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03/21/2003 Entry: "SACD: astonishing sound"

A few weeks ago I bought a Philips Matchline SA963SA DVD/SACD player. The last few hours have been my first opportunity to sit down and listen to it play SACD discs. The machine is a good buy, in fact I find it, well, amazing. This is probably a comment on the advances in value for money in DVD and SACD players, or maybe this player is going to collect a stack of awards ... but I see similar comments in reviews of Sony equipment at this price level. Perhaps Sony and Philips have decided to kick start the SACD market by discounting on the hardware. My ears are very happy about this. This is the first serious Philips audio component I have bought. The people behind this player should be very proud, although I wish they hired an English speaker to proof-read the manual. Here is a review of a similar model {{ link: http://www.whatvideotv.com/testbench/frame.html?http://www.whatvideotv.com/testbench/DVDPlayers/Philips/PhilipsDVD-962SA.php review of 962SA}}

But the real story is SACD. I am now completely convinced that this is huge advance in music reproduction.

I have a good stereo system. My speakers and amplifier are Stereophile magazine class B components, which means pretty good stuff at non-ridiculous prices. It is not high-end gear, but it clearly shows remarkable differences between the two digital formats. My CD player was quite good also (it is now looking for something to do). In this environment, SACD is amazing. I didn't expect such a breakthrough in the reproduction of music in my house. The twenty-year-old promises of digital music have happened at last. I expected some improvement over CD, but what I hear is a revelation. If you listen to music with any intensity, you must take the chance to listen to it. In fact, I would just upgrade on faith.

I have Vandersteen 2CE signature speakers, and a Rega Mira amplifier. This is not a terribly expensive system actually. I only plan to use SACD in stereo mode, not in multichannel. My old CD player was made by an obscure English firm, Orelle; it was a tweaked Philips CD player with a rebuilt digital-analog converter and output section. The DAC was based on a chip believed by many audiophiles to be one of the great achievements of 16 bit DAC technology ... the Crown version of the Philips TDA1541A. The CD format is pretty crippled though, so I was easily convinced on paper that new formats would be audibly superior. But this academic appreciation did not prepare me at all for the emotional response to the improvement. The vibrancy, clarity and warmth of this format is amazing. I bought from Amazon some highly recommended recordings. One of them is a 1958 recording of Isaac Stern. I have no digital recodings in CD format that compare. The 963SA upsamples CDs and this does help (against my expectation actually) but I have the sad realisation that all my CDs are a pale echo of the possibilities of modern music reproduction.

The alternative modern format, DVD-Audio, may be just as good. I don't know. I looked in some music shops and there were no DVD-Audio titles although quite a few SACD titles, which was enough for me to jump to SACD.

I'm going back to the stereo ... I was going to watch a DVD tonight, but my discovery of this phenomenal sound is almost irresistable.

Replies: 3 comments

It's a shame that CD audio didn't come around a little later, to have avoided the enormous compromise of 16 bits. Human hearing can distinguish squillions of different audio levels whereas 16 bits can only represent approximately 65 thousand levels. I'm sure you know the maths Tim. This approximation jars on ours senses, sounding in effect lifeless. Hopefully SACD will reach a critical mass, becoming the norm for the mainstream markets with a complete catalogue of music.

Posted by Ben @ 06/10/2003 01:17 AM GMT+1

Dave, hi. I made it multi-region by using a Palm Pilot and easily-found instructions on a website. After this 1 minute job, it plays CDs from Asia (we haven't tested it with anything else but there should be no problems). All Philips DVD players have trivial hacks to make them multi-region. My sister bought one is Australia and they had instructions included in the package (this was not a 963SA and they could do it using the remote that came with their player, they did not even need a Palm Pilot to generate a special code, but with the 963SA you will need a Palm or one of the other solutions). See this site: http://www.home.zonnet.nl/jeroenverhaar/en/index.htm

Posted by Tim @ 04/30/2003 12:57 PM GMT+1

I have been hunting for reviews of this product, not available here in S Africa, since I am thinking of ordering it online from the US. Question: is it multi-region? US machines are sometimes Region 1 only, though that's not usual nowadays, I believe.

I'm mainly going to be using it in my audio only system, as an SACD/CD player, but the DVD-V will probably see some service in my home theatre system (using a pretty good Onkyo at the moment).

Posted by Dave Farrell @ 04/25/2003 04:34 PM GMT+1