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Hi-Rez Highway: REVIEW: Sony SCD-C333ES CD Player/Recorder by jonbee

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REVIEW: Sony SCD-C333ES CD Player/Recorder Review by jonbee at Audio Asylum

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After 100 hours of break in, I compared this player to my main CD player, which I assembled after using dozens pieces of mid to high price digital gear. I compared cd redbook playback, and then compared SBM mastered versions of Kind of Blue, Weather Report Heavy Weather, and Willie Nelson Stardust to the versions on Sony's Sampler SACD. First, as a cd player, this player is very good indeed. It has no digital artifacts, and has very good, clean detail. It has a noticeably leaner, dryer sound than my main player, with less ambience and body. The bass is not quite as powerful, and the highs a little less sweet. My main player uses a Genesis Time lens, which reduces jitter and injects triangulated dither into bits 17-20, and the dac has 24 bit resolution. The extra body and ambience may be caused by this word length "enhancement". The 333 is about 1/4 the price, and probably supplies about 80-85% of the sound quality. I think it is excellent performance for the price.
Comparing the cd versions of the songs to SACD on the 333 highlites the SACD sound: cleaner, better instrumental definition and spatial cues and a dryer overall character. The dryness is what I would expect fron cleaning up the background. I think it may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I think it is clearly a more accurate renditon of the music signal. I could detect no other downside to this conversion.
My last comparison was playing the SACD versions on the 333 to the cd on my main machine. I preferred the SACD on the 333, although my wife still preferred the extra body on my main machine.
I would quantify the SACD improvement as thus being nearly equal to upgrading from a top notch $1000 player to a top notch $5000 player. Very significant, though perhaps not revolutionary. I'm excited to think we are in the early stages ot this medium, and there's a lot more development to come, and a lot more releases (Ihope).


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Topic - REVIEW: Sony SCD-C333ES CD Player/Recorder Review by jonbee at Audio Asylum - jonbee 12:53:26 07/7/01 ( 6)