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RE: backwards compatibility of SACD players?

Posted by AbeCollins (A) on April 28, 2020 at 08:08:55

In Reply to: backwards compatibility of SACD players? posted by immatthewj on April 27, 2020 at 15:12:09:

My 2-cents worth... often very unpopular with the SACD crowd....

"But, in the mean time, I have purchased a few SACD hybrids & the red-book layer sounds so good I am wondering how good the SACD layer sounds, & that has me wondering about going with a midpriced SACD player (I've seen, on ebay, a Maranz & Yamaha, NIB, for around 4k)."

Many hybrid SACDs sound better than some of your old CDs because they were produced after remastering. As such, the CD layer also sounds better than many of your old CDs..... which means, even a remastered CD (non SACD hybrid) may sound better than an old one that you've had for years.

I never warmed up to SACD because I always felt that a quality well mastered CD can sound just as good. In other words, it wasn't so much the fact that SACDs sound better, the improvement is mostly due to the remastering which can also be found in the same remastered redbook CD.

So I played with SACD for a couple years, paid the premium prices for the discs, then went back to standard CDs.

This was well over a decade ago and then computer based audio took over. The SACD craze fizzled out and CDs were losing steam. Ripping your own CDs to the computer and downloading quality lossless music files took over. And even that has progressed to high quality streaming services like Tidal & Qobuz. While my Accuphase DP-65v still sounds excellent, it is literally a boat anchor from another time.

P.S. I wouldn't spend much over $600 - $800 on a new CD player today, and I would certainly skip over anything near $4000.

The office computer / streaming setup

Me old Accuphase DP-65v boat anchor now in the basement.

Still sounds wonderful but the streaming setup is just as good or better, and significantly more convenient.

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