Madison, joy to your ears indeed! You are right, SACD is a great leap forward and finally the promise of digital is rising beyond the old snake-oil hype and is beginning to be fullfilled. My ears at least agree fully with yours. The best of SACD seems in a few aspects even truer to the music than the best of vinyl. The only thing which irks me, is the hiss, which obviously cannot be avoided, when transcribing older takes into this new format. Cheers,
Have you heard SACD?
Just spent better part of an evening, picking jaw up off floor after listening to SACD sampler disc about seven times in a row on newly obtained Sony 9000ES. If you haven't heard SACD, please, please, go listen to one. It is a statue of beautiful proportions and curves compared to CD's poster-flat presentation. The sound comes alive, and the music is THERE with you. Tonally, it is awesome, with every detail, nuance, hint of sound clearly presented in its proper place, with no brightness or etched quality. Bass is round, firm, fleshy. Midrange will carress you. Does that seem a bit too sensuous for audio? This isn't audio any more. It's not just electronic junk coming from wires and plastic. It occupies space and has at least four, maybe six sides to it. All this with a $15K SS system. With tubes, I would expect even more life.