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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.
128x128musichead
68pete
1,001 posts
 
i feel some SACD our very good and some not good. the same with red book , Gold, XRCD, K2 cds.They are getting better over all but still a lot of clunkers. what you play them back on does make a big difference.
good luck
mcgal
199 posts
 
To my older ears I prefer vinyl over everything else. The main problem for me with vinyl is that there is not to much newer music that is available. I then must use SACD/CDs. I tend to not listen to digital and analog during the same listening session since I do prefer the sound of vinyl. That being said, there are great digital recordings out there and terrible records.
highendbob
4 posts
 
SACD is the way to go IMHO. Buy the Oppo 105 and have Modwright instruments give it the full mod. The player becomes a giant killer in multiformat players. I have one as well as the 25k EMM labs XDS1 they are closer than they should be for the price difference.

Good luck
ptss
1,964 posts
 
High end Bob. Could you describe the improvements with your EMM XDS1.
zd542
5,339 posts
 
"03-04-15: Highendbob
SACD is the way to go IMHO. Buy the Oppo 105 and have Modwright instruments give it the full mod. The player becomes a giant killer in multiformat players. I have one as well as the 25k EMM labs XDS1 they are closer than they should be for the price difference."

Why not just buy a player that was made right the first time, like an Ayre 5 series universal player, or something similar? You will also be wasting money on video features that will never be used.
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