Hi-Rez Disc Player/Transport Reviews

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Esoteric DV-50 universal player

Ever since the introduction of high-resolution digital formats, audiophiles have been waiting for the smoke from the format wars to settle. What would the winning software be? DVD-Audio? DVD-Video? SACD? 24 bits at 96kHz or 192kHz? As new formats struggled to establish themselves, upconverting technology became commonplace for the playback of the familiar 16-bit/44.1kHz "Red Book" CD format. What to do? Invest large amounts of cash in a system that played "Red Book" (maybe with upconverting, but if so, by how much?) and one other format, and hope that you've bet right? And what about movies on them new-fangled DVDs, Tex?

Krell Cipher SACD/CD player

Around the turn of the century, a review of the latest hair-raisingly expensive turntable would often begin with a soothing chant that, yes, the RotorGazmoTron XT-35000 is a tad pricey, but it will be the last piece of analog gear you ever buy—so go ahead, take the plunge. A dozen years later, pressing plants are stamping out LPs 'round the clock, and new high-end turntables are rolling off production lines at a respectable clip. So who knows whether today's Cassandras might be equally premature in bewailing the death of the Compact Disc? Which is to say that I can't in good conscience urge you to pay $12,000 for a CD player on the grounds that the medium's about to die, so splurge now while there's still something to splurge on. But if you have the scratch, and the itch for such a product, step right up and let me tell you about the Krell Cipher.

Krell SACD Standard multichannel SACD player

With the exception of dCS and Accuphase, you don't see anyone jumping on the bandwagon of $15,000-plus SACD players—and for good reason. Despite enthusiasm for the format within the relatively small audiophile community, high-resolution audio isn't exactly making waves on the front pages—or even the back pages—of the mainstream news media. And while ABKCO Records has sold millions of Rolling Stones hybrid SACD/CDs, and Sony is looking to repeat that phenomenon with the recent Dylan hybrids, what's being sold in both cases are CDs, not SACDs. The higher-resolution layer is simply going along for the ride.

Linn Unidisk 1.1 universal disc player

The manufacture and marketing of so-called "universal" digital disc players should have been a no-brainer right from the start. I recall the first demo of SACD I attended, when both SACD and DVD-Audio were little more than promises and contentions. That prototype Philips player consisted of several cubic feet of hardware controlled by a computer, even though mockups of more marketable SACD players were arrayed around the room. After the demo, I asked one of the Philips engineers if it were possible to make a player that could handle CD, SACD, and DVD-A. His reply: "Sure, if they let me do it."

Luxman D-06u SACD player

In 1999, when I first heard a Super Audio Compact Disc, I felt certain that the new format was destined for commercial dominance. Ten years later, when I first played PCM music files through a USB DAC, I felt certain that the SACD was deader than Julius Caesar's dog.

In 2016, it's apparent that I'm not qualified to predict how anything will perform in the marketplace. In my defense, I'm not the only industry bigwig who's made those mistakes; on the other hand, one happily notes that technology and commerce, those inseparable sweethearts, carried on anyway, heedless of our thudding wrongness. The results are hundreds of new SACD releases, scads of new downloadable Direct Stream Digital music files—DSD being the technology on which the SACD is based—and at least one new machine that can play them both: Luxman's D-06u SACD/CD player and USB DAC.

Luxman DU-50 universal player

When US audiophiles think of the oldest firms still making high-performance audio equipment, they usually think of McIntosh Labs, founded in 1948. The UK's Quad traces its corporate origins back to 1936. Japan's Luxman, however, has them both beat: Luxman began making transformers and switches for radio sets in 1925. This is to the good; the company obviously has a sense of history. The iffy part is that Luxman's product line, which blends modern and heritage products, is a bit quirkily confusing. Luxman is by no means alone in having a product line that does not make intuitive sense to the uninitiated. A prime example is Harbeth's having two loudspeakers both costing $5000/pair, the Monitor 30 and the Super HL5.

I discussed Luxman's DU-50 near-universal player ($4990, it plays SACDs, DVD-As, DVD-Vs, and CDs, but not Blu-ray discs) in no fewer than five columns in 2009 (February, April, June, August, October).

Marantz Reference SA-KI-Pearl SACD/CD player

In my">http://www.stereophile.com/hirezplayers/marantz_sa-11s2_reference_sacdc… review in the February 2009 issue of Marantz's SA-11S2 SACD/CD player ($3599.99), I said that "buying [an SACD] player in 2009 necessitates an act of faith similar to the one turntable buyers faced back in 1992." The negative reaction to this from the besieged SACD community was as intense as it was irrational. If they're angry with me, I can only imagine how they feel about Stanley Lipshitz and John Vanderkooy, who presented a white paper at a 2001 Audio Engineering Society convention that claimed to prove that SACD doesn't qualify as a high-fidelity format (footnote 1). How many figurative bags of flaming poop did they leave at their front doors?

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