People who say there is no difference really should book a hearing test- seriously!

Totally agree, brother! I just recently inherited the components to upgrade my system, and I've been buying up SACDs voraciously, occasionally regretting that I have missed so many great buys in the last 20 years. But, I've got my original bunch from that first wave, and will never get rid of them.

@@gjohnleigh Same here. I have a LINN GENKI CD player that I bought back in 2002 - still going strong. It has an HDCD chip and wow do those discs shine! I've been buying up as many SACD discs over recent times and am just a few short of 500. Both formats offer a far superior listening experience. They should've become the baseline for audio quality but sadly the vast majority listen to music on white ear buds on their I-pod and now smart phone. It's a real travesty! Streaming is convenient and great value but doesn't replace the strong bond of owning a hard copy of a disc- cd or vinyl- being able to interact with it physically cannot be replaced!

​@@knockshinnoch1950My experience is that usually the SACD recording and mastering are better than others. But if you have and hybrid SACD and you play it as SACD and as CD... It's really hard to me to find differences, same I could say about HDCD. It makes me believe that the real difference is the disc recording and mastering. Other completely different thing is a multi channel SACD... This is clearly a different experience. But for stereo playing comparing same recording and mastering versions and playing in with the same gear... very little difference, at least for my ears.

Been buying cd's since the 80's. Lately got around to investing in some nice mid to high end speakers and a similar amp to match. Been curious about SACD for about 20 years but never got around to getting into it. I have had a couple of SACD'S in my collection for some time but never listened to them as SACD before, as I always intended to make a 5.1 set up using my home cinema amp but never did it. So last night, I listened to SACD for first time, in two channel stereo, using a 10 year old Sony DVD player that is SACD capable and has analogue outs. The sound was remarkably good with ordinary cd's but with SACD, there was definitely a difference in sound quality, plusher is how I would describe it. The SACD's were Dark side of the moon and Tommy.

I have the scd1 also. It sounds amazing with my new BHK250. My VIP turntable gets the most use though.

Using the same DAC with the DAC running the clock, a US$5 USB flash drive plays DSD files better than a US$20,000 CD transport.

I've never seen a person not hear the difference between CD & SACD!!! It's totally worth it!!

@@sakurachristineito6428 Couldn't agree more!

I agree, I wish they had become the standard as well.

I brough a dcd600ne 5 yrs ago.I though the denon cd player is impressive until I brough a used denon dcd 1600ne .and WOW! it was incredible.! Fantastic ! The sound quality far better than cd music player.

Dutch Spoonie i have it to, paired with the PM-KI Ruby its really lovely :) So sad that KI passed away a few weeks ago...

@@lukeshatterhand1969 Hey. How's the dac on the sa ki ruby and which are your final impressions about the amp. Did you compared to other amps of the price category? Does the ruby combo worth buying? Thanks

my happy ending was analog, and not the constantly changing and overly complicated latest digital format.

Thank you for putting into words the mentality that I've adopted. I've bought lots of vintage equipment with no satisfaction being derived from adding more devices. So I am content with the old Bose system my roommate gave me even though everyone hates that brand. My tinnitus will never allow me to enjoy music as I once did, so there's no point in trying to reach perfection when my hearing is far from that.

@@ignazs.5816 Everyone hates Bose (atleast these days) cause its premium on the outside but on the inside where it matters its pure shit. And the big problem is with everything there is no perfection. Every your hardware gets released with companys claiming thats even more realistiv sound blablabla often they just change the case ad a few features that nobody needs and thats it.

Agreed on “not having the need to look for the next best thing’....but, doesn’t hurt to have it if you like 🤪

100% agree with your comment. It’s a terrible place to be - always questioning the sound quality of your music and sound system. Someone in the comments section of a hifi site categorically states their CD player sounds better than the one you own, so it puts a seed of doubt into your mind. It’s the path to perpetual unhappiness! Make peace with what you have (it’s probably better than what 99% of people own) and enjoy the music.

And the Oppo players are one of the few that actually play native DSD.

i predict people watching *this* channel wouldnt dare do that

It sells more expensive cables that you don't need.

