SACD vs RBCD players

Great discussion going here with lots of excellent suggestions! Maybe my initial comment of SACD being "vastly superior" was slightly overboard, but I have to stick with it... In my experience, SACD always sounds better in absolute terms than RBCD. I'm a big believer in subjective listening, but there are times that the engineering and physics behind a product simply hold up in practice. Since the sampling rate of SACD is so much higher than that of Red Book, it will always have the advantage of holding more information. No matter how much you want to oversample, reclock, and process the RBCD stream, it's just not going to hold the same amount of info as SACD.

It's true that the catalog of titles is somewhat limited in relation to the mainstream, but there are excellent sources for SACD like Acoustic Sounds, Elusive Disk, Amazon and Arkiv Music. If you're looking for clssical stuff, Arkiv even has an entire section of their online catalog dedicated to SACD, so it's easy to find what's available. I've purchased SACD form all of the above and haven't been disappointed yet. How long SACD will survive has yet to be seen, but there are still LOTS of titles out there to be had... I'll keep buying them up and enjoying them as long as I can!

So, it's obvious that I'm a big believer in the format. For me, a player has to have good SACD capability. There are plenty of fine examples out there at all kinds of price points both new and used: Marantz, Esoteric, Denon, Onkyo, dcs, NAD, Lexicon, Oppo, Sony.... You're best bet is to find a player that keeps the SACD data stream in the DSD domain and doesn't internally convert the data stream to PCM. I use a Sony 999ES and use it's analog outputs to run SACD's direclty to my preamp. I use the digital output to run through a DAC for RBCD's, so I get the best of both worlds with one deck.

Hope all of this helps. Have fun in your search and most of all, sit back, relax and enjoy the music!

The following is not really an argument against SACD, because the format is slowly growing and SACD players play RBCDs as well, however I'm trying to gain a realistic idea of how much use I will truly get from a SACD player.

There appear to be roughly 6000 SACDs available in print. While the SACD format is superior to RBCD, this still does not affect a few other variables. The first is the quality of the performance and the second is musical taste. Once we eliminate the type of music that I do not like, and eliminate the discs with less than excellent performances and finally eliminate the discs that are really just mediocre recording quality ( and offer little to no improvement over RBCD ) I begin to suspect that the number of SACDs I would listen to on a regular basis might not be that many.

To those of you who own SACD players, how many SACDs do you own and what percentage of those do you really listen to on a regular basis?

I have already stated that analog is my first format choice. That being said, I own roughly 50 SACD's and 500 RBCD's. I find that when listening to digital, I wind up listening to about 40% SACD and 60% RBCD.....mostly due to aforementioned reasons. I would say that I listen to 70% vinyl and 30% digital.

BTW, I'm not a huge classical fan, but I do enjoy classical. I've found that jazz also has a large collection on SACD, and that is my favorite genre.

FWIW, it sounds like you are trying to talk yourself out of an SACD player by saying "I begin to suspect that the number of SACDs I would listen to on a regular basis might not be that many."

If you want a fancy name RBCD player (Cyrus/ Resolution Audio?), I'd say go for it. IMHO a SACD on a Sony (Marantz, Esoteric, etc) will sound better than any RBCD player, but I wouldn't want SACD to interfer with you getting what you really want.

Cheers,
John

"Why are there not more SACD-player manufacturers in the high end?"

you have SACD players from Krell, Esoteric, Luxman, Accuphase, dCS, Ayre, Playback Designs, EMM Labs, McIntosh, Mark Levinson etc they all are making hi-rez players now since CD players ale limited to low-resolution only.

latest Esoteric and Luxman SACD players models

Hmmmm, not sure how to answer that question? I have 100's of LP's, hundreds of RBCD's and probably a hundred or so SACD's and I listen to all of them, but I'm not sure I can say what actual percentages would be? Music is a huge part of my lifestyle, so I'm more concerned with the performance and the music itself than anything else. SACD's always shine through relative to sound quality next to RBCD, but that's not to say that RBCD's are chopped liver and I don't like them! On the contrary, I think there are some FANTASTIC sounding RBCD's. Ultimately, good music is good music. I listen to a lot of different flavors; rock, jazz, lots of classical. With all genre's, higher rez digital media like SACD's always impress.

You mentioned before that you like classical music; may I suggest that you visit arkivmusik dot com and check out the SACD's they have available... I think you'll answer your concerns about performances, artists and availability.

As John says, don't talk yourself into something that you don't really want and won't value out of. If for you, pure RBCD is the way to go and that's what will make you happy, then that's what matters! I'm obviously a big proponent of SACD, but that doesn't invalidate another direction.

Happy listeneing!