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Claude said:
Moving back to single layer SACDs means reducing the potential market even more than now. Only hifi freaks would buy them, but no music format can survive on that market alone.
I'm sure that's true - but it always seemed strange to me that "Hi Fi Freaks" as you call us are in such a minority! Even among concert going classical music lovers, the notion of having that kind of sound in the house is, generally, an esoteric notion! It's considered too expensive, and for our purposes here we are even a minority among the so called "Hi Fi Freaks" of this world either due to an ignorance problem or some perverse conservative character of this subset of the population which doesn't accept change readily. Blathering idiots like Sam Tellig and some others in the US publication Stereophile, drive me nuts, with back handed compliments and back stabbing speculative commentary born of ignorance, on SACD and surround sound.
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Post by armenian October 6, 2006 (22 of 30)
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How do you now that "Every and all players sooner or later are going to have serious problems reading the hybrids"? Sony players - which all use the same laser pickup - are known to have the problem, but the other popular brands are much more reliable.
Moving back to single layer SACDs means reducing the potential market even more than now. Not many people are willing to replace all their CD players with SACD-capable machines, and not many are accepting not to be able to play the discs on a PC, copy them to CD-R, or to MP3 for portable playback. As far as usability goes, single layer SACDs are crippled CDs. Only hifi freaks would buy them, but no music format can survive on that market alone.
The hybrid SACD's makes a lot of commercial sense, I am not questioning that, I also realize the SACD layer discs probably will never happen for that same reason. But reading the hybrids requires a level of precision from player transports that is currently not offered or possible.
With conventional CD players we never experienced the kind of problems taht are we now facing with SACD players, even some of the most expensive players are having issues with hybrids. I do not fully understand what the real issue is, but having two layers spaced at microscopic distance requires a level of precision that is simply beyond what the manufacturers are able or willing to produce.
SACD really appeals to hifi freaks anyway, most folks that have and enjoy CD's do not even know what SACD is, so I see no real disaster there.
As for replacing the CD players, why would you do that? the same player would handle both if programmed to do so/
Vahe
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Post by Claude October 6, 2006 (23 of 30)
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armenian said:
As for replacing the CD players, why would you do that? the same player would handle both if programmed to do so/
The problem is with backwards-compatibility of single layer SACDs, not of the SACD players.
Not everyone celebrates playing a SACD in our listening room like we do :-) Some people also want to use their discs in CD-only players in the bedroom, in the car, etc, or lend them out to friends. If the discs only play in SACD players, that possibility will be seriously limited.
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armenian said:
But reading the hybrids requires a level of precision from player transports that is currently not offered or possible.
With conventional CD players we never experienced the kind of problems taht are we now facing with SACD players, even some of the most expensive players are having issues with hybrids. I do not fully understand what the real issue is, but having two layers spaced at microscopic distance requires a level of precision that is simply beyond what the manufacturers are able or willing to produce.
For me, the solution is simple - buy a cheaper player that works fine on all the discs & get loads of SACD's instead...
My first SACD player cost $150 and worked fine & my latest player (top-of-the-line from a mainstream manufacturer) works fine - it simply isn't true to say that people can't/don't make machines that work.
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Post by eesau October 8, 2006 (25 of 30)
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bnimks said:
I've had problems with Philips 763SA, Denon 2900, 3910 and Onkyo DV1000. On Philips and Denon I got new transport , but it only functioned a couple of months and then the players would not read 60% of my SACDs. The Onkyo worked for 6 months before it stopped working. It seems to be a problem if I use the player on a daily basis. The Philips worked for a year, probably because I only had a few SACDs then. Denon players worked 2-3 months before they stopped working and the Onkyo worked 6 months. It is getting rather annoying. Maybe one should forget this technology because it looks like it is a beta version of a unfinished technology. By the way, hybrids are worst.
Hi,
I got a Denon 2900 for three years ago and at the beginning it worked properly.
Then the disc reading performance started to deteriorate slowly, first with hybrid SACDs then DVDs and finally some CDs were no more playable.
When the player was cool at the beginning of a listening session, it played SACDs without problems but in about 30 minutes some records could not be played any more.
Removing the cover helped but that is not, of course, a solution to this problem.