Since some time, all DACs have asynchronous USB. It means that it's the DAC which masters the transfer rate from the computer, and the same way that it explained here, the DAC has a buffer, and uses this buffer with its own clock to build the final digital data at the proper speed. Thus, unless there's a big tech issue, from the hard-drive till the DAC input, we don't really care because it's fast enough to keep the buffer feeding pace.

What player are you referring to?

@@rreiss60 I have an Arcam DV135 not quite universal player (stereo only, no Blu-ray) back from when they still manufactured all their kit in England. It originally listed for $1500, but I got it from a brick-and-mortar stereo specialist (support your locals) for a new old stock clearance price of $800 when Arcam made a total revamp of their product line. Even that was a bit of a splurge, but I'd had my eye/ear on this deck for quite a while and it was too good of a deal to pass up.

I had the Sony DVP-NS500V as well. Excellent sounding player that didn't cost a lot of money (MSRP $250).

Some people seem to be really hung up by this digital rights management stuff. I am not one of them. My ears are old and my "get off the merry-go-round", to cite the late, great Sam Tellig (his nom de plume is his birth name Gillette spelled backwards phonetically, clever), level system brings me much joy. Not to say that I don't don't also enjoy reading/YouTubing about it, though. Be happy!

You can send it out over HDMI to an external DAC

@@dempsey3 HDMI to an external receiver, but not an external DAC the likes of PS Audio, Chord Electronics, etc.

Awake2020 I wonder why companies don’t have HDMI on DACs

Maybe a question for Paul

I just built a small form factor pc to do media duty with a pcie4.0 nvme drive which is ludicrously quick at getting data. Connects directly to the DAC via ASIO instead of being resampled and remixed by the operating system's sound controls. Its about the size of a game console, and I can even use it like one if I want.

@@ThatGuy2042_ Sounds great :)

What is so novel about replacing a cheap and large HDD with a small and expensive SDD, Seeing how streaming is absolutely not dependent of the speed of either? Basically every large HDD even comes with a 64 or even 128 MB cache, so with the low rate of data to be delivered, an SDD does not make any sense. SDDs also break. I have probably lost as many SDDs as HDDs.

Paul mentioned this. It is called jitter.

Try it for yourself. Even a fairly cheap CD player sounds better than a regular laptop feeding a dac in my experience

It is not the throughput, an entire average song can be loaded in to memory from HDD in one second. It is the CLOCKING.

@@fretlessfender There's no jitter at this step, during file read, simply because timing doesn't matter. As he explained for their sacd player, in fact in DACs, which are asynchronous, there's a big buffer, to allow data receive from computer at irregular speed, and it's the DAC itself which uses its own clock to rebuild the waveform from the digital data. Regarding that, Paul's explanation is wrong. We just don't care if reading speed of file is irregular, because timing just doesn't matter at that moment.

@@sebsoud I wonder home many of this SACD-is-better-and-the-rest-of-you-are-deaf did proper ABX testing to trully compare the sound and see if they are able to tell the diference. It's all snake oil in the end and nothing sounds better than a regular lossless digital file

Or you can use the internal DACs of the Oppo or the Magnetar.

@@dannytse8767 True, but why would you? Assuming a high end external DAC will make all the difference in sound quality, plus if you have already been using one for your CDs, of course the natural thing to do is to use your SACDs on it as well. Having said that, many people are still buying Esoteric SACD/CD hybrid players and the likes though, well at least in Asia. I find a lot of audiophiles in Asia are still very much heavy CD/SACD users as opposed to streaming. Just my perception. So, I am not sure whether this HDMI Extractor device has caught on yet? I for one am still using my SACD player and its internal DAC for SACDs. I have to ask around and see what other people think. But, if I had to guess, this probably only applies to the older audiophiles as the younger folks say in their 20's and 30's after the closing down of pretty much all large CD shop chains in the 2010's like the HMVs of the world must have fully migrated over to streaming by now. Personally, I belong to the older group and am still actively buying CDs and SACDs online in sizable quantities every month.

e james other artists would consider it a dream to have the barriers between their fans and their music dissolve.

e james yes. Some artists think that is ideal. Because they’re getting ripped off more, and for longer by the record companies. It’s an unpopular opinion, but you can’t say it doesn’t exist. SOME artists would prefer to forgo the industry and give their fans a way to cherish their music forever.

e james and SOME artists have the attitude that it’s theirs to make, and others’ to enjoy. Yes it’s not very common, but you’re being arrogant.

e james the options are: be ripped off by the record company, or choose to give freely. Otherwise you do the right thing and go the Zappa route.

