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In Reply to: Do You Still Have The XA777ES? posted by Robertc88 on March 13, 2007 at 08:09:55:
Trying to decide whether to mod a 5-year old machine (the XA777ES) or go for the latest/greatest. SACD duties are currently handled by an overachieving Sony cheapie (DVP NS500V) which stunned me by outperforming the big Sony. No, I can't believe it either.
Follow Ups:
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But see below.
In that case, mod the NS500V! :) Or you may want to inquire on the hi-rez forum for opinions from others who have done so.Can you try the player you are looking to purchase against other players you already have?
Okay, I didn't plan to get into this, but what the hell. Here's my rationale, such as it is.I had pretty much given up on SACDs, own well over a hundred of them, don't play them much, figured they sounded little better than CDs. This was via my essentially unmodded XA777ES. I was going to put most of the SACDs up for sale.
First, though, I figured I'd see if this old NS500V, doing ignominious DVD-only duty in a TV setup, could hack it sufficiently as an SACD player to play those SACDs I didn't sell. So I just plopped it on top of the XA777ES and ... what have we here? Damn thing sounded better than okay and -- could it be possible -- better than the "real" SACD payer. This was via $4.95 Music Boy/Petra ICs mind you, while the real one was sporting my interconnects du jour, Oyaide PA-02/Bullet Plugs. When I switched ICs, the little one moved WELL ahead. So I decapitated its power cord, affixed an IEC pigtail and upgraded power cord, and treated it to some decent resonance/vibration control and it sounds GREAT. Oh, and I just ordered the little overachiever a $30 fuse.
Voila, let's sell the big sucker.
And then why not get a really good CD player, since the SACD situation is now under control. Actually, so is the CD stuff, currently via a Tascam CD-RW700 as a transport, into an Ack dAck 2.0. In other words, my tentative decision to go for a Saturn doesn't make gobs of sense, but not making sense is such a hallmark of this hobby I just decided to go with the flow :-)
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