Mike writes:

>I don't know if SACD is inevitable.  I'm afraid that in this next round
>of advancements in audio reproduction, sound quality will be somewhat
>compromised in order to accommodate home theater.

As long as the SACD people offer two channel and multi-channel, I'll be
happy.  With no disrespect to other genres, I would imagine that overdubbing
of movie soundtracks and pop music taints the recording before it's out
the gate.  Wouldn't this negate what SACD is all about?

>I had a conversation with the owner of a high end audio store (Audio
>Consultants in Evanston, IL) about SACD vs.  CD. His opinion was that
>there is plenty of information to be gleaned from CDs, and that a high
>quality CD player will sound better than an average quality SACD player.
>However, your experience doesn't seem to agree with this, since the SACD
>you heard sounded much better than CDs on your $3000 CD player.  If you
>don't mind my asking, what CD player is that?

The Musical Fidelity A308cr.  The SACD player was a $1000 Marantz.  The
sound was just better.  It was better than the Tri-Vista DAC and the dCs
puccini/elgar, (forgive the name approximation, I got to hear the duo,
not the trio, I must add).  I'm assuming that a lot of the cost in high
end CD players is "band-aid" innovation as much as refinements such as
multiple DACs, wiring and power supplies.  I'll bet most manufactures
have the latter stuff down pretty good.

I made the psychological jump and bought two SACD's used on Amazon: the
Telarc/Jarvi Stravinsky and the Chandos/Hickox VW Symphony 5 that Steve
Schwartz endorsed.  As for a hybrid player, I'm looking at the Marantz
SA-14 version 2 which is just available in the US.  It's $3000.  It's
my humble opinion that SACD does things so right that I'm off the
"refinement" kick.  I hope Naxos will offer both formats too!  I'm
looking forward to buying the core rep again.

Kim writes:

>I'm curious what your playback system involves.  I tried a SACD player
>and wasn't really impressed with the quality.  But friends told me that
>you need high end audiophile stuff to really appreciate the differences.

What stunned me was the opposite, I don't think one *does* need a high-end
system to hear a difference.  The system I heard it on was at the store:
A $1500 Musical Fidelity integrated, (I believe the A23), and Paradigm
100 speakers, in two channel.  I wonder what recording you heard and was
it played in surround mode?  I've read that some recordings selected to
be remastered weren't that good to begin with, and some artificially
remastered to make them 5.1 surround have been horrible.  Try a good
analog remastering or a DSD recording.

John Smyth
Sacramento, CA