I've been seeing some reference to a device called an SACD player. I've never heard of or seen one of these before. Can anyone tell me what it is and the what the benefits of owning one are?
gofar99 Messages: 1959 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi, They have been around for some time. It is a different way of putting the data on the disk. It is not compatible with a standard CD playback scheme. However many of the better players will play them. Another variation is the HDCD same drill. I have copies of some music on SACD and CD (my OPPO can play both) and the SACD is a bit cleaner in presentation and generally sounds nicer. But SACDs are scarce and likely to never be popular so if your player will handle them fine...but I would not base my choice between two different players on whether one played them or not.
gofar99 Messages: 1959 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi The players are not particularly scarce, but they are not cheap. To make one handle SACD requires more components and additional firmware. Since there are relatively few SACD disks and CD sales are generally on the decline there is little incentive to add the feature to typical players. Listeners tend to fall into two very wide categories IMO. Ones that want some music but want it cheap and ones that want very high quality music and are not too concerned with cost. SACDs and the companion players tend to be aimed at the second group. The improvement in sound quality of an SACD over a standard CD is unfortunately IMO wasted on many listeners (that is another topic though). Digital downloads can fall into either area (low cost or high quality) and the players as you might expect have the same general categories (inexpensive or costly). BTW I'm not knocking the standard players and lower fidelity sound quality as I use disks full of MP3s in my car. The environment there just doesn't warrant better.
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