Zack

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
Less than 1 month

Visitors rate this review
2.00 of 5, 4.00 votes

Price Paid:  $3000.00 from Moscow

Summary:
I bought this player second-hand definetly knowing what i was going to buy - ne plus ultra digital media with top-notch design and true sound reproduction capabilities. I will not add anything extra on the performance as too many spilled some good ink on the issue. I am faced with a minor problem some of you already touched upon here and there in the forum. So, please, help me: as soon as the redbook or SACD disk is loaded, the TOC is read and i hit play, there comes a single crackling sound of metal origin right BEFORE the music starts. Then i hit stop some 20 minutes later and press start again - NOT a single crackle, the music begins to be reproduced as it should be. Can it be that the laser positioning system misses the required sector in the very beginning, realigns itself and emits this sound? Please comment if you ever faced this problem and what possible actions can be of help to eliminate this nuisance. Much obliged, Zack

Strengths:
Detailed and overwhelming sound, design, weight

Weaknesses:
Flimsy Remote, no Dig Out for SACD, no Open Tray from Remote.

Similar Products Used:
Luxman D-10 Limited

Robert Lent

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
3 Months to 1 year

Visitors rate this review
2.25 of 5, 4.00 votes

Price Paid:  $3000.00 from audiogon

Summary:
EXCELLENT ENGINEERING! The best CD player I have EVER owned -- and I have owned a few of the greats. Thank you for making me enjoy my CD's once again.

Strengths:
Build quality is the BEST. The sound reproduction of both CD and SACD is hands down the best.

Weaknesses:
NONE

Similar Products Used:
Krell KPS-30i, Krell MD-10 & SBP-64X

Price Paid:  $3500.00 from can't recall

Summary:
it's a long story. The SCD-1 has been a long and awesome learning experience as I discovered an "upgrade underground" based on the SCD-1 cult devoted to extreme listening satisfaction. This started to make a greater impression on me when I took my unit in for repair after I had done a stupid thing with it, tried to switch out interconnects with the machine playing a disk. DON'T. You may blow an output stage. The repair shop tells me they rarely see an unmodified SCD-1 but they see a lot of them. it seems that this unit is widely perceived by afficionados as THE hot rod box. I had sent mine into Richard Kern for extensive rebuilding and consequently got into the mod thing. When the parts that the accountants won, an unimpressive clock ( a standard quartz crystal in a can), op-amps, caps, regulators, and resistors are switched for the audiomod upgrade kits, the unit opens up and delivers on a whole 'nother plane. I was still having some urges for better sound a year later that got me motivated to liberally treat resonant areas inside the unit with various types of marigo dots and Combak Harmonix "tuning bases", especially the steel table that the linear transport motor is affixed to. I had simultaneously put some bybee quantum filters between the power supply and main box of my 12 year old pre-amp so I cannot say with specific clarity which was contributing what. However, the sound came together with such tonal perfection and listenability that it was possible to groove away for hours with huge, voluptuous, billowing, cavernous sound that moved me close to the holistic musical experinece. I think the lesson from this is that careful, but thorough internal vibration damping is essential to bring out the best in this model, regardless of how much tweaking has gone into new parts. That done, and one channel recently fried thanks to my impatience, there was nothing else to do but listen in mono one evening until the repair shop opened the next morning. I was expecting the mono to sound collapsed and dead as only one channel was available. Amazingly, the mono with the right recordings, those without much L-R difference, still sounded big, spacious, and involving. The mono sounded "phatter" than the majority of theoretically good systems do in stereo, so go figure. The last chapter for now as being thoroughly bummed out and waiting for parts to arrive for the SCD there wasn't much to do but cruise the web for new ideas. Kern can now install the SuperclockII that is rumored to substantially outperform the original superclock. If it does, that would be good enough to be scary. There are also some new mods he can do to the transport board which one assumes tightens up the behavior of the linear motor. Then I discovered an entirely different philosophical approach coming out of Germany from a company called Vacuum State. They make a board that bypasses almost the entire analog section and the standard filters. There's a guy in the USA named Warren Gregoire who will do this as well as upgrade some caps on the digital board, all news to me. I have never heard the Vacuum State board, but it is reported to be another major leap in performance. This is the wildest part of all. The Vacuum State board operates in parallel to the standard analog board, so you will have a double set of analog outputs, one coming off the original analog board, or as tweaked up as you please by Kern, and you can simultaneously have the Vacuum State driven outputs running and switch bacak and forth. At least thats how Warren Gregoire explains it. Whatever you feel like, the SCD-1 is an impressive starting point that can be used as is as a quite fine player, or it can be taken in many directions by the upgrade crowd. Now I think of it like a classic car sought after by collector-rebuilders that has more than one final interpretation.