@e james I fail to see what this has to do with SACD superceding cd's. Are you saying that artists want it to be exclusive? If so, they succeeded to a point it's almost non-existent. Also I believe Sony is the one making it troublesome for other companies to use SACD's due to licensing. So I fail to see how this benefits the music creators.

The Denon was great - I had one, but for the record it converted DSD to PCM.

Hi. I have both Yes Fragile the DVD-a and the BD edition but hadn't time to compare them yet. Could you please tell me why do you think DVD-a is better? In terms that are convenient for you? I noticed that they sound differently but didn't compare them in AB mode or something like this.

@@perfectstranger1769 Impossible to compare since the DVD-A version of Fragile is not a version that was remastered by Steven Wilson. The DVD-A version seems to have more dynamics and more open sound.

@@Spock105 so effectively different versions unrelated to dvda or blu-ray.

@@Spock105 Thank you.

John: I never knew that. What Dvd player are you talking about?

@@charlescalkins4732 you need a special player to get the benefits of a DVD plus A discs,what you can have the sampling rate at 192khz 24 bit they are the best format for mastering off tape you can get. but they're not around much these days they say you can't tell the difference between the master tape and the DVD+A disc should be able to find second-hand like meridian models on the internet and discs are available still and some new releases

I watched this twice , and I don’t know if Paul is recommending one or not , I understand that there are a lot of factors particularly when using a computer, so using a dedicated SACD player certainly takes out a lot of variables to the equation. I’d also add , what is a high end player ? I use an Oppo and it sounds better than my MAC Mini , I know that it’s not that simple but that’s kinda of the point , the sacd player makes it simpler

@@dempsey3 I don't know I didn't watch it I got distracted lol check it again later maybe , but maybe Paul would like to introject if hes about, I wasn't talking about sacd!

@@johnsweda2999 You need a DVD player that handles DVD audio as opposed to just DVD video.

Harsh with sibilance peaks

The reason is because the title you seek is considered "out of print". If you would have got into SACD early on, you could've picked up Michael Jackson's "Thriller" on SACD for under $20 at your local Best Buy.

This fact caught me out only last week.

@@fredjones554 I find that NativeDSD Music is - apart from the Octave Records DSD files - the only source of true DSD file downloads and superb they are. (You usually have a choice of resolution; i.e. DSD64, DSD128, DSD256 etc). I concede that there may be other sources I am not aware of and I would be interested in finding out about others.

3 items sank the sacd. 1. most were turned off by the cost of entry. 2. the large number of non-discerning listeners. 3. drm

Correct

And this is problem how?

Carefully listen to the question again. "I know an SACD player connected to a really good DAC will outperform DSD file playback". His statement implies he is outputting DSD from his SACD player to an external DAC. Does the Sony spec for SACD allow it? Isn't that the reason there are no SACD drives for a computer?

Several manufacturers offer transports that send digital DSD to a separate DAC. The only hitch is that both transport and DAC must be from the same manufacturer. PS Audio used to do that and apparently they will have a new transport that will do it again. Esoteric and dcs also have them, and I'm sure there are others. Personally though, it seems that a single player in one box would have the benefit of shorter signal paths and no interconnect cables, and there's no reason it can't have a fabulous built in DAC.

@@ychilds99 There are various proprietary systems that allow transfer of DSD from a transport to an external DAC, but they are not inter-compatable as far as I know. Also, they tend to be very expensive. Some of the companies that do this are EMM Labs, dCS, MSB, MacIntosh, and (of course) PS Audio.

