SACD vs Regular CD's

I would agree with some that you will not best a great CD player with a cheap SACD player. I would suggest the Ayre C5xeMP as a universal source. It does both formats incredibly well. The difference on a good system is definite.

To my ears, some SACDs sound much better than the CD of the same music, others not so much. The quality of the original recording and what happened to it on the way to the SACD or CD have a lot to do with how different the two sound, of course.

There is something I like about the sound of some SACDs though, an ease or flow to the music, even compared to high res files.

To all who have responded, many, many thanks. I do appreciate the responses.

Regards,

AEW

One thing your Meridian has is trifield, which there are few recordings and players that can process it. You might search out recordings that have it. Just something I forgot to mention.

On recordings that were recorded in DSD then downsampled to 16/44 for CD, I found the SACD to be significantly better (for example Perahia's Goldberg variation on Sony, Paavo Jarvi's Beethoven cycle ). Some SACD release from older analogue tape (Living stereo series etc), really depends on the remaster. Some are really good, some are not that much different from CD. Also there are some rip off ie SACD that was upsampled from 16/44 which was a waste.
Personally I found Pentatone SACD to sound significantly better through SACD layer than CD layer as well.
Some of the cheaper, universal player also convert DSD to PCM before going through AD converter which does not help SACD much.
I would look through SACD catalogues first and see if there are enough music in SACD catalogues (preferably with original DSD recordings) that interest you. If yes, it would be worthwhile investigating this option.