Beautiful Music, SACD is amazing

None Unless you have lots of wax in your ears.

I have had chance to play this machine and to really listen to it. First you would help yourself a great deal if you had top of the equipment i.e. Excellent Speakers,good cable interconnects, amps and pre-amps, and even a great tube amp or integrate will do.This Sony 333Es will amaze you how beautiful music can be . The Music coming from this CD player is breathtaking. Also the guy who gave this machine a bad review twice should be ashame of himself. He does not know anything about audio he needs to also clean the wax out of his ears.

Similar Products Used:

All SACD players

Sounds great

Took awhile to break in

I first thought that regular cd's sounded terrible on this player. But after awhile, they sounded great, even better than on my Adcom 750 HDCD player. SACD's sound incredible. The $2500 and $5000 players are obviously going to sound better, but the $1200 model sounds real good too. There is a lot of detail. The SACD's and CD's sound very smooth. They don't sound harsh, like in many other players. I'd recomend this player to anyone wanting to get into SACD. I know there will be a $400-$500 player in June, but it is yet to be known how good of a player $400 will get. I give it 4 stars because the more expensive SACD players are even better.

Similar Products Used:

none

Sound and construction

shows the weaknesess in other parts of my system

I have broken in this unit for over 200 hours on both SACD and Redbook CD. Nothing short of stunning! this is one hot unit that plays the incredible medium that is SACD beautifully. The Redbook CD playback is the best i have had and is very much up there with some of the best i've heard.

I believe that those negative posts i have seen on here are mainly due lack of patience and breaking in... the posts said "they bought it after getting an incredible demo at the dealer" but were dissapointed when they got it home. I'm certain dealers don't replace the inner workings of a player and then sell a lesser product. This unit like any other high end unit will only sound as good as your weakest link in the system.... everything matters....A/C power, cabling, isolation from vibrations, amp quality, speaker quality and placement, room acoustics... this unit is the one i have playing when making fine-tuning adjustments to my system.

I have a mid-fi system composed mainly of SONY high-end ES line components with AR308HO speakers and a monster HTS5000 power conditioner. I have mostly higher end interconnects from Monster, but have a custom interconnect being made by Audience (AU24). I use mid-level 12 gauge speaker wires.

On this system..... the 333ES is simply breathtaking!

Similar Products Used:

krell, parasound.

To follow up on my review below, I have to point out that we gave up on the 333 after only about 50 hours' breakin. I regret that I didn't check other reviews first: the Audiogon forum shows consistently that this puppy wants a good 300-hour breakin. The dealer suggested 100-150 but the first 50 hours showed no improvement and we did not hold out hope for a miraculous change. Maybe we should have waited, but you only get a 1-week period (roughly 150 hours) to change your mind so we bailed. So take my review for what it's worth and remember that I just gave up on the 333. The broken-in unit sounded great in the showroom, as did the 777. someday maybe I'll have $1000 to throw at a new player just for the sake of seeing how much it changes over the first 300 hours!

build quality, choice of filters, price

OK sound on regular CD's, long burn-in time

CD sound: good bass, average imaging and depth, dry treble,
somewhat uninvolving
SACD sound: good bass, good treble, slight harshness,
still sounds DIGITAL

Overall, I was disappointed with the sound of this machine.
It is not nearly as musical as my Luxman player on normal
CD's, although SACD playback comes very close.

It might sound better on another system.

Similar Products Used:

Luxman

Great CD player, good sacd player

none for this money

When the price hit $550 that was the end of the wait. I have a very good system in the back of my house. Just two channel with the matching Musical Fidelity amp and preamp A3cr. Yes, it is noisy whan it changes disc but so what. It is a changer. It is well build not quite the quality of the 777. It is exactly the same to the 555 but the multichannel capabilities. You can not do wrong at this price. Just go to the store and buy it.

Similar Products Used:

Sony 777ES.

Adjustable digital filter, Very open sound, Great sound stage, One of the best considering price vs. performance.

No remote power switch or 12v control jack.

This unit has an unusually long burn in time but it’s well worth the wait. It has a very well defined sound stage (this is something that 5.1 channel is lacking). The sound is very open and free flowing almost like it is pouring from the speakers. I was very surprised to find that standard CD’s sounded better on this unit then my California Audio Labs but it was very noticeable. SACD’s are a much better option then HDCD’s and offer better sound. I have read complaints about the noise made by this unit but it dissipates with time. When playing the discs it makes virtually no noise. It seams that there is a lot of reviews about this unit all over the web, some good and some bad. Let your ears and not a review, a friend or salesman tell you anything. If your into Bose speakers and Kenwood receivers this unit is not for you but if you spend the money for good to great equipment give it a listen. I think you’ll be impressed.


