For best CD playback is SACD needed?

Hi-end Sony SACD is Stereophile Class A and can be brought to level with a $5-6K outlay with purchase and then modification from folks like Dan Wright that make the equivalent to $20K offerings from Linn,Meridian,etc.
Sony,Marantz,and Denon are all good stock performers at reasonable prices.And all three have a number of hot rodders.Now you have to think about some "HD" obsolescence.
But ones Red Book CD,and SACD's still sit thier so if your ready to go do it and it another type of discs sticks (SACD seems to be cooling off and may be dropped as have so many other formats.
Cheers
Chazz

It sounds as if you want the answer to be no, SACD would not be practical. However, I would say yes to SACD for two reasons. First of all you say you want to significantly upgrade your stereo AND digital is your only source. Secondly, you listen primarily to Classical and Jazz.

Well it just so happens that SACD is sonically superior and the easy (re: cheap) way to significantly upgrade your stereo. By cheap I mean to say that a $500 SACD player will sound better on SACD than a $5000 redbook player will sound with the same RBCD. You can never recover information that isn't there in the first place. You can also choose to listen with your mind, and let the scientist/engineers tell you what you can and cannot hear, or you can listen with your soul and KNOW what you hear/feel.

Also, though SACD new releases are diminishing, Classical and Jazz represent roughly 73% of the current SACD catalog. I would also estimate that these two genres represent roughly 90% of the new releases.

Cheers,
John

BTW, vinyl is my preffered source, SACD second, and RBCD third.

I recommend SACD even at this date because even if you can't hear a difference between a Stereo SACD program and its redbook counterpart (I can hear a big difference, by the way), you surely can detect a monumental difference between a multichannel SACD program and a stereo redbook version, if you're willing to set up a multichannel playback system. Amazon.com has thousands of used SACDs available at a fraction of their list prices. I have bought hundreds of them and have enjoyed them immensely.

An article by Kal Rubinson in the current Stereophile suggests HDMI may be a solution to multichannel without the mass of cables. Adding 3 more cables has been holding me back. I enjoy mostly classical, baroque, and jazz, and an occasional large orchestral work, especially Mahler, and find a ready supply of superb SACDs.

db

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.