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In Reply to: Re: George Thoroughgood SACD reviews posted by DKY on December 24, 2003 at 09:53:37:
...was it your player?I've heard this sort of description of the difference between the CD and SACD layer from other people quite often; yet in many cases I don't hear the same thing.
One possible reason is that my Redbook CD rig is top-notch, to the point where an SACD must be truly head-and-shoulders above its CD cousin to make a noticeable difference on my system. It's been my experience when auditioning or listening to various SACD players that the emphasis is on SACD playback; their Redbook playback is usually somewhat inferior to their SACD playback.
Could this be why you found the SACD layer to be better than the CD layer; whereas I found them to be too similar to make the SACD layer stand out?
Follow Ups:
my player is a SA-14. I know its red book is not up to the level of its SACD performance but it does not totally suck either. The rest of my system/room is definitely way better than the SA-14 so any differences to be heard are readily apparent the good and the bad. I had a Teac DV-50 in the system for a day with some friends and my general impression between CD and SACD still would apply there as well.I have also noticed over the years that different people hear different things in different ways and respond accordingly. What stands out for one person is a wash for another. As an example a bud and I were listening to an external dac a few weeks ago on the system and he liked what he heard and decribed the presentation as cozy and warm. I did not get that impresssion at all. I found the DAC rolled off and very flat sounding with no dynamics. Go figure ?? I have also noticed that some guys tend to build systems that make all recordings sound similar or shall I use the word pleasing and in the process their system can not clearly show the differences between formats or recordings.
I have listened to top notch (hyper expensive Levinson, Wadia, Theta Digital)red book performance on various occassions for hours at a time and I have yet to hear what SACD does on such a regular and effortless basis. I know having a better red book player would tighten the gap in certain areas of performance but I do not think it can make up for a format which just does not have the data in the bits to begin with.
One of my next upgrades I want to entertain is a better front end to bring it in line with the rest of the system but I still do not see a all in one player (CD/SACD) that is substantially better than the SA-14 to justify the 5-8K investment at this point. Maybe in a year or two when more quality universal players start to become the norm I hope.
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