What's the best Sony CD/SACD player?

IMO the SCD-1 / 777es are the best players Sony has ever built...........properly modded they can compete with anything out there irrespective of price ............ stock they are OK ...... competetive within their price range ........

I'm currently using Unidisk SC. I have XA5400ES on order, so hopefully I should be able to make a direct comparison between two pretty soon.

Jylee,

Nice system you have there. It looks like you use the the Unidisk SC as a disk player only. Have you ever used it as a preamp? If so, how would you rate it?

To be more specific, I have Linn Ninka speakers and C5100 amp, the 9100ES player and a Rotel integrated as a preamp. I'm considering a Linn Exotik or 5103 preamp or Unidisk SC. If I go with the Exotik or 5103 as the preamp that leaves me with the disk player in question.

I look forward to hearing you opinions on the 5400ES vs the Unidisk. I also wonder how people would compare the newer SACD 9000ES vs my 9100ES or the 5400ES. I know the SCD 1 is a great player but I would prefer something newer.

Thanks for any opinions on any of the above.

I forgot to mention in the last post, I also have a Trikan center and old Helix speakers for rears so I would like to stick with a multi channel preamp. I will use the system for movies and 2 channel music. The 9100ES will stay for movies unless I go to a Unidisk. So the questions is what combination of multi channel preamp and music source is best. The Unidisk fills both roles but would an Exotik and a good music source be better for the same price as the Unidisk (all used)?

Bmdduck,

I've been using SC without a preamp for a while with good result. The built in volume control is quite good. Bypassing preamp makes the sound very transparent. However, the analog input section is not very good, so if you have other analog sources a dedicated preamp will serve better for you. The digital input section sounds okay. I've connected Airport Express to the digital input of SC, and it sounds good. I don't have a lot of lossless music on computer so I can't tell you how the digital input compare to the CD from its transport. I haven't watched a lot of movies on SC, as I use it mainly as a music player. I do have some DTS music disks, and Unidisk decodes them just fine.

As far as 5400ES goes, all the reviews I've read said it sounds better than any previous Sony ES players so I am pretty excited about the purchase. It reportedly has long break in period, so it may be a week or two until I can do a meaningful comparison.