cAMBRIDGE 840 IS GREAT ON RED BOOKS AND BEATS THE FICKLE SCD. I have its cousin xa777es which has 5.1 outputs also. Having recently heard the 840 I can say it best's the Sony's
The SCD-1 is a very nice looking unit and built like a tank. That alone gives it some value and the built like a tank thing does translate to some performance gains.
It was a better than average player in its day but it no longer is a real contender and hasn't been for some time. Whether it be SACD or redbook.
Mine drove me nuts with disc read problems. It had vsei mods which sounded very good, but it is not worth the headaches, plus parts are getting very hard to find for the transport. The Northstar transport/DAC that I replaced it with sounds even better than the scd-1 with vsei mods.
I ordered mine already so hopefully it does a good job, and I don't think you can ever win anyway technology keeps changing plus this player was way over my budget but I figured for the money it was the best I could score, and I could always use it as as transport later on and get a wadia 150 dac if need be in a few years anyway thanks for the info greatly appreciated.
I still think the SCD-1's SACD playback is the best for the money, maybe not the redbook playback but it is very difficult to beat the SCD-1 is SACD playback.
Paul, Agree with Dgarretson about mods. The SCD-1 is a realy good player/transport that can be upgraded to a great player quite easily. The clock is always a good place to start because jitter, therefore noise, etc is lowered. Darker background always cleans things up a little more.
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