Here's how the argument in favor of buying a CD player goes: There may not be much software yet, but more is coming soon. So why not buy an SACD player mainly for playing CDs and have the SACD capability?
Seems like a good argument. Is it?
No one disputes that SACD players do a more than adequate job…
"You also end up with a better signal-to-noise ratio," Antony stated. "The A324 has an A-weighted S/N ratio somewhere in the range of 112-116dB, whereas our older A3 CD player, still a fine machine, had an A-weighted S/N ratio of 105dB. We're talking about an additional 10dB." (footnote 1)
"And that could help explain why…
Or consider Naxos 8.553330, Tchaikovsky's Piano Music, Vol.2, performed by Oxana Yablonskaya. Again, with the A324, the sense of space around the…
Musical Fidelity Ltd., 15-17 Fulton Road, Wembley, Middlesex HA9 OTF, England, UK. Tel: (44) (0)181-900-2866. Web: www.musical-fidelity.co.uk. US distributor: Kevro International, Inc., 902 McKay Road, Pickering, Ontario, Canada L1W 3X8. Tel: (905) 428-2800. Fax: (905) 428-0004. Web: www.kevro.com.
Sam Tellig enthused about the Musical Fidelity A324 D/A processor (footnote 1) in his April 2002 column (Vol.25 No.4): "At $1195, it's an astonishing bargain that belongs in Class A of 'Recommended Components,' " he gushed, concluding that he "wouldn't drop money on a more costly digital processor without first hearing this one." I thought it worthwhile, therefore, to submit this upsampling processor—not "oversampling," as we termed it on our April cover, Musical Fidelity politely tells us—to Stereophile's usual measurement regime. (You…
Way back during the Climatic Optimum, the Vikings came to America. The Climatic Optimum was a period of warmer weather that lasted approximately from the eighth through the 14th centuries AD. Warmer temperatures caused the crop surpluses and population growth that led to the breakout of the Norse from their home region.…
Editor: In the future Mr. Marks should write only about those things of which he has any knowledge. As demonstrated by his February, 2005 column, his realm of studies never included atmospheric science or climatology. Specifically, to call global warming "junk science" only illustrates his absolute ignorance on the subject.
Global warming has been around Earth since its very creation, and the very existence of it allows Mr. Marks to live and breath on this planet today. Moreover, the Climatic Optimum of which he writes in his article was partially triggered by, and is…
This Follow-Up concerns the X-01 Super Audio CD player ($13,000) from Teac subsidiary Esoteric (footnote 1), which John Marks wrote about in his February "The Fifth Element" column. Not only was JM impressed by this massive single-box player's prowess in playing SACDs, he also enthused about its CD performance: "This is the most musically satisfying CD playback I have ever heard," he wrote.
I spent a month auditioning the X-01. (Though this is a multichannel player, I used it only as a two-channel…
Weeks earlier, I had asked Sony whether I could ask a few questions of the mastering engineer who had made the DSD transfer of the master tapes of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, from which the SACD editions were made.1 In due course, I received a…