Ears you will find one of the biggest SACD's supporters on these forums admit that some of The Stones discs sound better on the redbook layer of the SACD hybrids.
He has the state of the art SACD set up.
This of course doesn't disprove the overall theory, I admit that.
DSOTM imho doesn't show much difference between the layers.
I'm stepping out of this debate again but I want to make it clear I am a music enthuasiast-I do not recycle discs lighty and I do care about sonic reproduction.
I'm only offering another set of experiences.
To offer a true example here's a recent experience.
I recently sold an interconnect on Ebay to a guy who stayed locally-he was a vinyl guy but with a lower end system.
He liked the way my system sounded,he clearly knew his stuff and was impressed with the Ayre equipment which he'd never heard.
He spotted my Sony DVD/SACD player and
asked to hear some comparisons.
First up he noticed the big drop in sound quality from the Ayre.
But when he heard both Let It Bleed and DSOM on the Sony on different layers he found the performance between Redbook and SACD almost indentical.
He thought LIB sounded very slightly better on Redbook and DSOM very slightly better on SACD.
Maybe it's my system-but a friend who has a Levison 39s and the cheap Pioneer multi-format machine-feels exactly the same.
Let me finish by saying also I wish I could afford the like of Emm Labs equipment because I believe at that level you are very probably in a win win situation.
Last words.
He has the state of the art SACD set up.
This of course doesn't disprove the overall theory, I admit that.
DSOTM imho doesn't show much difference between the layers.
I'm stepping out of this debate again but I want to make it clear I am a music enthuasiast-I do not recycle discs lighty and I do care about sonic reproduction.
I'm only offering another set of experiences.
To offer a true example here's a recent experience.
I recently sold an interconnect on Ebay to a guy who stayed locally-he was a vinyl guy but with a lower end system.
He liked the way my system sounded,he clearly knew his stuff and was impressed with the Ayre equipment which he'd never heard.
He spotted my Sony DVD/SACD player and
asked to hear some comparisons.
First up he noticed the big drop in sound quality from the Ayre.
But when he heard both Let It Bleed and DSOM on the Sony on different layers he found the performance between Redbook and SACD almost indentical.
He thought LIB sounded very slightly better on Redbook and DSOM very slightly better on SACD.
Maybe it's my system-but a friend who has a Levison 39s and the cheap Pioneer multi-format machine-feels exactly the same.
Let me finish by saying also I wish I could afford the like of Emm Labs equipment because I believe at that level you are very probably in a win win situation.
Last words.

