Sony SACD Monsters: Already Obsolete?

I read in the April issue of Stereophile that Sony dropped list price of the 777ES from $3500 to $2500. This sounds like an inventory correction move if they also ceased production (not mentioned in the article however).

Joyful sound,Pioneer has a SACD/DVD -A player that
costs just under $5000. I went to their USA website,but it was not listed here yet.

ok, lets clear some things up. first of all, the scd-1, 777es, and marantz sa-1 have all been discontinued and what is remaining in the field is it. the drop in price was sony's way of saying "we know you'll like this format so we are going to drop the price so more people can experience it." inventory correction had nothing to do with it cause every mail order company that had them sold out in a day and some even had waiting lists (save a few companies who always overcharge). at one point the 777 was available for 1500 but after discontinuation they were hard to find for that and then the ones you did find were $2500+. as for the combom sacd/dvd player, it only plays dvd-videos and chesky dad's. no dvd-audio cds will work with it. the units all use very different transports as well. the 777/scd-1 and sa-1 all use the sony top of the line transport, whereas the 9000es uses a different unit. the one in the the 777/scd-1 will be the same one used in the krell, classe, etc. it is already being used in the $28,000 accuphase. as for being obsolete, i think the term you are looking for is "legend" or "classic." these two units (especially the 777) will definitely be remebered and possibly hold their value very well for some time to come.

in response to the pioneer unit, while it seems great that it does it all, this unit downsamples dsd (sacd) to pcm, so basically all the advantages of sacd are thrown right out the window. it will still sound better than regular cd but even the cheapest model sacd player you can find will beat it in sacd performance.

Adhesiv, if you're still sticking around, I have a question for you. You seem to have some knowledge on the current info. Concerning the Pioneer SACD/DVD-A, why even bother having an SACD player at all? Is the PCM just for digital out? It doesn't make sense Pioneer would produce an SACD player and not provide analog output from the DSD bitstream. I would liken it to using a telephone to transmit Morse Code.