Thread: Views on hardware

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Post by Ric Schultz January 2, 2004 (11 of 12)
Kyle at Reference Audio Mods has two expensive mods ($2800 and $5500?) to the Marantz SA-1 SACD player. Just in the last couple of days he A/Bed a Marantz with the less expensive mod against the Meitner pair (Meitner modded SACD-1000 and latest version Meitner DAC). The Marantz was clearly better...in fact much better..so he says. The owner of the Meitner gear also ownes the modded SA-1 as well and will be using both of these machines to demo gear at CES....he is in the industry. So, it looks like a used SA-1 ($3300?) plus $2800 for the less expensive mod will give you pretty dang great sound but at slightly over $6000 is way out of most peoples budgets....but, if you think the Meitner is hot....well...

Ric Schultz

Post by Johnno January 5, 2004 (12 of 12)
The waters are starting to get very murky with many desirable recordings only becoming available in either one format or the other. In an ideal world, we'd see whatever is going to be released on either DVD-A or SACD available in BOTH formats simultaneously, but I doubt that's ever going to happen. That's especially true when some companies are apparently having second thoughts about their involvement in one or other of the new formats.

At the moment I only have a stereo SACD player and am enjoying the SACDs I have. Nevertheless, I am now seeing a lot of recordings out on DVD-A that I would really like to own. So far I have resisted the temptation to buy a DVD-A player but for how long?

Changing the tack slightly, I was annoyed recently by an article in "HI-Fi News" when Mike Oldfield was interviewed about the "Tubular Bells 2003" project. If one didn't read the article carefully, one could well get the impression that the general conclusion was that DVD-A was superior to SACD because the new recording is stated as being superior to the remastered original. Why did that conclusion hardly surprise me? What is REALLY needed, of course, is for the "2003" to be available in both formats so that they can be compared. Perhaps that's not in Warner's best interests!

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