CD v. SACD


I was planning on buying a new CD player (Rega Jupiter 2000), when I read a few reveiws of the Sony SCD-XA777ES, which used, I could buy for about the same amount as the Rega new. I currently have an extensive CD collection, but no SACDs. My question is whether I should just go ahead and buy the Sony, or whether a dedicated CD player, like the Rega (or others at its price point) are significantly better in their CD playback. Thanks. Tom
boschtb
Gary, thank you for the clarification. To further some clarification, I do not disagree that the new formats can outperform CD. I had two points/positions within this thread:

One, CD can sound good, even excellent, contrary to a comment made that it can't.

Two, the lack of availability of software for the new formats, CD may give you most enjoyment yet at this time, and further, there are some awesome CD players out right now that, IMO, will exceed the performance of a majority of the SACD "players", don't confuse my comments of players vs. formats.

From my experience, I do not view the review in question as inaccurate.

Thanks for the follow up, I do not think we are that far apart.
Brian, I have a tendency to sound more dogmatic than I probably am. It was not my intention to argue as much as perhaps discuss the differences in opinion. IMO redbook CD is a flawed medium which as been fantastically tweaked to sound much better than it originally sounded.
I do beleive SACD is a much better format and I thought that was what we were discussing. The potential for SACD is much better than CD, and I would hate to see the format disappear before it matures to reveal what might be developed. I am not denying that Sony is probably playing games with consumers to protect their patents, but I still like to think it's about the music.
Regardless I still prefer the sound of LPs which IMO is better than CD or SACD.
"IMO redbook CD is a flawed medium which as been fantastically tweaked to sound much better than it originally sounded."

Wow, I don't even know how to respond to that; at any rate, enjoy the music, I am!
yes, redbook CD is flawed. there's a general rule of thumb in audio engineering that you can't expect to accurately reproduce any frequency above one third of your sampling rate. for redbook that would be 14.7 kHz. sounds like a flaw? try digitizing pure sine waves at 44.1 kHz and see what starts happening above 15 kHz. it starts to look like crap, not like a sine wave.
Carefully read the post.
Are other CD Players significantly bette at CD Playback.
No where is SACD mentioned.
Point being you will find significantly better CD player at half the amount of the SONY which is a Horrible CD player.

At this point stick to a CD player.

DVD A may just win this battle in the end. You can play DVD A in any DVD player. Cant do that with SACD.