Post by scamwb April 8, 2012 (1 of 60)
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I am a log time audiophile and as yet I haven't made the jump to HD audio. As far as SACD (which I am considering)goes. I have to purchase a separate piece of hardware to play SACD's. It seems that there are far less SACD players now then there were a few years ago. Now most of the players are Bluray/SACD combo units and a few SACD only players starting at around $1000 for the Marantz 8004. I am also considering hi res FLAC downloads which only require an FLAC decoding program and a DAC capable of converting the signal. The Jriver Media Center is $50 and there are many DAC's starting at $100. So for around $150 I am ready for playback. On the other hand if I go the SACD route it's a cheapo Pioneer Bluray or Sony Bluray but I suspect the quality of the audio is inferior to a good stand alone SACD player and that kind of defeats the purpose of going to HD quality audio. As I understand and I may be wrong the SACD signal is outputted by a HDMI cable to a receiver or by an analog two channel to an amplifier or preamp. The quality of the signal will be determined by your decoding of your SACD player. There are many SACD titles out there considering the format has been out since 1999. It would seem the way of the future is FLAC whereby the companies could have their own websites and sell direct to the consumer like NAXOS does. SACD will always be a limited market considering the cost of the player and the increasing ease and proliferation of digital medium. I think SACD had its chance in the 2000's and now it will be relegated to a niche market. I suppose if I was considering SACD years ago when hi res FLAC was not an option it would have been a no brainer but now I am undecided but leaning towards hi res FLAC.
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Post by M_Dixon April 8, 2012 (2 of 60)
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In my experience there's a much greater amount of music available on sacd compared to what's currently available on 24 bit flac files, especially if you want multichannel. That alone is reason enough to go for it.
Then again, who knows what things will look like in 5 years. Eclassical, itrax, and hdtracks all have decent and growing catalogs, though again multichannel is sometimes sparse.
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I was in the same situation as you a few months ago. I didn't want multi channel so went for a good cd/sacd player bought as exdem so well under £1k. This gives me excellent sacd playback as well as much improved playback of RBCD over my previous Quad cd only unit. I also bought a VDAC to cover downloads. You don't need to purchase a player by the way, there are plenty free ones and even Mediaplayer will suffice with a free plug-in. I have bought very few downloads however as I find them generally expensive and I like the thought of a disc sitting on my shelf. Quality wise downloaded 24/96 sound very good but I still think well recorded direct to DSD SACD's can sound more involving somehow. Some companies are producing regular new releases from the very finest of today's artists and as someone rightly said elsewhere on this site some of these will be the recordings of choice for the future. Some here will recommend a blu-ray/sacd set up to be future proof. I would wait and see. If you've got the money a good nearly new SACD/CD player is where I would put it.
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scamwb said:
The Jriver Media Center is $50 and there are many DAC's starting at $100. So for around $150 I am ready for playback. On the other hand if I go the SACD route it's a cheapo Pioneer Bluray or Sony Bluray but I suspect the quality of the audio is inferior to a good stand alone SACD player and that kind of defeats the purpose of going to HD quality audio. As I understand and I may be wrong the SACD signal is outputted by a HDMI cable to a receiver or by an analog two channel to an amplifier or preamp. The quality of the signal will be determined by your decoding of your SACD player.
Agreed, the quality of the SACD hardware and the means by which DSD is decoded will play a big part in the quality of sound, but to be fair, how good would your high Rez FLAC files sound on an equally cheap media centre and DAC of the type you mention? I dought $150 worth of gear would do justice to those FLAC files either, and lets not forget that although Blu Ray players in the main are hardly audiophile machines, something like the Jriver most certainly wont be.
If you are looking to transmit DSD/converted PCM digitally over HDMI then the source players quality becomes less important anyway, however I do accept that in order to do decent internal decoding of DSD you would need to spend a reasonable amount of money to achieve that. However I expect a decent expendature would be required to play back FLAC files and have them converted to analog in the best possible way, so its horses for courses really. Yes playback of FLAC can be done cheaply, but is the end result any better?
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Post by Claude April 8, 2012 (5 of 60)
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scamwb said:
I am also considering hi res FLAC downloads which only require an FLAC decoding program and a DAC capable of converting the signal. The Jriver Media Center is $50 and there are many DAC's starting at $100. So for around $150 I am ready for playback.
No need to pay for music file playback software. One of the best is free
http://www.foobar2000.org
However, I doubt any $100 or $150 DAC will sound good.
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scamwb said:
Now most of the players are Bluray/SACD combo units and a few SACD only players starting at around $1000 for the Marantz 8004.
