HDTV Forum

Anyone have any experience with mods to sacd players such as the XA777ES or the Sony SCD1 by AudioMods and Richard Kern?

I looked at them but remain concerned.

My SCD777 is one neutral player; It does not appear to have a sonic signature which is exactly what I wanted as one seeking artifact free audio reproduction. I have stated many times if you don't like the sound of the SCD1 or SCD777 then you don't like your equipment.

Of course the easiest remedy is to replace the player with one that does have a sonic signature that offsets what you don't like but that brings us back to synergy which is my least favorite topic but a realistic requirement for most folks.

[quote="Richard"]I looked at them but remain concerned.

My SCD777 is one neutral player; It does not appear to have a sonic signature which is exactly what I wanted as one seeking artifact free audio reproduction. I have stated many times if you don't like the sound of the SCD1 or SCD777 then you don't like your equipment.

quote]

It's not that I don't like it, just that there's always "better." Always chasing something a little more advanced. Micheal Fremer of Sterophile raved about the XA777ES when he reviewed it a while back. Everything was just peachy, as he drooled praise all over it. So, respecting his (and other similar opinions) I went out and purchased it, even buying new this time, with a nice discount though.

So here we are about a year and half later and Fremer is now drooling over the $11,000 Linn Unidisk player. "Makes my XA777Es sound muddy by comparison" he wrote. Oh yeah? Muddy? Great! Why the hell would you recomend it back then if anythingcould make it sound muddy? And why torture me by naming a player that you had previously raved about? Liberal weenie!

Sorry about the rant, but I do it to illustrate how easily we can get sucked into chase after thinking we have finally achieved the best sound for the money. Btw, Fremer reviewed a pair of mono blocs in this month's issue that list for $250,000!

Having read Stereophile for over ten years it is important to take all this with a grain of salt.

The venerable J. Gordon Holt reviewed a Sony CD player for $2000 in which he stated that while the Mark Levinson $30K player outperformed it did not do it by $28K and the Sony was the better recommendation. Last review...

When I was heavily involved and trying to make sense I was in a position to easily test some of the equipment they were reviewing in my own home and started to get a handle on what each individual reviewer liked and disliked. One man to beware of is the infamous Sam Tellig. At the time, 1990-1992, the rest were reliable and provided good perspective.

So does it ever end?

Sure, when you are happy. It helps a bunch if you have a goal. My goal was artifact free audio reproduction and while there could be some improvement the level of improvement will not be night and day at this point since I covered all the big stuff already. I am very happy and have no real hankering to go test and play. I have not heard anything to steer me any other direction. Course that's what happens when you start using headphones as a reference... Tough to beat that clarity and tone but I did!

Immediate future for me? Find a 2 way speaker I like and buy 6 of 'em. Replace my power house amps with something more practical for what I am now doing or based on new speakers have none (self powered). Take my X3 preamp from mere experiment to well built product. Get the dual volume control thing figured out with dual mono volume controls (to be applied to a multichannel job in the future).

Distant future? Find one or build my own (again) multichannel preamp that works correctly. Set up a multichannel system. Get a bigger house The next night and day difference would be a much larger room. Pretty much maximzed what you can do with an average size room.

Much of the audiophile world is designed to keep you basically ignorant so you can keep on thinking it can be better rather than teaching you what is correct so you know when to stop because you are finally there.

You could be on target now. Send your player in and the sonic signature may end up heavier and just about everybody thinks more bass must be a good thing... Course if your system is light on bass this might be a good combo, ARGH! Synergy strikes again!

More bass. Kinda like making TVs with blue grayscales... You can't resist!