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In Reply to: How was the audio quality compared? Redbook, SACD? posted by QQQQqqqq on October 11, 2002 at 08:48:18:
I made just the short comment because it was a short test. Very preliminary. Used SACD two channel material only. Differences between the '999 and '900 were small and would require extended listening with multiple switching back to really nail down. My agenda was to see if the 999 was enough of an improvement over my '900 to justify a trade-in. It was not.The next day I compared to a SCD-777es. The nine hundred series players are not in the same league, not that I would expect them to be given the vast differences in resources thrown at the task between the designs. Three times the money does bring results.
On CD playback I rate the '900 and '999 as "good plus" but not really in the top strata. Let me be up-front here and state I have spent years first tweaking CD players than designing and marketing my own DACs (see www.audiocraftersguild.com for details). It is just a fact of (audiophile music lover) life that no $1000 CD/DVD/SACD delivers SOTA performance. The nine hundred series players exhibit the slight murkiness and veiling typical of mass market players which have to be designed down to a price. At the same time they are really quite amazing examples in that the sound they do serve up from CDs is so far ahead of the typical boring muck spewed from that class of CD players 2-3 years ago. This I attribute to advances in DAC design, a happy bit of fallout from the SACD/DVD-A wars.
So in summary I find the '999 and '900 sound "good plus" on CD and really exciting on SACD. The fact the SACD format pulls the sound of the same set of electronics so far up really has me chopping at the bit to mod my '900 and unlock what it can really do.
(Since I fessed up to being a lurking designer I have posted a picture of one of my designs the X-DAC 3.0 Signature above. This product is out of production so I hope this will not offend the spirit or rules of this forum.)
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Follow Ups
- Re: How was the audio quality compared? Redbook, SACD? - Norman Tracy 10/11/0209:44:35 10/11/02 (1)
- That DAC is a beautiful piece! Thanks for the post. - QQQQqqqq 09:55:27 10/11/02 (0)
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