Posted by Frank Stuppel [ 24.25.213.170 ] on August 17, 2004 at 15:20:32:
A short story….Once upon a time there was an audiophile who lived in San Diego.
His name was Frank. He built a house out of wood and stucco, and lived quietly with his wife.
He was passionate about music, spending all his leisure time listening to his beloved collection of CD’s.
He was also lucky that he had a wife who tolerated his passion, who retreated to a different part of the house when he engaged in his music.
Frank had steadily been building up his system, by carefully upgrading different components. He tried to attend as much live music performances that he could.
When he returned home after one of these performances he was happy when his music system sounded like the live performance.
He was a happy audiophile listening to 2 channel audio.
One day he heard about a new format called SACD. Woe is Frank !!!
What to do ….should he embrace the new format…or should he just be happy listening to his beloved 2 channel CD’s.
At night he tossed and turned….he lost sleep. He lost weight (not really)...his loving wife said to him “What ails you husband”….He replied with a heavy heart” There is a new format SACD...and I don’t know what to do”.
Being a loving wife. and who’s advice he respected, and who after 25 years of marriage he always listened to….otherwise “life could be hell” ….she said to him with a loving voice“ Go my husband, and purchase this SACD that bothers you…and be happy”.
This he did….and they both lived happily ever after.
Cute story….
The other side of this story…how do upgrade to SACD, without loosing the level of performance of your 2 Channel CD’s. With an investment of $1000’s in CD’s, and only maybe 2000 SACD’s in the market. How does one do it?
My CD player that I was using was the Audio Aero Prima, a really excellent CD player, and at $2,200 was a good as many other players costing $3,000 to $4,000. It is very musical, fast, transparent, and effortless.
My research found that the really good CD/SACD players were in the $3,500 to $5000 range. That was the challenge, how do I duplicate the CD portion, get SACD as an extra, for less than the bottom price of $3,500. I knew that there were manufacturers who took a stock CD player, and by upgrading certain critical parts, transformed the player into a component that performed at a much higher audio level. The logic being that the original manufacturer of the stock CD player could only (when trying to sell at a given retail price point) put only so much cost into the components. The manufacturer who then modded the CD player, could carefully change the parts, and not have to mark up the modification 4-5 times (which is standard in the industry).
I decided to purchase the Modwright Sony DVP999ES (Cost about $2,700) as my replacement CD/SACD player, with 14 bit video DVD as a bonus. I had not heard the player before purchasing it. I could have purchased the Denon 5900 instead, but that would have put the price about $4,000. $1,300 saved is $1,300 saved.
The Sony I ordered from Dan Wright of ModWright had all the mods done that could be done.
It is a great looking player with the two output tubes sticking out of the player…real cool.
To the sound…trepidation and anxiety …what would it sound like???
I burnt in the player for about 200 hours, using a 4:1 burn in CD.
Turned on the unit……put on my 4-5 test CD’s….and “relief” …the CD sound was equal to the Audio Aero. What a relief …I was not going backwards in sound. The SACD tests were as expected…better sound that the CD sound, but not much. I had heard CD vs SACD on other players, and the difference was more noticeable. So, this Sony with the Mods had a bigger positive effect on the CD playback, than on the SACD playback.
I did not want to sacrifice CD sound for SACD or DVD convenience, plus my investment was in CD’s….not in SACD’s ( BTW some of the SACD’s sounded really terrible..bad SACD transfer from old original tapes).
Back to the short story…and Frank …now that he had his SACD player, with excellent CD audio sound…..lived happily ever after…..(till the next upgrade)….and because he is a business man and a husband…and has to buy for his loving wife..“Rings for her fingers and bells for her toes”, has decided to represent ModWright CD/SACD/DVD players. So everyone can purchase the ModWright modded Sony player from Frank, and live happily ever after.
Contact Frank if you wish to be in harmony with the muses.
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