PhrostByte said:

I know most of you will probably look down upon my setup but oh well.. I like the SA-CD's I have and wouldn't mind a nice home setup but don't have any money right now.

So this is how I got into SA-CD.

I bought a Sony MEX-DV2000 car stereo. (Also got the XT-HD100 tuner, which is irrelevant.) So, I realized it could play these new fangled things called SA-CD's. I looked it up on wiki and it looked like something I should try out.

I decided to start with one of my favorite albums ever, Dark Side of the Moon. It sounds really nice in my car. I hear a bunch of things I've never heard before, not in any of those long nights where I would just lay there (sometimes tripping, most times not) and just groove to the sounds. I hear a lot of distinct obscure instruments and sound effects. It's really cool. After that my mind was made up, I was from that point on an SA-CD fan.

I ordered more.

So far I only got one more in, which is Ludacris - Chicken -N- Beer. I haven't compared it to the SA-CD Stereo or standard CD versions yet, but the SA-CD surround version sounds pretty good.

I'm waiting on two others to arrive in the mail. Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral (also one of my favorites of all time), and 112 - Hot and Wet (probably a bad choice, but like the Ludacris album, it was cheap, only $8 shipped.)

I also went ahead and made both a wish list and library list on this site. I wonder if my car stereo can play Dual Discs and DVD-A's too? I tried ****ing (not sure if I can talk about it here) one of the Doors boxed set DVD-A's but it didn't seem to play.

Anyway, that's my story. Feel free to comment! Glad to be a part of the community now. :D

rammiepie said:

Mr. Phrosbyte, welcome to the fold. I only came to sacd April of last year and the cheap but very proficient Oppo DV-HD980 was the catalyst that propelled me into the format. The oppo for $229 plays DVD-A, HDCD, SACDs, CDs and upsamples DVDs to 1080p (thru HDMI). A great budget surround Amp is the Onkyo STR705 which also decodes blu-ray and hd-dvd's Dolby True HD and DTS-MasterAudio If you like pink floyd DSOTM, I 'm sure you will want a copy of Layla (long out of print), but fear not, BMG music and Your Music (a subsidiary of BMG) has it for $6.99 + tax (no membership required) as most of the Elton John SACDs (his early seven). If you love surround, the Layla and the Elton John's are revelations. I have since upgraded to the Parasound D3 Halo (another universal player) which I just purchased from Audio Advisor for $999 down from a list of $2500. It blows away the Oppo (but at a much greater price) and is a stellar DVD upsampler. There are SACD players out there for $45,000.00 but I would rather have a car with a sacd player at that price. Regarding Dualdiscs, because of their thickness some car players may have trouble playing them and unless your player (read the manual) is a universal player, it probably won't play the Doors Perception Box (as they are DVDs). For that, the Meridian 800/861 combo will put the Doors sonically in the middle of your room. Good luck and check out Amazon.com for new/used discs as they have some pretty amazing prices (if you already haven't).