Marantz SA-8004 isn't an "SACD only" player, the unit can also serve as a USB DAC.
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Post by SnaggS April 8, 2012 (7 of 60)
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scamwb said:
I am a log time audiophile and as yet I haven't made the jump to HD audio. As far as SACD (which I am considering)goes. I have to purchase a separate piece of hardware to play SACD's. It seems that there are far less SACD players now then there were a few years ago. Now most of the players are Bluray/SACD combo units and a few SACD only players starting at around $1000 for the Marantz 8004.
Theres those Denon Anniversary players at %40 off which have a DAC input. The Yamaha cd-s1000 can be had at good prices. A second hand Sony or Marantz would be good. You also have an Entry level Sony XE800 or something which will sound nice. Start somewhere and move forward.
96/24 sourced material is with a few exceptions, the least you get from SACD, it just goes up from there. And theres are thousands of titles to choose, a real depth of hoice.
Thats why its worth it.
Daniel.
PS. I assume youve planned your upgrade path for digital downloads, chosen the dominant standard etc, also dont forget off-site backup storage and rotation should some break into your house and steal your drobo. Drobos are noisy, so youll need to run network cabling and hide it somewhere. You will end-up with a mini IT server room and all the associated responsibility. My power bill also went up alot too. Lots of hidden costs and effort.
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Hello,
It was always a niche market and a failed format. Any format that only consists of one type of music, and nearly zero buy-in from the recording industry is always going to have the tiniest of markets.
Sony was probably using it largely as a R&D tax write-off that could've paid big dividends if adopted. Clearly, they had little interest in its success, learning none of the lessons of Beta in the video realm.
The only "good" SACD players were/are $5000+ players that also do redbook well. As Sony purposely made their redbook sections sound bad in order to emphasize SACD sound. As we have seen, poor to mediocre SACD recordings are not really better than "great" redbook recordings.
If Sony would've given away more hardware and licensing, then the recording industry would've been more likely to adopt SACD for its copy protection. But, the industry has killed itself with their horrible, arrogant, reactionary, and punitive business practices: so good riddance to them all.
The only people who "shine" in this whole mess are those dedicated manufacturers who are designing and building multi-functional, and SOTA playback equipment. Those are the labors of love that will last for a few people and their friends, making great recordings, and great playback equipment in their garages, for sale to 100 or so people.
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scamwb said:
It would seem the way of the future is FLAC
FLAC was considered the format of the future 5 years ago... In 10 years it will still be just that, "the format of the future".......
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scamwb said:
I am a log time audiophile and as yet I haven't made the jump to HD audio. As far as SACD (which I am considering)goes. I have to purchase a separate piece of hardware to play SACD's. It seems that there are far less SACD players now then there were a few years ago. Now most of the players are Bluray/SACD combo units and a few SACD only players starting at around $1000 for the Marantz 8004. I am also considering hi res FLAC downloads which only require an FLAC decoding program and a DAC capable of converting the signal. The Jriver Media Center is $50 and there are many DAC's starting at $100. So for around $150 I am ready for playback. On the other hand if I go the SACD route it's a cheapo Pioneer Bluray or Sony Bluray .....
The Oppo players via HDMI into a high quality pre/pro with Audessey room correction software can give amazing results.
I have a Sony SCD 9000 ES multi-channel player into a Bel Canto Pre-6. This is a multichannel system centered on my old Stereo comprised of Apogee Duetta Signatures driven by a Musical Fidelity P-270.
The enhanced system (multichannel) is vastly superior to the stereo even though the main components (L & R speakers and basic amp) are common to both.
Then I invited myself to Fitzcarldo 215's abode to audition his system with and without Audessey. Without the room correction applied his system was very like my own (surprisingly - since the speakers are wholly different, although both are dipoles)
But with room correction, his was immediately much cleaner with much more air around the instruments, much more like being in the concert hall.
That last - being in the concert hall - That is why bother. If you don't care about acoustic music, then in my opinion it probably is not worth the bother. If you do care about acoustic music, especially classical music, you are cheating yourself badly if you do not bother!
I just purchased an Oppo Blu-ray and SACD player last year and just received my Integra 80.3 pre/pro with Audessey. This will be the start of a second system similar to the one I heard at Chez Fitzcarldo. After that I will probably sell my Sony and Bel Canto replacing them with another Oppo and Integra.
The transformation from stereo to high res multi-channel brings you so so much closer to live sound in a good concert hall, with the best recordings this transformation is astonishing! If that matters, there is your answer.
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