B&K Reference 20
B&K AV5125
Paradigm Reference Studio 80 Speakers
Sunfire True Sub Mkll Sub
Monster Z Series 2 Interconnects
MIT Terminator 2 BiWire Cables

Similar Products Used:

California Audio Labs, Marantz, Other Sony ES, (HDCD & DVD Audio)

SACD, inexpensive, good build quality, digital filters.

Cheap tray (yes, it makes noise but I don't really care about that), long break-in time (imaging sounds flat at first and steadily improves)

While imaging is flat (at first), this player is at least as good as the Rotel and getting better. SACD is a nice feature but except for a couple classical discs there is nothing that really appeals to me in the lineup. However, as a standard CD player it is still a great piece for around $700-$800 at most stores (I did a trade-in @$800 because I know the manager) - HDCD would've been nice but only having 4 discs off that type I didn't care too much. The digital filters are actually kind of useful at least in the beginning and with my equipment - we'll see how that works as time progresses and I get new equipment.

Similar Products Used:

Rotel RCD-951, Sony CA7ES, Yamaha some pos 5-disc

SACD Excellent sound, CD is very very good ES means elevated standard. well built.

NONE unless you can't hear excellent sound.

No matter what some of these clowns on this board say negative about this player. I bet they dont have this player, because if the had this player. They would love it. This CD and SACD player is a Monster. awsome sound.

Similar Products Used:

Phillips SACD 1000 Sony Scd 777ES Accuphase SACD Player

A few firmware quirks
A little loud when changing CD's

First, I'm under the impression that a lot of the negative reviews(two bad ones from one person?!?!?!) are due to breakin, incapable system, or constant interconnect trauma(connecting, reconnecting, moving, etc). Either that or maybe it was the music used in the comparison. Heavily processed music or poorly recorded music won't make much difference between players. It will just be different rather than better or worse.

I've been running mine for about 100 hours now so it may not be completely broken it yet, but I like what I've heard so far! This review is generally a review of the Redbook quality of this player as I don't have many SACD's yet. I also don't have any SACD players to compare it to.

I tried a number of players at home, but those didn't even come close to the performance of this player. The Rotel 951 was detailed, but had a huge coloration of the bass that made it very unatural. The Jolida had a small soundstage and the bass rolled off around 50Hz or so(a change in tubes may have fixed this). I won't even comment on my 5 year old Sony megachanger because there is no comparison.

Comparing it to the ones I heard in the store is a mixed bag. The systems varied a lot, so who knows how it would sound in a direct comparison. In general though, it seemed more detailed than any other player I heard. I definitely prefer the build quality and ergonomics of the Sony over any that I heard or saw.

I love the look and feel of the Sony. Its one of the few players that I've seen that actually looks like its worth as much as it actually costs. Every button and knob on the face feels solid and is well labeled. It uses a similar remote that my old Sony uses. I guess they haven't changed this in a long time. Overall, the build quality and remote go a long way to inspire confidence in the player as a whole.

The sound of the Sony seemed very natural. There was no coloration in the sound at all. I heard more detail than I did in any other player in this price range. There was just a rightness to the sound that I didn't find in any of the other <$1000 players.

Its hard to complain that it doesn't sound as good as many much more expensive players, but I'm sure that it doesn't. The SCD777 and the SCD1 are obviously going to sound better, but they also cost MUCH more. My only complaint with the player so far was with the random play mode. It seemed to prefer choosing another song on the same disk over selecting another disk at random. Since it would eventually choose another disk, it wasn't a major problem.

I would have been happy with the sound of this player if it were a single disk redbook player and no more. Add in the 5 disk changer, SACD capabilities, and all the other bells and whistles like disk labels, sound filters, and display options and I think its the best deal in any player costing under $1000. My only regret is not spending a little more and getting the 9000ES DVD player.

BTW, I live in GA, so I couldn't get mine from Oade Bros unless I wanted to pay tax and shipping. J&R's matched the price with no problem!

Similar Products Used:

At home:
Rotel 951, Jolida 603, Old Sony Megachanger
At store:
Creek MKII, Cambridge D500, Musical Fidelity A3, Marantz CD6000