All this indicated that there was a laser power problem i.e. the output power from the disc reading laser gets lower when the device is heating up during use. This is very typical for all optical drives at the end of their lifetime but players at the 1000+ euro price category should not do this after two years.
-> I contacted the local representative in Finland (i.e. Soundata) and they replaced the CD/DVD/SACD disc drive in 2900 and because this is a known epidemic fault in Denon 2900, I did not have to pay for the new drive (but for transportation, work, etc).
Now Denon 2900 seems to work as new. I think this new transport runs cooler. And further it plays the CD side of DualDiscs, too.
If this problem will emerge again, I shall never buy Denon again. It will be time for Pioneer, then I guess.
Denon 2900 and 3910 probable have the same disc transport and they are may show the same symptoms. But are Onkyo and Philps using the same transport, I don't know. But is is very well possible because the disc transport looks very much like is has been subcontacted as a module i.e. other manufacturers may be using the same unit.
best regards,
Esa
PS. this shows how difficult it is to develop and manufacture high quality products. If you buy a very expensive Chinese SACD player with tube amplification at the output, be prepared for further problems ... but that's high end stuff ...
PS2. hybrids are possibly the worst because the have the lowest reflectance with the yellowish filter on them ...
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Post by dvda-sacd December 21, 2006 (26 of 30)
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armenian said:
if this format is going to survive the answer is moving away from the hybrids and produce SACD layer only discs.
In my opinion, the perfect solution would be the SACD+CD formula, used by Lindberg in his Mozart's Violin Concertos.
I had a SCD-XB940 for one day and returned it because of the same problem with some hybrid SACDs. Then I got a SCD-XB790 and it's still working fine; and no problem with my Pioneer universal player either.
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Post by Claude December 22, 2006 (27 of 30)
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As I said it's a problem with only two or three brands of SACD players, one of which being the market leader Sony. It's not a fundamental hybrid SACD flaw. The players need to be fixed, not the format.
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Post by dvda-sacd December 22, 2006 (28 of 30)
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It seems to me that it's not only a problem with some SACD players:
· Firstly, there are some current CD or DVD players that cannont read the CD layer of some hybrid discs.
· Secondly, durability of hybrid SACDs is uncertain.
/showthread/16737//y?page=first
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Post by andrewb December 24, 2006 (29 of 30)
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Claude said:
As I said it's a problem with only two or three brands of SACD players, one of which being the market leader Sony. It's not a fundamental hybrid SACD flaw. The players need to be fixed, not the format.
There is a problem with some players not reading some hybrid SACDs easily - but to put this in perspective I have owned a Sony player, the XA9000ES model, for over two and a half years and now have a collection of about 275 hybrid SACDs. About 6 of these discs often fail to read the contents table first time, and I have to reinsert the disc, two or three times plus fiddle a bit (like going straight to play rather than just closing the drawer), then these discs play fine. The rest of my hybrid discs, about 270, always play perfectly and have never given any problem. I did have one disc which failed to play at all after a short while, and no amount of coaxing could get it to work - however I bought another copy of the same disc and it always plays without any problem.
This problem is very reminiscent of the early CD players when they appeared - some CDs would not play on one machine but would play on others. Eventually all the players became very reliable, and today CD players very rarely have a problem with commercially made RBCDs - hopefully the same will apply to SACD players in the coming years as the technology becomes more standard. But unless one is unlucky enough to purchase a rogue player, it is in my experience only a minor problem.
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Post by Crusty January 9, 2007 (30 of 30)
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andrewb said:
There is a problem with some players not reading some hybrid SACDs easily
For what it's worth, I've got a Sony DAV-S500 and played my first (hybrid) SACD on it last night. Having not played one before, apart from the demo one that came with the system, I wasn't sure what to expect. It sounded like it was playing in stereo; and it was.
I came here (www.sa-cd.net) and searched around, finding this thread.
After repeatedly inserting & ejecting the disc, the system finally recognised it as SACD and played it.
As a tip for anyone else in the same situation I would point out that the display on the DAV-S500 does not indicate anywhere that it's recognised the disc as an SACD one rather than a bog standard CD. A way of knowing that it HAS recognised it as SACD is to set the Sound Field on the unit to anything BUT A.F.D. (Auto Format Detect) this way, when it does recognise it as an SACD, the sound field automatically changes to A.F.D. at which point you don't need to eject it and try again...
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