Sony SACD Player SCD-XA5400ES; YAY or NAY?

Happy New Year All,

Sony SACD Player SCD-XA5400ES; YAY or NAY? (around $1,000. usd used)

6 dacs, 3 left/3 right

sends SACD’s DSD out RCA jacks without conversion to PCM.

Upscales CD’s 8x to SACD #s, then out RCA

spinner traverses over fixed dual laser: one cd, one sacd

2010 model: typically 10-12 years old, I see laser assemblies for sale, indicates

a. people want to keep em going.

b. laser problematic

thanks for advice as always,

Elliott

speltz Details Discussions Posts This discussion Message User 5 posts 05-18-2022 at 10:39am Copy Comment URL Report Comment Edit Delete I can confirm that the XA5400ES outputs DSD from an SACD. CD playback is NOT DSD but PCM at the standard 44.1 kHz sampling rate. How do I know that? I’m using the HDMI output of my XA5400ES, connected to the HDMI 4 input on a Bryston BDA-3. (The BDA-3 has four HDMI inputs. Only input 4 is HDCD 2.2 compliant and I found that it was the port I needed to use.j The BDA-3 uses LEDs on the faceplate to identify the sample rate of the incoming signal and to identify an incoming DSD signal, if that’s what the source device is sending it. With CD playback, the 44.1 kHz LED lights but the DSD LED doesn’t.