Price Paid:  $180.00 from Best Buy

Summary:
Purchased through Best Buy for a pretty decent price. I was in the market for a new CD player and had been intrigued with SACD's. Given the price and with the DVD functionality it seemed like an easy choice. Buil quality is a small issue, feels a bit on the light side and the tray makes some slightly unsettling noises sliding in and out. Once it did get stuck out and I just pushed on it a little bit and all was well. I haven't had any other problems. My guess is they just went with cheapo parts on the tray mechanism.

DVD playing aspec works smoothly with good picture quality and sound. My only gripe is that is does suffer the 'pause syndrome' depending on the DVD. If it does happen, it happens only once and lasts for about a half second...just enough to notice. I can live with it, however, I do find it annoying considering my Apex DVD player never had that issue.

SACD's sound great. This is what I was looking forward to. The detail of the music and being able to actually hear the artists playing their instruments, being able to hear the air in their voices and tonal details and idiosyncracies of their voices trumps CD's without question. I like the Multichannel mixes and wish there were more titles. I like stereo, but I also like the enveloping sound of multichannel too.

CD's play very well also. Sure it's not SACD quality, but the CD's that I do have sound fuller and richer without so much dropoff.

Bottom line, for the price it's worth just the opportunity to dip your foot into the world of SACD. You get a decent DVD player and CD player as a bonus. My only misgiving is that it doesn't play mp3's, but I'm not a big one for playing MP3's on my system anyway.

Setup:
Sony STRDE845
Sony NC650V
Energy Take 5 w/8" Sub

Strengths:
SACD playback is good and the sound from the format is fantastic. Plays CD's and DVD's as well with pretty good results.

Weaknesses:
Build quality a little questionable regarding the turntable tray. DVD pauses generally once during playback one moving between layers on DVD's for a half second.

Price Paid:  $100.00 from Best Buy

Summary:
My system
Harman Kardon Signature 2.0 preamp/processor
Harman Kardon Signature 2.1 5 channel power amp
Harman Kardon Citation 22 power amp
Harman Kardon 670 (Used as phono pre-amp)Harman Kardon ST8 turntable with Shure M97xE (Couldn't afford the V15)
Nakamichi RX505 cassette deck
Tascam 202 Mk III dual well cassette deck
Magnavox CDB650 CD player (Now dead)
JVC XV-FA95GD (DVD-Audio Player)
HK Citation 13 speakers
1 pair Koss CM/1030 (Used as subwoofer)
4 Koss CM/1020s (one for center channel, two as rear surrounds, and one which is used as a computer printer stand)

Background:

Truth be told, I am a vinyl enthusiast. I never really liked the CD format. I grant that a CD may be technically superior in some aspects than an old long playing licorice pizza, but listening to CDs was usually a fatigue inducing experience which required lots of alcohol to overcome.

Background:

This unit plays CDs, SACDs and DVDs. I did not buy it for its DVD playing abilities, although it is a nice bonus.
I bought this unit because my old Magnavox CD player finally died, and I wanted a CD player which handled SACDs. I had read several reviews which said SACD sounded really good, and that the technology and sound were better than DVD-Audio disks. I already owned a 7 disk JVC DVD-Audio player, so I know from personal experience that advanced resolution sound is very much superior to CDs, and better than most vinyl pressings. So, when I was able to convince the sales person to sell me the last open box unit and the floor demo for $225, I jumped on it and sent one to my mom for her birthday. Even if I used it as second DVD player, I came out ahead!

Impressions:

Using GOVI's album Andalusian nights, I did an A/B comparison of the analog output of the Sony to the Digital to Analog converters in the HK preamp. The sound quality from the Sony is not quite as good as the HK. This is noticable when listening to the decay in the tail end of a guitar note or precussion instrument. It is not very noticable, and may be the the result of the fact I am using mid-grade cable to connect the machine to the preamp. The tonal balance is similar and imaging is very good.

SACDs sound very good. My opinion is based on my listening to only two SACDs, Toto IV and James Taylor's Hourglass. Hourglass, in particular, shows the potential of the SACD. With a CD you always feel you have to turn the treble up or down to fix what is wrong with the sound. With the SACD, the balance is right. You can hear the air passing through Mr. Taylors voice box. The difference between CDs and SACDs is like the difference between a newspaper photograph and a high quality 8 X 10 glossy photograph. There is just much more information to make the picture lifelike.

Some SACDs also contain a 5.1 track as well as a stereo sound track. Many do not. While an audio purist may demand stereo and stereo only because you would not be surrounded with instruments on all sides when listening to a concert, I feel the surround sound track is better because there is more information available to reproduce the sound accurately, and it allows the artist more freedom to express himself/herself, wether it be to add a track for ambience of a concert hall or to allow the listener to hear the music in the manner of a member of the band.

Strengths:
SACDs sound great. Holds multiple disks. Excellent array of outputs plus an input for audio from the TV or VCR for external surround processing

Weaknesses:
Bad marketing by Sony.
No progressive scan.

Similar Products Used:
Pioneer DV-333 (DVD player); JVC XV-FA95GD (DVD Audio)

Price Paid:  $160.00 from Best Buy

Summary:
What an excellent way to get into high resolution audio. Even at the advertised price of 188.99 for a multi-disc, multiformat, SACD, DVD, redbook, player this is one heckuva deal.

Initially the suttle nuance of SACD is not as perceptible as advertised, and will depend on up source equipment as well as quality of musical production. But with Terence Blanchard, Erich Kunzel and Cincin Pops Plays Beatles, and Midori's Mozart multi-channel SACD's, the merits of Super Audio's higher resolution becomes evident.

I do detect more warmth and sweetness in the string arrangement such as heard in Kunzel's Performs the Music of the Beatle's track 4; "Michelle". The higher resolution resolves in better dynamics on my mid-fi eqiupment consisting of Kendwood amps and Boston Acoustics speaker combination.

Recommended for someone who would like to experiment with SACD. DTS DVD's also will play well but not DVD-A's. Redbook or regular cd's sound good evidenced by an excellent reproduction of Eva Cassidy's "Songbird" on the surround sound matrix employed on two channel systems.

I am still waiting for proper burn-in to see if there are any more improvements. I have only logged less than 10 hours on both the audio and video. As a whole, I am very happy with the audio player

Picture is the typical Sony picture. Not as saturated or vibrant as the picture represented on my Panasonic DVD-rv31. I have not detected the chroma bug as some have seen on other Sony players. Picture is natural and realistic.

Strengths:
SACD multi-channel capabilities

multipformat (CD-R, DTS-DVD, redbook, SVCD)

multi-disc: you can change a cd while one is playing.

Weaknesses:
Will not play DVD-A (which is understandable)
Anemic audio reproduction at initial play
(average burn in time, will improve as the player's electronics settles)
Analog connections for multichannel

Similar Products Used:
yamaha, sony, panasonic, Norh cd-1 tube,