Sony XA7ES vs Sony SCD777ES

First time at responding so bear with me. I replaced a Wadia #20 transport with the 777ES. I bought the Sony for the SACD format ONLY with intention of keeping the Wadia for normal CD play. After A/Bing the two for well over a month the Wadia is no longer in my system. Admittedly I am running the Sony through a Timbre DAC when playing standard CD's with great success. As stated above, they (777ES/SACD-1) are slow in loading, but after many months of use, one dosn't even think about it anylonger. A freind of mine just bought a new CD player and he wanted to see how it sounded on my system, when I pushed play at the player it was playing before I turned to go back to my chair, kind of caught me off gaurd, point is, it's no big deal. Lets not forget why we are participating in this crazy hobby, it is about the music. I will continue to be plagued by the slow loading time of these players in return for the excelent results from the sound especially in the SACD mode.......Bob

i see someone rated my post here with some seriously bad negative numbers, and that is fine, if the way soemone wants to do this is anonymous fine, but don't rate me bad just because i passionately like my player and don't want to see potential buyers turned off by people telling him only their negative attriubtes.

Beemer, thanks. i feel better. i love this player as it is.

Hello Kublakhan:

As I've read elsewhere, the Sony SCD-1 with balanced outputs uses a pair of opamps to create the balanced outs, and many have reported that the single-ended outs sound better. Did you know that both 777 and SCD-1 share the same circuit boards with the exception of the balanced outputs!
I have no desire to replace my 777 with the SCD-1.

Hope this helps!

Paul

How important are balanced inputs? I just got a sony 777ES and can't stop listening to it. just wondering how much more i'd get from balanced? any thoughts?

I'll be happy to get rid of my SCD777ES when you pry it out of my cold, dead fingers.

Anyway, at the price these (were) available for, they were a steal. Snooze ya lose! SACD is here to stay, and I'm sold on the format.

Paul

who cares about the loading, i don't think he's asking which one loads faster. and macm is right, if you need balanced inputs you need to either look at the xa7es or the scd-1. as for sound quality which is what your really asking for, it has opened a new door for me. many people like to dog the sacd format right now either cause they can't afford, have never heard it, or are unwilling to change formats. although there are some who may actually dislike the format altogether based on its performance these people are few and far apart. anyways, the sound quality is excellent. all of my cds play equally than or better than my previous player (modded pioneer dv-525). and when you switch to sacd, its a revelation my friend. i think it may be true that you'll hear its benefits more if you have a more higher end system but isn't that true with all players regardless? i mean if you have crap going in, playing on an sacd/cd/dvd/? player, and crap down the line, what do you think will come out...CRAP no matter what format! unfortunately the 777es and scd-1 have been discontinued in favor of lower priced players to appeal to the more average music buyer. they will still offer a hi-end player but it has yet to be released and no one knows anything about it yet. you should check out the hi-rez forum at the www.audioasylum.com site. there you can learn anything you ever wanted to know about this new format and the players that support it. as for a comparison to the xa7es i could not tell, i never heard it. but i couldn't sit back and let these previous posters give you such broad and unhelpful answers.

It's slow at loading EVERYTHING.

I own the XA7ES. Although I've never seen a 777ES, I understand they do not have balanced outputs, only single ended. Just an FYI in case that's important to you. I also have heard that the 777ES can be very slow at loading SACD's.

I owned a SCD777E - it was a pretty good player - sounded best on the custom setting - takes a while to read the disc and determine if it's SACD - sometimes it would not recognize the disc at all. My friend has a XA7ES and it is a really good player for the money - very versatile and he runs into a power amp with no problem.