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Keep my XA7ES, or get a DVP-S9000ES for CD play?

My digital front end is currently the venerable, built-like-a-tank Sony XA7ES, a CD player that was considered a reference unit when first unveiled.

But I wonder if it isn't time to upgrade, and whether I would be well served by obtaining a Sony DVP-S9000ES.

The "wrinkle" here is that I'd be using the 9000ES solely as a CD player, because (1) I have separate home theater and stereo systems; and (2) I don't plan to get into SACD, because I'm hoping that better and less expensive upsamplers will eventually come to the rescue of the thousands of red book CDs I already own. The S9000ES has a "stereo only" selector which allows you to shut down its unnecessary circuits during stereo only play.

To round out the picture, the XA7ES feeds into a Plinius CD-LAD preamp, which outputs to 2 Adcom 555II amps (both bridged to mono), each one of which drives a Snell A Reference Tower Speaker. A Snell SUB-1800 passive subwoofer is fed by the Hsu 250 watt sub amp. Lieder all-silver interconnects and Bear Labs Silver Thunder speaker cables. Various homemade and commercially available isolation devices used in combinations (granite, sorbothane, brass cones, wood "boxes" -- nicely finished -- & compressed air). On the analog side, a heavily modified Denon DP59L, sporting a Grado The Statement, and feeding into a Plinius Jarrah phono stage. (Also a very cool homemade record cleaning machine). API power conditioners. FIM outlets fed by dedicated lines.

I'd appreciate hearing from you wonks out there who truly understand the differences between these two machines, and who have themselves perhaps played both side-by-side.

Thanks in advance for your helpful and friendly input!

Best regards to everyone,
Paul Frumkin
paul_frumkin

Showing 1 response by john_l

john_l
782 posts
 
I have not heard them side by side. I did own the xa7es for 2 years, and a good friend with a similar system had the 9000. I felt that the xa7es had a better sound. It's output stage just seemed to be much cleaner and the imaging a little better. The xa7es had mosfet rather than op-amp output stage which I think attributed to it's good sound.

The 9000 was pretty impressive on sacd, and I thought it's cd playback was good, but not up to the level of the xa7es. It had a mild case of the mass market midfi haze. from it's output stage. You can get the output stages replaced by modwright or audiomod.

Since you are not looking to move to sacd, I would stick with the xa7es. If you want to improve on the xa7es, I personally would go for an xa777es (1500 used), a resolution audio cd-50 (1300 used), or an es-777 (1500 used). These won't be huge jumps.
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