I auditioned SACD today


After reading all the positive reviews and posts on SACD I decided to take a serious look at this format. I have 22 dual layer SACD in my collection so I took 4 SACDs of music I know the best. To my surprise one of the local dealers still had a demo Sony SCD 1. The sales person led me to the room and said take as long as I would like and left. Since I read all the reviews on the SCD 1 I was able to operate it without difficulty.

There was no question that the SACD layer had a bigger soundstage and better detail than the Redbook layer but the difference were not as great as I expected. I wondered how the Sony compared next to my Audiomeca Mephisto 11.X CDP. Then a strange thing happen, I noticed a Linn LP 12 turntable to the side of the equipment rack. I cued up one of the lps and played it. As a former owner of 2 LP 12 over the years I had a good idea what to expect, the sound was full , warm , detailed and most of all musical. I should add that I have over 7000 lps and 5000 cds and listen to both, prefer the sound of vinyl but love the convenience and catalog selection of cds.

To make a long story short I decided to forgo the purchase of a SACD player and continue to ad to my vinyl and cd collection and just enjoy the music. I may look at SACD again in the future as the hardware improves and the software growa in numbers.
rec

Showing 1 response by robert56

Wow, I think SACD blows LP's away and for sure CD's. I go back to Mono tube FM systems. I currently have a turntable I listen to once in a while, but good SACD multi channel is better sounding in so many ways. The new Sony Reference SACD player has 18 DAC's and cost 3000.00. which should fit nicely into anyone's high end set-up. I have the $1000.00 NS900v which sounds wonderful. I read somewhere that there is currently 1600 SACD titles, with more coming weekly. It will become the Audiophile standard because of the sound quality. Remember for the full surround effect one must have five identical full range speakers equidistant from center seating. Talk about 3-dimensional holo-graphic imaging, it's a reality, been there.