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SACD & other Formats

I'm a vinyl guy and have invested lots of money in my TT rig and listen primarily to vinyl because it can sound so much better than digital.

I want to buy a CDP that will satisfy and understand a well mastered CD can sound good as well. I abandoned red book play back 10 yrs back because it was very frustrating finding satisfaction. Too many poorly mastered CDs that could not communicate the music. Have things improved? I know you can get better digital sound for less $$, but has the quality of mastering improved?

Looking through stores online I see SACDs are getting a lot of new mastering attention, gold CDs are available, XRCDs, etc. Is SACD the direction to look? are the current SACD issues of titles living up to the marketing hype/price? sonically? the key is in the software, availability and mastering.
musichead

Showing 1 response by plato

plato
1,543 posts
 
Things are way better even in Red Book than they were in the first decade of CD playback. I have a couple of pretty good turntables/arms/cartridges and phono preamps mainly because I have a lot of LP records from back in the day.

Although I definitely enjoy vinyl playback on a decent audio system I mostly play CD's these days. The better of the CD recordings sound very impressive--musical and dynamic if you have a nice DAC or CD player.

I personally like the DAC route because these days they include all kinds of digital inputs and you can play from either a CD/SACD player or a laptop, music server or tablet. It's just more flexible and the DACs have more features.

For a CD player you could buy one of the Oppo players like a 105D to start with. The Oppo's will also play SACD and Blu-ray concerts too. Believe me, you need to get with the times... Good Luck :)
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