@@sactownchad Sold the OPPO and replaced it with a Denon 1600NE

@@kissed61 How do you like the Denon?

@@dannytse8767 I love it

@@kissed61 Yes. The Denon is great.

@@gaylenhalbert4391 I'll say one thing , it is very unforgiving of poorly recorded cds

If you're using the HDMI output on the Sony to send the DSD bitstream to the Marantz, then the Marantz is conventing the DSD bitstream to PCM first, before final conversion to analog.

@@dannytse8767 I thought so. The DSD does sound much better than the regular CD's even with the conversion to PCM.

Totally agree with you, all decent DAC's reclock the signal anyway. Much more logical starting with files on a SSD rather than reading them off a spinning optical disc!

Anthony Martino How do you know if you have this issue? Data errors on an audio CD are camouflaged by algorithms aiming at you not noticing those errors and the worse errors the more the sound is affected. Bit perfect playback is much more reliable in an SSD or HD.

Also, for durability, an big advantage of files is that they can easily be copied on a backup disk (which, is anyway highly recommended!), so we can ensure that there's really nothing lost during time.

Anthony Martino If you handle your discs well, you hopefully enjoy handling discs. I prefer not bothering with handling discs anymore. I used to be like that. Nowadays I just pick my music from the media player user interface and promptly play it. Check Tidal, for example. The guy who owns the most CDs on the planet is a friend of me. His name is Li Jihui and he is Chinese. His collection is insane covering rooms of walls full of CDs and LPs plus a warehouse of boxes also. I dare not ask him the time spent in finding a particular song. My perhaps equally large collection can fit in my hand and any song is found in less than a second. He also has the world’s largest audiophile equipment collection and several large acoustically optimized listening rooms. It’s an audiophile paradise. He makes his money owning China’s largest knife company.

sebsoud Another reason is space. If you want to have a large collection of music on CD or vinyl, it takes a lot of space and cost a lot of money. The future of music storage is solid state either in the cloud (like Tidal) or in your home on some NAS drive or other drive.

And who has $4,000 to blow on a dac?

@@centralscrutinizer9591 That's a good point. I know I don't.

There are plenty of HT receivers, some under $500, that has the DAC that decode DSD and can accept the HDMI output of a Sony Blu-ray player.

If the digital interconnect included flow control you could do that, but alas it does not. If it's left to the DAC, what happens if your DAC is expecting data faster than the transport supplies it and you run out of buffered data? Conversely, if your transport is supplying data faster than it's being used by the DAC, then how many bytes of extra buffer should the DAC provide to accommodate the mismatch and what happens if that buffer is exceeded? Because there is no way for the DAC to control the flow, the clock needs to be established at the start of the chain and then followed by the destination. It would be simpler if computer or RADAR nerds engineered these transports... in that world I would assume the digital components would operate in a more "packet" oriented context and there would be a seperate cable to distribute a single master clock to all components. Most audiophiles would likely elect to use an atomic clock for their master.

The transport is controlling and providing the master clock so while it might not make sense, that's the way it's been setup for as long as there have been DACs, transports and CD players.

@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio Thank you for the reply! I sometime have problems with, well we have always done it that way. LOL

Wadia's clocks are located at the DAC.

Hello Steve, I feel the same way, I've had my eye on a Sony ubp x800mk2, it is a digital transport that plays sacd, 4k blueray, dvd audio, and most other things for under $300.00. Hope that helps.

right. I have the $ 200. Sony 700 that plays SACD and the new 'high tech' multi ch. movie soundtracks, said to be better than SACD I think. I don't get the alphabet of digital ratings, but if the digital flow of info is twice or 3 times standard CD ( SACD ) that's probably pretty darn good. as is standard CD. it's in the recordings and quality of mastering.

The Dec.2019 and Feb. 2020 issues of The Absolute Sound have reviews of CD/SACD players from Arcam, Marantz, Technics, and Yamaha in the $1200 - $4000 range. Not chump change, but not bat-sierra (keep it family friendly) crazy, either. Not a substitute for personal auditions, of course, but presumably honest opinions from a source with a long established track record. And in the words of Jeremy Clarkson (or was it James May) in Top Gear, "Old school and the better for it." =//=OIdDudesStillRock

I bought a refurbed Sony ubp-x800 for $99 and it does a great job on sacd. I also have an oppo 103 and can’t tell the difference.

