Sony XA7ES vs Sony SCD777ES

I owned a SCD777E - it was a pretty good player - sounded best on the custom setting - takes a while to read the disc and determine if it's SACD - sometimes it would not recognize the disc at all. My friend has a XA7ES and it is a really good player for the money - very versatile and he runs into a power amp with no problem.

I own the XA7ES. Although I've never seen a 777ES, I understand they do not have balanced outputs, only single ended. Just an FYI in case that's important to you. I also have heard that the 777ES can be very slow at loading SACD's.

It's slow at loading EVERYTHING.