John Lloyd
Second Unit
- Joined
- Feb 1, 1999
- Messages
- 256
I posted this topic at another site, but I wanted to get some more coverage.
I recently started thinking about upgrading my old Parasound CD changer to something a little more state of the art. It seemed reasonable to research changers since that is what I would be replacing. After doing a little research and reading some reviews, I settled on the Sony DVP NC555ES. Since it also offered DVD and SACD playback, it seemed like a good candidate.
Last weekend I happened to walk through Best Buy and noticed that SACD disks were priced competitively against CDs so I picked up a few to help evaluate my choice: Dark Side of the Moon (which I surprisingly did not own on CD), Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Come Away with Me. Of course Best Buy did not carry any SACD players, so I went down to the local audio boutique and ordered the 555ES.
The player arrived yesterday and I sat down last night to evaluate my purchases. My system is relatively high end, but targeted more towards home theater: Aerial Acoustics speakers, Theta Casablanca 2, Parasound 2205 amplifier, Pioneer CLD-99, and a Panasonic RP-91. I was forced to choose 2 channel SACD since the Casablanca does not have a 5.1 input. I used an analog direct passthrogh mode for the 555ES and started listening. I was listening primarily to "Come Away with Me" since I have played that many times on my system in the last year.
While the music sounded great, I was not blown away by any obvious improvements. Does anyone have suggestions for good ways to evaluate SACD against CD?
I recently started thinking about upgrading my old Parasound CD changer to something a little more state of the art. It seemed reasonable to research changers since that is what I would be replacing. After doing a little research and reading some reviews, I settled on the Sony DVP NC555ES. Since it also offered DVD and SACD playback, it seemed like a good candidate.
Last weekend I happened to walk through Best Buy and noticed that SACD disks were priced competitively against CDs so I picked up a few to help evaluate my choice: Dark Side of the Moon (which I surprisingly did not own on CD), Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Come Away with Me. Of course Best Buy did not carry any SACD players, so I went down to the local audio boutique and ordered the 555ES.
The player arrived yesterday and I sat down last night to evaluate my purchases. My system is relatively high end, but targeted more towards home theater: Aerial Acoustics speakers, Theta Casablanca 2, Parasound 2205 amplifier, Pioneer CLD-99, and a Panasonic RP-91. I was forced to choose 2 channel SACD since the Casablanca does not have a 5.1 input. I used an analog direct passthrogh mode for the 555ES and started listening. I was listening primarily to "Come Away with Me" since I have played that many times on my system in the last year.
While the music sounded great, I was not blown away by any obvious improvements. Does anyone have suggestions for good ways to evaluate SACD against CD?