It's hard to be taken seriously when you're never serious!
But I have to write a little more about the Sony CDP775 CE and SACD in general. Seriously.
I don't have thousands of dollars to throw at a front end anyway, but I also didn't want to get into a new format that had no chance. Last year, I bought the Cambridge 500 for $399 and was very satisfied.
Didn't buy a DAC, either as I figured the next gen of 1 box players would have better DACs.
But lately, I think because the horn tweeter is so much more revealing than the cones I had, I became dissatisfied. Came really close to buying a VPI jr, PT-6, BLue Point combo and some LP's.
Of course, I'd have to build a phono stage and drive around to house sales and sooner or later feel the urge to have a VPI record cleaner and then I'd want a Koetsu.....
At almost the same time, I saw the posts about the 775 being less than $200 at Circuit City and decided to take a chance.What the heck, if SACD dies, it's not a lot of $$$ and I'd still have a CD player.As I posted previously, after about 50 hours, it was a decent CD player and SACD's were just kind of "what's all the fuss about"?
Now however, as the hours have piled up and I have acquired more SACD's my opinion has really changed.
I can see where the 775 would be too bright in many systems but with the PSD2002 rolling off at 13k it's just right. It's a better CD player, in my system, than the Cambridge. And SACD!
I now have some Telarc's: McCoy-Tyner, the Tall Band of Milt Jackson, Ray Brown and Oscar Peterson, should be called Dream TeamII. This is way beyond analog. You don't think so? Try for yourself. Analog, IMHO, is over-romanticised. The RIAA curve rolls off, no way bass is presented as cleanly as digital (the conventional wisdom that tubes don't do bass is a holdover from vinyl days; how many times have you heard, with a Cd front end, "I expected the bass to be lose but it was controlled"?; there's the reason tubes have made a comeback). check out Ray Brown's bass work on this SACD. WOW! And there's the ticks, pops, skips, and mis-tracking, turning up the volume even caused mis-tracking.Sidebar> I'm convinced that 90% of the people that describe a sound as more or less analog-like have never heard an LP. Just another term in the audio lexicon.
With SACD the performers, whether a trio or the LSO are right there in the room. The presentation is so clear there are almost visual-spatial cues that simply force you back in your chair and become immeresed in the sound. And SACD was made especially (!) for horns. What I'm trying to describe is the same low distortion you-are-there presentation that horns give.
The kicker is how good it is at 'redbook' playback. One of the few things I miss about my former life is how my LP rig played the Sheffield Lab recording of Harry James 'The King James Edition'.I truly miss it. VPI, ET-II, NYAL, Muse, Acoustat did something special to that black disc. The CD never came close. But I fired it up tonite and heard, once again the soaring overtones and shimmery 'bite' of Mr. James trumpet. He was 72 when that recording was made. Amazing.And the drum work as well as all the sidemen, outstanding. Hard to find, though.Point being that no matter if Toshiba has this or that next year, or DVD-Q takes over or we listen to those pointy crystal things on the Sci-Fi channel, this player and others of it's type are here now, make incredible music and are dirt cheap. Subtract the $200 price from that of a Classe or Planet and there's $500 left over for software.
Seriouly.
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