wes

I am in the market to replace my Sony XA-777ES player for a new one with HDMi SACD multichannel capabilities.

I looked at Marantz but they are stereos!!

deacongreg

The Marantzs are very good units, but you are right about them. If you can go for it, I know it would be one of the esoteric players. I feel they are the best available.

kennyt

I and Jim Swantko are both very happy with out Esoteric DV-50s, they won't do SACD over HDMI though.

Wes,

Why do you want to have it run over HDMI??? You will of course be bypassing any D/A conversion in the player this way, and therefore only need a transport, does the Sony not output HDMI? If you really want to do this, you could even buy an Oppo for $200 and do it, buying a good to great SACD player and using the HDMI output is counterproductive unless you are feeding something sick like the ML 502......

__________________
Ken Taraszka, MD
Associate Editor
http://avrev.com/
http://hometheaterreview.com/
http://www.avrevforum.com/

wes

I want to be "bypassing any D/A conversion in the player" and use only one cable instead of six? So what you are saying is that if I let the processor do the D/A decoding the Oppo would be sufficient? Which model does DSD decoding!

kennyt

Wes,

I forget what pre/pro you have, but if it accepts SACD via HDMI, than any SACD player that outputs over HDMI will let your processor do the work, yes, their are differences in transports, but if you NEED HDMi for MC Audio as you say need the pre/pro to do room correction and bass management, then a reasonable transport is OK. The Denon universal players will all do this I believe, and you can pick up 2910/3910's all day long on Audiogon for less than $200/$400.

__________________
Ken Taraszka, MD
Associate Editor
http://avrev.com/
http://hometheaterreview.com/
http://www.avrevforum.com/

wes

I am looking to get the Classé SSP-800