SACD - Another year and ...

I totaly agree with Whatjd's hardball comments!. He has pointed why most digital gear sounds like crap. I am part of a small audiophile group who has discovered how to modify their digital gear. We replace those junky ic's, those inadequate power supplies and strip out those worthless sounding digital filters (replacing them with a simple, yet unbelievably effective analog filters), and clean up the digital noise floating around inside those DAC's or CD players. What do these modifications yield?...THE BEST SOUNDING DIGITAL FRONT ENDS THAT YOU CANNOT BUY! This is the absolute truth. My buddies and I constanly embarrass high end dealers with our "modified" basic MSB DAC's, that cost us less than $1000.00! Yes, you read that right...the best sounding digital can be had for less than $1000.00. (P.S.- We are not mid- fi guys either...most of us have $30k + in our systems, and most of us have been in this hobby for over 20 years)

Ehider I'd lke to know more about your group & the mod's you're doing. thanks, Tweaker.

It's not my group doing the mods, I am just an audiophile that has been fortunate enough to find an unbeleivably talented circuit designer who implements these mods. Over the years, he has saved me and my other buddies many thousands of dollars, and given me the musical satisfaction, that the high end companies promise, but rarely deliver. If you post your E-mail on the next thread, I will personally E-mail you with the details you are requesting.

Rcprince, I agree, anything Sony makes is built to a price point. You did the right thing, replacing those op amps for the analog output stage, anything would be better than those.

I'm VERY happy with the mod, but it does have a down side as well. SACD gets you closer to the master tape, and the new output stage turns the Sony into a high-resolution player. On well recorded stuff (DMP, Delos, Telarc, Audioquest, new Sony dsd releases), it can sound frighteningly good (I get the same sort of let-down, which is less these days than it used to be, switching from SACDs to normal CDs that I get switching from vinyl to CD), but on less than stellar reissues you'll hear everything bad about the master tape as well as the good, such as overly hot mixes. Ah, the price of a glimpse of (digital) heaven... I hope that more new releases based off DSD, or even well-recorded analog, 20 or 24-bit digital, masters come out, because they really show SACD's strengths.