wadia making mistake?

In my opinion SACD (hybrid) is going to be around for awhile and if a manufacturer wants to compete in the digital arena they need to offer it on their players; which is probably the case with Wadia. It has been my experience that SACD sounds superior to redbook in the majority of CD's that I own. And if available I always purchase the hybrid disc over the redbook only counterpart. As far as XRCD they are far to expensive to even consider me buying them as well as to limited in the selection available. And with HDCD not enough players available to play the format and limited material avaialability. I would never consider purchasing a player that could not play SACD's. But again this my preference and others have theirs.

Chuck

SACD can sound VERY good, but too many of the discs available are miserably average in recording quality and can barely compete with high-quality standard CDs. Just as bad, the prices for SACDs are typically far too high. This is why I gave up on the format.

BMR3HC - I own a GNSC modified 850. I did not hasve it modified, but had an unmodified 830 before. The modified 850 wasa significant improvement over the 830 in terms of bass extension, image depth and 3 dimensionality (the sounds popped out more, making the 830 sound flat by comparison, and a slight improvemnet in naturalness and harmonic resolution. I have no way of knowing, though, how much of the improvement was du to the mods and how much was due to the change from 830 to 850. Steve said that most of the improvement was due to the mods, and that the main difference between the 850 naqnd the 830 was the 850s ability to better differentiate musical aprts on complex musical pieces.

Bmr3hc: I had an 850, got it modified by GNSC, and liked it so much that I later committed to buying a GNSC 861. IMO the GNSC mod is worth the price. BTW, I've tried a couple of top Sony SACD players for home audition of this format, and I still like the Wadia Redbook sound better. Perhaps I just didn't hear the best that SACD playback can offer. It will be interesting to hear how Wadia does SACD.....

As a former 270 / 27i owner I would suggest you guys consider a used EMM Labs CDSD / DCC2 combo- street price is in the $8000 range. This combo absolutely destroys the 270 / 27i, renders the Wadia virtually unlistenable. If you want a significant improvement over the CDSD / DCC2 belly up to the big bar and spring for the new Signiture Edition CDSD / DCC2. The SACD playback is state of the art, the Redbook performance is very close to the SACD and will blow you away- it's really that good. An additional plus- you can drive your amp(s) directly with the superb analog pre-amp section of the DCC2. I was never satisfied with the 27i Sledgehammer output stage driving power amps, it had a very lean and skeletal sound.
sound