confused about SACD

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wilson32

Active Member
Hi, I'm looking for a new mid-priced cd player and am drawn to the Cambridge Audio Azur line. This seems to be a good value in the $600-$800 price range but none of their cd players seem to support SACD. I'm a bit confused about this format as my cheap(<$200) sony DVD player is SACD and Cambridge audio's inexpensive DVD player with a single noname D-A converter is SACD, but none of their "audiophile" cd players are. Is SACD is more of a DVD audio format rather than an audiophile format? what is the general feeling about the future of SACD?

Thanks for your thoughts.
 
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Have you looked at the Oppo-BDP83? It supports SACD, is in your price range, and has gotten amazing reviews.
 
So sorry but I'm still not getting it... Would my Sony SACD / DVD player that I received 6+ years ago as a present still be a true SACD player?
 
Sure...

Are you not happy with it or looking for a change?

The Azur line is fantastic stuff - you might be surprised if one of their newer CDP's sound better then your SACD sony.
 
SACD never really caught on - there are a few titles out there in the SACD but it is basically a dead format and most new titles do not come out in it. So while it does sound better than the "red book" cd format, it is not practical due to it not being adopted as the next generation of audio format. probably the next format will be on line downloads and lets hope they use a higher bit rate like SACD
 
elgato8905 said:
So sorry but I'm still not getting it... Would my Sony SACD / DVD player that I received 6+ years ago as a present still be a true SACD player?
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I can't tell if you're serious or joking....if it plays SACDs how would it not be a "true" SACD player? :scratch2:
 
wilson32 said:
Is SACD is more of a DVD audio format rather than an audiophile format? what is the general feeling about the future of SACD?

Thanks for your thoughts.
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No. DVD-A could also be considered an "audiophile" format if the qualifiers are higher bit depth and higher sampling frequency.

SACD is never going to be as big as CDs if that's what you mean. It's still around, titles are still coming out, but it'll probably eventually die.

Laserdisk is dead, and people still collect/lust after those.
 
whoaru99 said:
Around 6,000 from what I gather.
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Compared to how many CD's? :D And the majority are classical music. I love SACD but only have about 20 discs. I find it hard to find SACD's for stuff I want. When I do buy them I try and buy Hybrid's. I also have a few DVD-A's which are equally as good.

While SACD and DVD-A may not be dead, they are on life support. Too bad. Next up is BD audio discs but don't expect them to gain wide spread acceptance either.

elgato, Sony invented SACD and your player is a real SACD player.
 
Sony was one of the creators of SACD & a lot of their CD & DVD players from the early to mid 2000's had SACD capability. If a machine will play a SACD or SACD layer of a hybrid disc it's a SACD player.


Edit: Some of you are quicker on the keyboard than my Bourbon influenced mind...
 
"Few" was ambiguous. Thought I'd put a number to it.

Yes, there are likely millions of different CDs.
 
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there's a shop by where I live that still get's SACD's, SACD is now kind of a boutique item. Though I have found a fair amount around at half price books.

The way SACD can be decoded, Esoteric is one brand that leaves it in it's pure form has a dedicated chip on one model and converts it to PCM on an other model. Mcintosh on their CD/SACD players has a separate or separate part of a chip. I got tired of SACD and DVD-A always being compared to Vinyl so I just bought a record player. Vinyl the real dead format. :angel::D

Mark
 
59volvo said:
SACD never really caught on - there are a few titles out there in the SACD but it is basically a dead format and most new titles do not come out in it. So while it does sound better than the "red book" cd format, it is not practical due to it not being adopted as the next generation of audio format. probably the next format will be on line downloads and lets hope they use a higher bit rate like SACD
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whoaru99 said:
Around 6,000 from what I gather.
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It's not really accurate to say SACD never caught on, unless you're putting it in the context of mainstream mediums. Still, 6,000 titles is not something to sneeze at, I think whoareu99 makes a good point in saying that. In the hi-fi audio community it has a sizable following and new titles are released all the time. It's still a niche thing, but it's certainly not dead. It also seems geared towards multi-channel audio, which is something a lot of audiophiles who enjoy classical seem to use.
 
