Stereo-only SACD Players. What's The Point?

AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
What's the point of stereo-only SACD players,especially astronomically priced ones? Take,for example Marantz's SACD 10 player,price approximately $15,000.. For that price,you could nearly buy FIVE Magnetar UDP-900 player(Price $3200).
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Then again some whiskeys are great at 10, some 12, some more, some less....hopefully if one is doing a 20 plus year version, it's a batch that's well worth it.
 
N

noob0804

Audioholic Intern
The only advantage of SACD was that it was an early multichannel format. In terms of two channel performance it has zero advantages over CD.

Editing in DSD is so complicated and costly it is next to impossible. So fairly shortly everyone including one of the principle proponents BIS, converted to PCM and then back to DSD. As I think many of you know that DSD, and by extension, SACD was a totally bogus construct of audiophool mania, and based on totally bogus science, with zero advantage over PCM, in fact had significant shortcomings. It was a totally unnecessary development that actually set back the adoption of multichannel PCM. It did set back multichannel audio. If it had not happened there would have been multichannel audio only PCM discs aplenty.
I agree. I personally cannot tell the difference between CD and SACD layers in the disc, but (big but) I notice that albums released in SACD (referring to classical music only) tend to get the royal treatment in terms of recording and mastering, therefore in general, sound glorious. I particularly love the huge dynamic range. I have CDs that sound just as good, and some that sound like crap, but both layers of all my SACDs sound fantastic. My personal listening preference is stereo for music and multichannel for movies. My SACD (an old Oppo that was one of the best purchases I've made in my life) player is connected to my stereo receiver so even when playing the SACD layer I get it downmixed to 2 channels. I don't exclusively buy SACDs, but I see why someone with money to burn wouldn't mind not getting the stereo only player. If $16,000 means as little to someone like a couple of hundred to me... It's all relative.
 
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