the modifiers can do repairs, though), but sonically a well-modified unit is more than competitive with what's out there in today's marketplace.