I've had a Sony CE595 since new. You can find one in good shape you are golden. They did have some alignment issues but there is a fix for that. Mine never had the issue. Maybe because it's sat on the same shelf since it came out of the box. It even plays good quality normal CD's better then most also.

No sir I don't. I love physical disc media and lately seem to be good at wearing out mega CD changers. I keep having to buy used ones and crossing my fingers. Just bought another changer (Pioneer PD-F27 this time) and also bought a Marantz SA8004 SACD player (single disc obviously). The SA8004 will satisfy my SACD needs for now and also has digital inputs so I can use it as a DAC. I need the DAC feature so if and when this new mega changer fails I will have files of all my discs on my laptop ready to play through the SA8004 on my home system. That will give me time to sort yet another mega changer. My first mega changer lasted me 22 years but I'm now buying used.

@@07zx14White I have a 100 disc pioneer and a 6 disc multi player. everything seems to work except the laser doesn't want to read the discs. any ideas how what's the problem? where do get your 2nd equipment? hard to come buy here in oz :(

@@realguyozWhat is the model # of the faulty CD player? I constantly check second hand stores, flea markets, vendor malls, goodwill, and ebay. My last two purchases were Ebay though. Ebay is always a gamble but if you put in the study time you can find good deals from honest sellers. Also if you search the model # of your disc player sometimes used working parts will show up.

Yes CD player read are the same. But the build in DAC are maded difference give you quality sound differently.

No. I've had to reject cd players in the past because their sound didn't balance with my system.

No, they don't all sound the same. I have several, and I have owned many more. They don't sound the same.

@@timyen75 The DAC is not the only factor. The LASER and the quality of the motor and supporting electronics (not to mention the analogue output stage) all come into play.

They definitely don’t all sound the same ,

Please keep in mind that flash storage is *temporary.* As flash memory cells scale, the atoms they're made from do not and the result is the stored charge in each cell has been getting smaller and smaller as density increases. Modern SSDs only keep your data in tact by virtue of error detection and correction logic being very good and as they're used, they constantly provide invisible "housekeeping" in the background that periodically rewrites saved data to new locations on the chip to refresh it and even out the number of writes to any given data block. The flash used in server cache drives can start to forget its contents in as little a 3 months without power applied to run that background housekeeping. Consumer units are much better but I would not count on any flash drive for archival storage because it absolutely will forget. Make a copy of your valued data on spinning disks and then copy those to SSDs for the benefits, but don't even think your data is safe on a SSD. (BTW: I used to work in one of the largest SSD factories in the US which got moved to Mexico a couple years ago)

so, you havent done an A/B, then.

What program do you use and output chip?

@@djknox2 That's a valid argument to make, if the better sound quality is due to the equipment or the better mastering? But I would argue it does not really matter. If it's the mastering effect, then so be it, you are still getting a better reproduction, better fidelity via SACD in most cases, and you need the SACD player to get that better quality, due to greater bandwidth that they are able to reproduce in. This is not any different than individuals who with vinyl look for earlier/ different pressings of albums because they do sound better? And there are many grades of styli that reproduce an album and accentuate the album differently. I really don't think that SACDs are pointless for people over 40. That's a very unscientific generalization. You would have to assume that everyone over 50 can't hear above a certain frequency. I myself am 54 , and I watched a KZfaq video where the individual played a cd and a SACD of dire straits and I could definitely hear the difference between the two and it was not subtle either. That's not to say you're going to get that with each SACD but at least in this instance there was a big difference. I am a researcher and believe at every age nuances in the ability of individuals to use their senses to perceive more or less occurs across all ages. I'm not saying that the placebo effect is not real, but that's not to say that we should discount an individuals ability to hear some thing that another individual cannot and call it snake oil because of it.

You do know what’s a SACD, right?