Will i need sorround sound amp if I buy an SACD player

Zawinul

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Dear peeps

I'm confused, as SACD's sorround sound like 5.1 audio DVD or just stereo?

Thinking of getting an SACD player as many of my favourite albums, prog and Classical are out on SACD

If sorround then I will need new amp and speakers

anyone recommend a CHEAP but decent SACD player please?

cheers

Z
 

hybridauth_Facebook_664715932

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Zawinul said:
Dear peeps

I'm confused, as SACD's sorround sound like 5.1 audio DVD or just stereo?

Thinking of getting an SACD player as many of my favourite albums, prog and Classical are out on SACD

If sorround then I will need new amp and speakers

anyone recommend a CHEAP but decent SACD player please?

cheers

Z

simple answer woulb be NO

as already mentioned you can listen in stereo.

sorround is mainly/only for movies
 

Zawinul

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nopiano said:
You can listen in stereo, so no need for change unless you want speakers all around the room.

Denon and Marantz are a good place to start. What budget?

pretty low at moment... I've got a very old Rotel Cd player I really need to ugrade so thinking of getting an SACD at same time and splashing out on a few disks...

a Marantz one I've seen is £3000! ouch
 
Animesh Ghose said:
Zawinul said:
Dear peeps

I'm confused, as SACD's sorround sound like 5.1 audio DVD or just stereo?

Thinking of getting an SACD player as many of my favourite albums, prog and Classical are out on SACD

If sorround then I will need new amp and speakers

anyone recommend a CHEAP but decent SACD player please?

cheers

Z

simple answer woulb be NO

as already mentioned you can listen in stereo.

sorround is mainly/only for movies

It would depend entirely on what was used and connected up. My Sony blu-ray player will do surround sound SACD through my Sony home cinema amp.

So yes you can listen in surround or stereo

P.S.. Not all SACD's offer multi channel sound anyway.

Admittedly most of the SACD players on sale are stereo only the better being Marantz although not sure if they are within your budget.
 

expat_mike

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Not all SACDs are multichannel, some are just 2 channel stereo.

The few SACDs that I have bought have been hybrid discs, which contain two layers - one layer normal stereo CD, and the other layer SACD audio. This means that I can enjoy the stereo CD version of the music, until I get a discplayer that will handle SACDs.

Some quite cheap bluray players will handle SACDs, but I suspect that they convert the DSD file on the SACD to PCM format, and then send it on to ones AV amp to be decoded. The Marantz UD7007 seems to have been the last player that would decode the DSD on a SACD, and split it into separate analogue streams (7.1?) which was then sent to the AV amp.
 

iMark

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I bought my first player that was capable of playing SACDs in 2003. It was a Pioneer DV 565. I still have it but is now in the attic since we bought a Sony BDP-590 in 2012 to accompany our first flat screen TV. I have never had a surround set, always stereo.

I started buying SACDs (and DVD-As) in 2003 and will still pick up the occasional one. Most of them are hybrid, usually with 2.0 and 5.1 SACD and stereo CD, which is very convenient for ripping to the iTunes library and making the music portable.

In the past SACD only discs have been on the market, both as single layer 2.0 or dual layer 5.1. and 2.0. And there have been hybrid SACDs without the 5.1 layer, just stereo in SACD and CD.

The Pioneer was quite interesting because it will decode 5.1 to analogue outputs. Very handy if you have an AV amp with multichannel analogue inputs. But modern multichannel decoding relies on decoding in the AV amp and the signal is fed through an HDMI connection.

In practice we only have used the Pioneer and Sony with stereo analogue outputs and both players sound fine for stereo SACD reproduction. I don't think there are players left that will decode multichannel to analogue outputs. But some more expensive Bluray players still have analogue stereo outputs.

The main part of our SACD collection is classical recordings. We like to believe that the SACD layer sounds a little bit better than the CD layer. However, the ripped CD layer played from iTunes through an Airport Express to a Cambridge Audio DACMagic isn't far behind.

We might upgrade the current Sony BDP-590 to a Sony UHP-H1 so we can play the couple of DVD-A discs we have and any other disc we can think of.
 

Barbapapa

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If you don't want to spend too much money I'd advise you to look at second hand options. I've been in the same position like you a year ago and in the end bought a Marantz SA8400. There appear to be quite a number of Marantz players floating around, such as the SA7001. They're quite sturdy. There are also older Sony players, but some people report bad experiences for longer term physical reliability (even more so with Pioneer).

For a new option I'm also considering the Sony UDP-H1 as being a combo DVD-player.
 

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