philips sacd players and naim

Posted by: Dan M on 18 April 2003

Hello All,

Has anyone had experience with Philips SACD playes and Naim equipment. Philips has, as far as I know, discontinued the SACD-1000 model that was ranked highly in the latest copy of Stereophile. However, for half the price Philips' new top of the line also plays DVDs and upsamples! Not bad for $499. Or if you want to skip the upsampling and beefy case, one can get an SACD player for $179 thru amazon - got to be cheaper than Linn's new universal player. So this had me thinking...

After all, not only are there all those Stones SACDs but even the new stuff (such as Beck's latest) is now coming out on that format.

Your thoughts?

cheers,

Dan
Posted on: 18 April 2003 by JohnMak
To use an SACD player, if you want the multi channel feature of some of the new SACD's, your pre-amp must have 5.1 channel input and enough amplifiers for each channel. SACD also uiltizes a much higher frequency range than normal CD. I think the pre-amps and amps are supposed to go up to 100kHz.
Many SACD's (from Telarc etc)can be played on a standard CD player but it's a second layer (dual format) and is not to SACD standards.

I have now about 20 SACD's and the good ones are absolutely amazing recordings - especially from Telarc - Willie Nelson, Spyro Gyra, Ray Brown. I also have a lot from Sony which are mostly re-releases and they are absolute crap ... very, very much worse than the orignal standards CD's .... Stevie Ray Vaughn, Billy Joel are appalling recordings. Unlistenable actually. It's quite amazing that Sony would release such abysmal recordings if they are trying to introduce a new format.

But, having hear the good ones, I'm in no doubt that SACD will be the future.

That's my brief experience with them anyway.
Posted on: 18 April 2003 by redeye
Recently tried the Philips SACD machine at home for a week. Played DVDs quite well but offered no appreciable improvement over the Philips 951 I normally use.
No dramas...I didn't actually think it would. Dragged the thing home to see whether it'd stack up against my CDX with cds. It didn't.
Was doing a reasonable job with the fantastic new Jayhawks album (Rainy Day Music) until I chucked the disc into the Naim player...
Game over. The Philips went back the next day.

Possibly fab with SACD discs though..not that I have any. Do you?
Posted on: 18 April 2003 by redeye
SACD 1000 btw
Posted on: 19 April 2003 by Dan M
Thanks for the replies. As usual, there appears to be no free lunch.

cheers

Dan