Sony SCD1 vs. Mark Lev 37 as transports

A couple of more points. I spoke to Sonic Frontiers on Friday and they told me their future plans. They are going to be offering an upsampling upgrade for the Processor 3 within two months. Expected upgrade price is $1895. A

They are designing an SACD player, but Sony keeps changing the transport design and they are waiting until things firm up and the transport prices go down before offering it as a product. I suspect this is why we have only seen the Sony and Accuphase SACD players so far. Also, Sony has not released an interface for SACD yet so we won't be seeing any SACD capable DACs for a long time.

Well, let me start this by saying that I already have decided eventually to get the new dCS CD/SACD transport to go with my dCS Purcell and Elgar, so everything else I say is a temporary conclusion. Having said that, I have been running the Sony SCD-1 and the ML 37 into my Purcell side by side for a couple of months, using balanced (on the Levinson) and RCA (on the Sony)versions of the same digital cable, NBS Monitor 0. There is a noticeable difference between them as transports (and yes, I've tried the RCA cable on the 37, and that's not the reason for MOST of the difference). The Levinson is generally warmer, smoother, and has a wider sound front on orchestral music. The Sony has more detail at the frequency extremes, is slightly brighter overall, is slightly more dynamic in its presentation,and is a bit more forward. There is a difference between the two on ambiance retrieval, but it's not clear from recording to recording which is generally better--the Levinson seems to get more on most recordings, but then all of a sudden the Sony will get more convincing ambiance on a particular disc than the 37 does. The real point isn't which one is "better"--I marginally prefer the Sony--but that as a transport the Sony is completely competitive with a $4000 Stereophile Class A rated component. In case anyone is interested, I've posted the Levinson for sale here on Audiogon, for a good price, while I wait for the dCS transport. But for anyone who has a broken-in SCD-1 and a good DAC, I would just invest in a type quality digital cable (unless, of course, you're like a friend of mine, who goes nuts waiting for the Sony to acces a disc. I suggested to him he needs a shrink, not an audio dealer).

... great post Mgottlieb. I agree that the DAC market will be agitated for a while with more high end offerings and also that the Sony is a decent $4K transport for Redbook. Glad to see you've A/B'd it against other top transport(s) and seem to also conclude that balanced on the SCD-1 is not superior to RCA (if I read you right) given equal high end cables. Please let us know how the new DCS sounds with the Sony front end.

To clarify, I tried both balanced and single-ended versions of the same cable on the Levinson, to make sure I wasn't attributing what were actually cable diferences to the transports. The Sony only takes RCAs.

Oops, sorry--the Sony's digital out only takes an RCA digital cable.