Good quality 2-channel SACD player?

[speakerdave]

My very good sounding Philips SACD1000 has died. As some of you may know, who have followed the story of this unthinkable corporate lack of good faith toward its customers, Philips has abandoned purchasers of this player and has stopped fixing it and has stopped making parts available to a custom shop that was modifying and fixing them.

I have been looking around for a new SACD player, and I'm asking for help identifying a model. I think there are certain things I want:

1) Could be two-channel only. Does not need to be also a DVD player.

2) Discrete processing of PCM and DSD all the way through the DACs.

3) Solid construction with attention to detail.

4) High quality power supply

5) High quality audio section. Could be tube output, but I'm not particularly in favor of that.

6) Upsampling PCM to 24/192. There is one player I know of that upsamples to DSD, but it is $14,000. Oh, that reminds me--

7) Reasonable price.

I say two channel is OK because it seems that the play-everything players have a lot of complicated video features I don't need. I'd like a simpler player designed with concentration on good two channel audio. Unfortunately most of that type of player are "audiophile" players and absurdly expensive.

I am aware of the Music Hall Maverick. Does anyone have experience with this machine? Or the Xingdak SCD-2? Are there others in that price range? There seem to be some good ones in the $3000 range, but I don't want to go that high.

Thanks for your help.

David

[Steelyfan]

There is a very reputed factory in the Netherlands that modifies
Philips players so maybe they can supply you some parts or help you in another way, it is called Van Medevoort www.audioart.nl however I myself have no experience with them

Good Luck !

[Steve K]

Sorry about your Philips. Too bad because they used to make wonderful players.

I recently had an occasion to test audition Denon's and Marantz's newest $1300 (oh, I'm in Tokyo, and these list for 150,000 yens) players, and found that while their SACD output showed a little more clarity and delineation when compared to their normal CD playback, I felt the normal CD output sounded much better on my five year old Arcam FMJ CD23 player. IMHO, SACD/CD combo players in the $3000 range finally start showing worthwhile differences in sound quality between the two formats, without sacrificing normal CD sound.

It's when I auditioned Denon's top-of-the-line, $4500, DCD-SA1 that I was truly impressed with SACD's potential. Needless to say, its redbook CD output was topnotch. However, as I only have a couple of SACD discs which I got to try with an universal DVD/SACD/CD player from Sony, I'm not yet ready to dish out that kind of money.

Having said that, I'm also convinced that SACD will become the standard format in the near future. I'm figuring another year or two for SACD album prices to come down to more reasonable levels, for more titles to be reissued as hybrid SACD/CD discs (at least during this transition phase), and for player manufacturers to reduce the costs of implementing SACD playback. Until then, I may invest in a 'used' Linn Ikemi (if I'm able to get a good deal) to get the most out of my CD collection.

Good luck!

[speakerdave]

Thanks for your response. One of the things about the SACD1000 was that it did such a damn good job with regular CD that it caused me to accept that medium for the first time, really. But because it also did an HONEST job with SACD the differences were obvious.

Unfortunately for those who want SACD to succeed (myself included) there is some cheating going on with the way some SACD discs are being produced (mastered in PCM and then upsampled to DSD rather than being recording in DSD, for example) and reproduced in some players (down-converted to PCM before conversion in the DAC's). So we hear these responses about SACD in which the distinction from PCM is not great. Believe me, it is not subtle.

I hope you're right, that SACD will become the standard. The Hybrid disc is the one thing that will make it possible, I think.

Anyway, I'm still looking.

David