Thread: Views on hardware

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Post by tream December 29, 2003 (1 of 12)
Most if not all of the threads in this forum are about software, which is really what it should be about, since it is the music that counts. However, it would be useful to seek the views and experiences of others when it comes to the enabling technology, since this is a rapidly moving target.
I started on the SACD path when I moved into a new house, had a surround video system built into my family room and for fun threw in a low cost Sony SACD player. My main "reference" system was in a different room. Imagine my surprise when I heard multichannel SACD doing an incredible job of recreating the concert hall experience-specifically the SFS recording of Mahler 1, which to that time was the most realistic recording of an actual concert hall experience that I'd heard. (Still is, come to think of it.) I have been attending the live concerts of the SFS Mahler series and buying the recordings on release, and the SACD's provide an extremely realistic depiction of what I actually heard live.
I had an emergency move just before Thanksgiving (we found toxic mold in the house where we were living) and I currently don't have a multichannel system. It's going to take some effort to get it going in the new house, one of the drawbacks of multichannel. In the process, I'm rethinking the digital front end. Originally I didn't even consider DVD-A but there now are a few issues I'm interested in (Abbado's Beethoven cycle, for example)
An ideal front end would play SACD, DVD-A, HDCD, and CD with upsampling-most likely this is an impossible engineering task. The early universal players optimized for DVD-A, converting SACD into PCM and thus degrading the sound (the reviews uniformly noted that SACD was inferior to DVD-A). The Linn Unidisk seems to have the right engineering approach-enable only the circuit that is being used-but at $11K a pop, and still not solving the upsampling issue, is pretty pricy. I'm going on about upsampling, but I have 000's of CD's and still about 100 SACD's.
The second generation of universal players - Esoteric DV-50 for example - seem to be getting good reviews for both SACD and DVD-A (none have HDCD circuits or on-board upsampling for CD). I haven't seen anything in print yet about the Bel Canto PLayer or the McCormack UDP-1. What I've seen on some of the other universal players isn't encouraging.
So-my dilemma is do I try to find a universal player OR do I get a preamp like the Bel Canto PRe6 (favorably reviewed in Stereophile) that has two 6 channel inputs, and upgrade my SACD player to something like the Sony SCD-XA9000ES, get a separate DVD-A player, and also connect my current CD player (the Cal Audio CL-20 which does have the HDCD circuit) with an external upsampling unit.
Any thoughts or experiences out there?

Post by Dan Popp December 29, 2003 (2 of 12)
Tream,
My experience and my goals are quite different from yours, but I offer some thoughts for you to consider.

I personally don't feel that "upsampling" is all that important. If you've got good PCM D/A converters, working from a solid, low-jitter clock, that's about as good as it gets for CD reproduction. Trying to make one digital signal into another digital signal is usually problematic.

As I've posted before, buying DVD-A products just supports that format, which already has an edge in hardware popularity over SACD. If it ends up killing SACD, would you be content with that result?

If you want a player that "does everything" and does it well, the answer will be expensive. As Scotty said, "I canna change the laws of physics." Or the laws of economics.

Yours,
Dan Popp

Post by zeus December 29, 2003 (3 of 12)
From my perspective, the whole "universal" thing has been a bit of a furphy. Today you can get consumer level players that do everything passably, and a (very) few players that reportedly do a good job all round (like the Teac and Linn). But the latter want a premium for the privilege. Other than space/convenience and the fact that only one set of analogue outputs are required, there doesn't seem to be any real world advantage in putting everything in a single box. And with video still evolving and price/performance plummeting, it's probably not prudent to invest heavily in this. Having to support video would appear to have kept a lot of small audio-only manufacturers out of the market as well. Only now have these realised that there's still a market for a dedicated CD/SACD player (even just stereo).

I personally would be more inclined to distribute my dollars were it's needed and go for separates ... but everyone will make their own choices based on individual priorities.

Post by Tireguy December 29, 2003 (4 of 12)
I have listened to nearly every high end digital front end available and the sun rises and sets with the Emm labs(aka Meitner). It is not cheap but it is the best sacd reproduction available- IMO- and argueably the best on redbook as well. Get the DAC6e with a switchman mkIII and the matching transport and enjoy, and sleep sound at night knowing that it is fully upgradeable pending any SACD changes. Ed Meitner is the man behind SACD he has made the technology successful, he knows it inside and out- go to the source instead of someone's "idea" of what SACD is capable of.

Post by tream December 30, 2003 (5 of 12)
Dan Popp said:

Tream,
My experience and my goals are quite different from yours, but I offer some thoughts for you to consider.

I personally don't feel that "upsampling" is all that important. If you've got good PCM D/A converters, working from a solid, low-jitter clock, that's about as good as it gets for CD reproduction. Trying to make one digital signal into another digital signal is usually problematic.

As I've posted before, buying DVD-A products just supports that format, which already has an edge in hardware popularity over SACD. If it ends up killing SACD, would you be content with that result?

If you want a player that "does everything" and does it well, the answer will be expensive. As Scotty said, "I canna change the laws of physics." Or the laws of economics.