whoaru99 said:
I can't tell if you're serious or joking....if it plays SACDs how would it not be a "true" SACD player? :scratch2:
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I'm sorry... I just looked back at how my post was written and it did seem kind of snooty. I really was serious about the question though. The truth is that I've never really used my SACD/DVD player for anything other than a DVD player. Quite honestly up until last week I never realized it was an SACD player... Just a DVD player. In my system I use a basic CD player (A Denon DCD-815) and I love the way it sounds. I've always been kind of in the dark about the whole CD format in general and I just kind of figured that the SACD players would make regular CDs sound better too. Having thought this was the case I've been scouring CL looking for a reasonably priced SACD up until last week when I realized I already had one. I still haven't tried hooking it up to my stereo system just yet and now I'm not really in that great of a rush to do so. If it's basically a completely different format and it won't make my regular CDs sound any better I'll probably just leave things the way they are because my Denon sounds pretty damn good:yes:. I can't even imagine the Sony sounding better.
 
elgato8905 said:
I'm sorry... I just looked back at how my post was written and it did seem kind of snooty. I really was serious about the question though. The truth is that I've never really used my SACD/DVD player for anything other than a DVD player. Quite honestly up until last week I never realized it was an SACD player... Just a DVD player. In my system I use a basic CD player (A Denon DCD-815) and I love the way it sounds. I've always been kind of in the dark about the whole CD format in general and I just kind of figured that the SACD players would make regular CDs sound better too. Having thought this was the case I've been scouring CL looking for a reasonably priced SACD up until last week when I realized I already had one. I still haven't tried hooking it up to my stereo system just yet and now I'm not really in that great of a rush to do so. If it's basically a completely different format and it won't make my regular CDs sound any better I'll probably just leave things the way they are because my Denon sounds pretty damn good:yes:. I can't even imagine the Sony sounding better.
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I recommend you forget the SACD thing, that's a different format, and some SACD players don't even play normal Redbook CDs IIRC. It sounds like you just want a better CD player, so you're best bet is to look at one of the better offerings from Cambridge, Rega, Jolida, etc, and forget SACD unless you only listen to classical and jazz and/or you're just very interested in getting into that particular format.
 
a better use of funds would be this:
If your current CD player has a digital out - digital coax or hdmi then get yourself a DAC and run your cd player thru that and then to your amp. or if your cd player does not have a dac go get youreslf an inexpensive CD player with digital out and connect to a DAC. It really does not matter whether you get a really expensive cd player or not as the cd player is just a "transport" to send the 1's and 0's to the DAC which will do all the processing to make it sound better. You will be amazed at how much better sound is possible.
 
59volvo said:
a better use of funds would be this:
If your current CD player has a digital out - digital coax or hdmi then get yourself a DAC and run your cd player thru that and then to your amp. or if your cd player does not have a dac go get youreslf an inexpensive CD player with digital out and connect to a DAC. It really does not matter whether you get a really expensive cd player or not as the cd player is just a "transport" to send the 1's and 0's to the DAC which will do all the processing to make it sound better. You will be amazed at how much better sound is possible.
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I could not agree with you less. Yes there are a few cheap tranports that have relatively have low jitter, and will sound pretty decent when paired with a good DAC, but most sound simply terrible when paired with a good DAC in my experience.

The ones and zeros may come out in the correct order, but if their timing is varied even the slightest amount, it impacts the waveform that is reconrstructed by the DAC. It has never ceased to amaze me how influential a factor this really is with Digital Audio.
 
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Thanks for the input guys. I really am very happy with the Denon for now. I've actually tried a lot of different CDPs before this one (many very good ones...) and I have to say this one sounds the best to my ears. Especially considering the money I paid for it. I was really only interested in getting the SACD because I was curious to see how much better it could possibly sound.
 
elgato8905 said:
Thanks for the input guys. I really am very happy with the Denon for now. I've actually tried a lot of different CDPs before this one (many very good ones...) and I have to say this one sounds the best to my ears. Especially considering the money I paid for it. I was really only interested in getting the SACD because I was curious to see how much better it could possibly sound.
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It seems to me - though I admit I don't have an SACD player and haven't heard one - that this is one of those things you can get into relatively cheaply, but to really hear what the format is capable of, you'd probably have to invest quite a bit.
 
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