Strengths:
The SCD-1 has serious first rate engineering in it that is not found in many similar products. It has an outstanding transport mechanism that is finished like a museum grade work of art and first quality R-core transformers in beautiful rounded anti resonant cans and a fanatic case made of multiple vibration dissapating materials

Weaknesses:
there are limitations and design compromises that aren't visible to the naked eye. It appears that the engineers and the accountants each won a round to get the finished product to market

Similar Products Used:
listen to a wide range of latest and not so latest everything... transports, DACs, cables, U name It

Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
I've only used Sony SCD1 with standard CDs so far. I'm very impressed with the powerful deep bass, the imaging and the detail. All this compared to my previous Naim CD2. However, maybe its not run in yet but whichever filter setting I use I can't seem to tame the sibilance with vocals and the slight sharpness with instruments like the dobro. I'm using new balanced interconnects into a Krell KAV250 pre/power amp combination and Martin Logan SL3s. I've got the Sony on approval for a week. I love everything else about it but I'm wondering whether take it back or if it will tame itself over time.

Strengths:
Detail. Bass - deep, powerful & really plays a tune.

Price Paid:  $4000.00

Summary:
I had the SCD-1 for about a month now. It almost broke my back hauling the box to my apartment and hauling the unit out of the box. It's that heavy!! Initial impression is that the build quality is impressive. And it sure looks good sitting there among my other audio equipment. So what about the sound quality? I made the mistake of listening to it right away instead waiting for it to burn-in. Don't! You should let it run-in probably for a week and then listen to it. CD sound is very good indeed. The sound is detail without the usual shrill and glare. I have never had vinyl in my collection. I started out with CD right from the start. But I can say that, with my limited exposure to vinyl, CD pales in comparison to vinyl. However, with the SCD-1, CD sound isn't CD sound as I'm used to but it sounded altogether more towards vinyl like to me. As I have more CD now than SACD, I can happily say that I can enjoy my CD collection via the SCD-1. Good thing is that in future, I can just add a upsampler and external dac (as a future upgrade...it never ends, does it?) and keep the SCD-1 as a transport. It looks too good (and looks more expensive that the pricetag it has) to be replaced. SACD sound is even better. Compare to SACD, CD soundstage can be flat. It is as though the music is contained within a invisible boundary. Not that the CD soundstage of the SCD-1 is bad in anyway, mind you. I can happily live with it if SACD fails to take off. But with SACD, suddenly the soundstage opened up and you can tell that the artificial boundary has been removed. The soundstage stretches to beyond the left and right of the speaker and way into the back. It appears as though there's no limit how far it can stretch! Playing any one of Jacinta's SACD from GrooveNote, you can sense that she's right there and you can almost reach out to touch her. If CD is more towards vinyl-like for the SCD-1, SACD is the quantum leap to vinyl sound for me! My equipment now: pre-amp: ML 380S power-amp: Krell 250Mc speaker: Thiel 2.3 CD: SCD-1 I was using the Proceed cd transport and Pink Triangle "oracle" dac.

Strengths:
impressive build. SACD sounds fabulous for the pricetag. All the strength has been mentioned by other reviewers here.

Weaknesses:
none