Sony DVP 9000

there is no doubt that vinyl sounds significantly better. However, like many people my age, I have far too much invested in CD software. My wife would destry me if I were to start buying vinyl copies of CDs I already owned. Its tough enough to justify my CD purchases. By the time I was old enough to know how much better vinyl sounded, it was too late. Luckily CDs can be playued by SACD players, so its a no risk buy.

And good CD recordings played on an above average CD player are more then acceptable.

For a perfect description of the Sony 9000ES as Redbook and SACD, see Neil Gader's review in issue# 134 of The Absolute Sound, Feb-Mar 2002. An excerpt:

"As a stand-alone CD player, the DVP-S9000es is competent and balanced, an a par with players under $2000 I've auditioned, although it doesn't out-perform them in any single aspect....

"...It offers a neutral, slightly cool character, with perhaps a bit more upper-frequency edge and texture than I find completely natural."

to finish my post....

Where the 9000ES excels is in detail (especially bass to midrange detail) and dynamics -- the bass is really punchy. It also has decent soundstage and imaging.

Good recordings can really be hypnotic with it; bad recordings can be a little hard to listen to.

Radknee, I find that to be a very accurate description of my Sony DVP-S9000ES player.

I would third the findings of Radknee and Twl. That is exactly how I find this unit. This is a very unforgiving unit which sounds superb on many recordings, but less than great recordings are a hard to get into as much. I am looking into mods that would "tame it" just a hair. There is a bit of an edge in the upper midrange that causes me to back down the volume a notch or two on some recordings. This is really a minor fault, and might not even be noticable if you are all tubes. Tom