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