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For best CD playback is SACD needed?

I’m looking to significantly upgrade my stereo. I am planning to use CDs as my only source and I listen primarily to Classical and Jazz. Should my CD player have SACD capability?

I ask this for two reasons.
1. SACD seems to be fading away. Many new high end players (like the Nagra CD player) don’t support it. Most new music releases are NOT in SACD, in fact it seems that the number of new SACD discs is on the decline.

2. Some would argue that even though SACD clearly has better numbers on paper, that in the real world it is impossible even for experienced listeners to hear a difference. I’m referring here to the September 2007 issue of the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society (Volume 55, Number 9).
hdomke

Showing 2 responses by larryi

larryi
4,188 posts
 
If you primarily plan to listen to CDs, then you don't need an SACD player. Any time one makes a machine capable of playing multiple formats, COMPROMISES to both have to be made. The idea of upsampling CD to DSD as an improvement is dubious.

I used to own a Sony SCD-1 (I gave it away to a friend) and replaced it with a very, very good CD player. Given the vastly greater availability of CD material, really topnotch CD reproduction was much more important to me (the better SACD and DVD-A machines did not do much for me as CD players). But, I actually find that a surprising amount of good classical releases are on double layer SACDs, so, a classical listener can find quite a bit on SACD (I've actually bought more SACDs during the time I did not own an SACD machine than during the time I had the Sony).

As for whether the difference between the two can be heard, to me, the difference is easy to hear on machines with dual capability and usually in favor of SACD. But, when a really good SACD player is matched against a really good dedicated CD player, the strengths of the particular CD player can outweigh the inherent advantages of the SACD format.
larryi
4,188 posts
 
Hi John,

I have not heard that many cost-is-no-object SACD or DVD-A players, primarily because there just aren't that many around. The Meitner gear I heard and the Esoteric weren't to my taste. I did not like the somewhat lean and analytical sound, but, this quality was not format specific, which means I just did not like the particular voicing of these particular lines of gear. The full DCS stack I heard was in a system I was not familiar with, but, the sound did remind me of a CD-only dcs stack I heard in a friend's system (smooth, musical, but a touch laid back in terms of dynamics).

What I have concluded is that the superiority of SACD and DVD-A as formats is not so great as to make brand-to-brand and model-to-model implementation insignificant as a factor in the overall sound. I happen to like what Audionote does with CD sound, and I like what Naim does in its top two models (CDS3 and CD555) -- this superior implementation of CD sound means more to me than what I can get out of the few great sounding SACDs I have heard.

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