nads

Well-known member
Yes you can tell the difference.

much More data in the bit rate.

but what are you really want to to know.

there are some very expensive ones out there but there are also some not so expensive ones.

mine plays all disc formates up to but not including the recent HD formats.
 

Samd

Well-known member
Yes as NADS says you can tell the difference and I prefer DTS 5.1 to SACD but that may be solely because of what's recorded rather than the quality. I only have a small collection anyhow - costs of either cd can be huge!
 
I only have three, but did a back-to-back - I couldn't tell the difference. The caveat is that they were on different machines - the CD version on my previous Arcam and SACD on the Oppo. FWIW, CDs on the MF player sound better to my ears than SACD on the Oppo, so I prefer to concentrate on the system as a whole.

It's worth reading the 'Sound quality' section here: Super Audio CD - Wikipedia but here's the gist:

In September 2007, the Audio Engineering Society published the results of a year-long trial, in which a range of subjects including professional recording engineers were asked to discern the difference between high-resolution audio sources (including SACD and DVD-Audio) and a compact disc audio (44.1 kHz/16 bit) conversion of the same source material under double-blind test conditions. Out of 554 trials, there were 276 correct answers, a 49.8% success rate corresponding almost exactly to the 50% that would have been expected by chance guessing alone.[33] When the level of the signal was elevated by 14 dB or more, the test subjects were able to detect the higher noise floor of the CD-quality loop easily. The authors commented:[34]

Now, it is very difficult to use negative results to prove the inaudibility of any given phenomenon or process. There is always the remote possibility that a different system or more finely attuned pair of ears would reveal a difference. But we have gathered enough data, using sufficiently varied and capable systems and listeners, to state that the burden of proof has now shifted. Further claims that careful 16/44.1 encoding audibly degrades high resolution signals must be supported by properly controlled double-blind tests.
Following criticism that the original published results of the study were not sufficiently detailed, the AES published a list of the audio equipment and recordings used during the tests.[35] Since the Meyer-Moran study in 2007,[36] approximately 80 studies have been published on high-resolution audio, about half of which included blind tests. Joshua Reiss performed a meta-analysis on 20 of the published tests that included sufficient experimental detail and data. In a paper published in the July 2016 issue of the AES Journal,[37] Reiss says that, although the individual tests had mixed results, and that the effect was "small and difficult to detect," the overall result was that trained listeners could distinguish between hi-resolution recordings and their CD equivalents under blind conditions: "Overall, there was a small but statistically significant ability to discriminate between standard quality audio (44.1 or 48 kHz, 16 bit) and high-resolution audio (beyond standard quality). When subjects were trained, the ability to discriminate was far more significant." Hiroshi Nittono pointed out that the results in Reiss's paper showed that the ability to distinguish high-resolution audio from CD-quality audio was "only slightly better than chance."[38]

All I would add is I'd suggest you have a listen and ensure you can hear a difference before heading down this road - the discs are far from cheap.
 
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Freddy

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Does anyone still use a SACD .Can you tell the difference from a standard cd player and is a used one still worth a try ?
I could hear a difference between a Cambridge Audio CXUHD 4K Blu-ray player and a Reavon X110 4K Blu-ray player hooked up to my amp and speakers when listening to a SACD in 5.1 surround sound. There was various theories though why I could hear this difference. I am not too sure.
 

aversaurus

Well-known member
The problem I have is I change my boxes all the time but I'm totally happy with the ones I have (and yes I still have the Leema) .
But I've never had a SACD player I would be looking at used .but all the reasons to not get one are probably all the reasons I've never had one .
 
The problem I have is I change my boxes all the time but I'm totally happy with the ones I have (and yes I still have the Leema) .
But I've never had a SACD player I would be looking at used .but all the reasons to not get one are probably all the reasons I've never had one .
I’ve enjoyed my Marantz (in my signature) very much, and they still make SACD players. The big BUT for me is the discs, in that I’m a classical music lover, and several labels, like BIS, regularly release their output on SACD, so it’s easily acquired. These are dual layer, so work fine as a CD too. I can’t speak for other genres though it seems to be more prevalent in MoFi type remasters of stuff you already bought three times.

As the interesting experiment quoted above shows, it’s far from certain that we can reliably tell hi-res sources from CD anyway. I stream Qobuz in high resolution and have also tried comparing SACD with CD without being any more certain. I find that I ‘like’ SACD, and ‘feel’ it’s better, but it’s subtle at best. As if to confound such comparisons, even my Marantz has fractionally different output levels between SACD and CD. And different filter options in the DAC! It may be genuine engineering differences or the skeptic might think it’s a trick to favour one or the other. Similarly, SACD of older material are often remixed or remastered, so you can’t be sure you’re comparing identical masters
 
Probably an expensive journey with little real benefit seems to be the advice
I saw it as a similar entry price for the player, and the SACDs themselves I buy are regular price, £10-12 each. One snag is they’re slow to read and begin playing compared to a regular CD. It’s just a shame there’s not much choice any more, though disc players are not getting replaced in many ranges. LUxman just discontinued three models, for example.

I’ve also got an old Oppo which can be fun way to experiment, and you can always use as a CD transport with a external DAC.
 
Can you send a digital SACD signal to a standard DAC ? Or would you not want to ?
See the previous post - I couldn't, there's no digital output signal even though a SPDIF is available. I'm guessing that's for CD only as it doesn't work with SACD - at least on my Oppo. Like I say, I suspect that's to stop people making hi res copies of what were expensive items. In this instance the DAC has to be done inside the box, and I wonder if that's not either very common or even universal.
 
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See the previous post - I couldn't, there's no digital output signal even though a SPDIF is available. I'm guessing that's for CD only as it doesn't work with SACD - at least on my Oppo. Like I say, I suspect that's to stop people making hi res copies of what were expensive items. In this instance the DAC has to be done inside the box, and I wonder if that's not either very common or even universal.
some expensive players, like PS Audio, have an I2S connection that will allow a digital signal to a similarly equipped DAC, however they are few and far between
 
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