Yours,
Dan Popp

Dan, I assume on the experience and goals you are referring to type of music (?)-I looked at your reviews and saw the AK-US "Live" and The Police. I'm a huge fan of classical, but two SACDs that have spent a lot of time on my system are the AK-US "Live" which I think is terrific, and Johnny Cash's "Silver" - ditto.
Cheers

Post by tream December 30, 2003 (6 of 12)
Tireguy said:

I have listened to nearly every high end digital front end available and the sun rises and sets with the Emm labs(aka Meitner). It is not cheap but it is the best sacd reproduction available- IMO- and argueably the best on redbook as well. Get the DAC6e with a switchman mkIII and the matching transport and enjoy, and sleep sound at night knowing that it is fully upgradeable pending any SACD changes. Ed Meitner is the man behind SACD he has made the technology successful, he knows it inside and out- go to the source instead of someone's "idea" of what SACD is capable of.

Interesting thoughts - I have heard about Meitner (or Emm) in The Absolute Sound, and also in discussions with Peter McGrath of Wilson Audio. I'd love to hear the gear. I emailed Emm yesterday to see if there is a dealer nearby (I live in Silicon Valley), as they don't list dealers on their site. They advised me to call the US distributor, which I will do.

After posting this I ended up talking to Emm's US distributor, Jonathon Tinn at Blue Light Audio in Portland (503 221 0465 for anyone who wants to talk to him) and spent a good while talking to him about the Emm gear. There are no dealers in the US outside of Blue Light (he is a dealer as well) at the current time. Emm currently offers a DAC and a preamp, but no transport-they expect that to be released in March or so. They had been modifying the Philips unit which is no longer available. The equipment is expensive - in the dcs range. Reviews have been uniformly excellent and he did offer a money back trial.

Post by Dan Popp December 30, 2003 (7 of 12)
tream said:

Dan, I assume on the experience and goals you are referring to type of music (?)-I looked at your reviews and saw the AK-US "Live" and The Police. I'm a huge fan of classical, but two SACDs that have spent a lot of time on my system are the AK-US "Live" which I think is terrific, and Johnny Cash's "Silver" - ditto.
Cheers

Tream,
What I meant by "different experience and goals" is that you are coming to the party from the video side and multichannel is important to you; I am coming from the audio side, and I want to improve my stereo rig before I even think about MC, if ever. From my perspective, the universal player is a non-issue. SACD and CD are more than enough, especially if getting a broader range of options on a player means diminished quality on any of those options.

Thanks for the opportunity to clarify. I hope my initial comments were helpful even though you and I are expecting and wanting different things from our hardware.

Post by tream December 30, 2003 (8 of 12)
Dan Popp said:

Tream,
What I meant by "different experience and goals" is that you are coming to the party from the video side and multichannel is important to you; I am coming from the audio side, and I want to improve my stereo rig before I even think about MC, if ever. From my perspective, the universal player is a non-issue. SACD and CD are more than enough, especially if getting a broader range of options on a player means diminished quality on any of those options.

Thanks for the opportunity to clarify. I hope my initial comments were helpful even though you and I are expecting and wanting different things from our hardware.

Dan, I'm an audio guy too, but got into SACD almost by accident through my video rig. I'm now looking to upgrade my audio system to incorporate SACD. I recommend strongly to you that you hear a good multichannel set up before thinking about your stereo-there's a bloom and ambience in multichannel that you'll never get in stereo.

Post by Dan Popp December 30, 2003 (9 of 12)
tream said:

Dan, I'm an audio guy too, but got into SACD almost by accident through my video rig. I'm now looking to upgrade my audio system to incorporate SACD. I recommend strongly to you that you hear a good multichannel set up before thinking about your stereo-there's a bloom and ambience in multichannel that you'll never get in stereo.

Tream,
I think I will do a thread sometime on why I think stereo rocks, but in the meantime - he asked with tongue in cheek - where would you suggest I go to hear a good MC setup? I've been listening to THX-approved-optimized-and-blessed systems at the movies for years and I haven't heard a good one yet. 8-) But to each his or her own. As long as we can agree that Quality of sound is paramount, then we can disagree about Quantity.

Dan

Post by tream December 30, 2003 (10 of 12)
Dan Popp said:

Tream,
I think I will do a thread sometime on why I think stereo rocks, but in the meantime - he asked with tongue in cheek - where would you suggest I go to hear a good MC setup? I've been listening to THX-approved-optimized-and-blessed systems at the movies for years and I haven't heard a good one yet. 8-) But to each his or her own. As long as we can agree that Quality of sound is paramount, then we can disagree about Quantity.

Dan

Dan, depends on where you live. Here in the Bay Area, I know that SF Stereo (locations in SF, Mountain View, and Berkeley) has Krell ready to demo in a multichannel environment. I actually met the CEO of Krell, Dan D'Agostino, at the High End show at the St. Francis (outside the Musical Fidelity room, which was an awesome display of two-channel), with the SF Stereo sales manager of the Mountain View store. So, find a good dealer and arrange the audition in advance.
So one of the issues I can see is the THX systems you've listened to, which are optimized for video, and process everything internally into a precooked digital format-which means that even an SACD on a THX system is reduced to no better than CD quality. You need a system that allows for pure analog pass through, if you are hooked up to a system that also does video processing. The Telarc Web site does a good job of explaining some of these issues.
Now I'm going to drive you really crazy-even though I think MC is MUCH more true to a realistic concert hall presentation, what REALLY counts is the quality of the music and the performance, and I spend as much time listening to Schnabel play Beethoven on Naxos reissues as I do listening to the SFS Mahler series on MC SACD.

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