CD v. SACD

Natalie, I certainly don't want to be in the argument between the two of you, but a further clarification; my reply to Nrchy was the fact that he believes that CD cannot sound good, I disagree and when I say it was no comparison when I switched from the SCD-1 to the EMC1-UP, I was including SACD on the Sony.

SONY's CD players (most of them) can sound bright. But there are not always bad things about SONY. Higher end SONY's transport actually last pretty long time in my experience. Therefore, I am confident in mod on a good SONY CD or DVD player. Because the transport is unlikely to die young!

Among my friends, I notice that SONY and PIONEER's high end DVD players usually have less problem of skipping marginal quality DVD or CD. This is a good sign for tracking and accurate reading of digital signals on disks. I have to agree that those mass production company invested enough to make sure these things work well.

Small company did lots of work on analog part, I think, that's why their output driver is usually better than mass production ones. There is not much room (money & technology) to develop a new digital processing format for a small company. DAC chips, everbody can buy better one when newer/better design come out, if you have $$.

For XA777ES, it is a quite warm sound player (unlike most of SONY). IMHO rega planar is not better this one (others can't comment, never compare them). Other good redbook players mentioned previously probably cost about the same as a high end SONY anyway. There is no excuse if they sound bad on their specialty: redbook. Eventually, small company will come out good SACD player if SACD do succeed. But you need big companies to drive DSP technology and market for their own profit and for serious audiophiles too.

Who else on this site once say "If you give up on SACD, then they will do MP3 for bigger market". Then later, you will hear some guys claim their MP3 player sounds better than mega $$ CD player. That would be a big mistake for audiophile.

From LP to CD, dynamic range is compressed, SACD pulled back to wider range to reach LP. If you go MP3, man!, we are going backward!

Kayakfit... "redbook" cd refers to the standard cd that has been out for 20 years now. SACD (super audio compact disc) is Sony and Phillips attempt to hold on to the patent they have on digital recordings with cds that is expiring. DVD-A (digital versatile disc-audio) is Panasonic's (and the rest of the packs) attempt to knock them off the "hill" and take over the next digital format. In both cases, removing our ability to make copies of the discs is the overriding motive for the format change. Thats not to say the new formats are not better than redbook, but the question is which will win the format war and become the new standard.

My point which NataLIE will never be able to understand is the sampling rate of redbook CD players is too low to reproduce music accurately. SACD by virtue of it's sampling rate is emanantly more capable of accurate musical reproduction. SACD still has improvements to make in the playback, but inspite of this it still is superior to the products NataLIE is talking about.
Lots of companies have spent millions of dollars trying to get redbook CD players to sound good but it is ultimately a waste of time. We would all be better off if more people got behind a medium more capable of giving us the sound quality that cheap LPs already provide. That being SACD.
NataLIE is not worth arguing with. He does not understand the technology or have the ears to listen anyway. He is against anything he does not understand, which is virtually everything taking place here. Follow his threads and see for yourself!

And I will again disagree with you Nrchy about CD's being a "waste of time".