I've noticed a surfeit in the cost and availability of SACD's - prices are really cheap for some top notch music, often recorded in Europe with the cost for many disks below $12- with shipping no less!
I'm in the process of digitizing my vinyl along with ripping hundreds of CD's to my Mac, but I also like playing a single disk through my Cambridge CD+ player running through a Peachtree DAC. All is well with this.
I'd like to upgrade my digital source equipment and is seems that the value offered by the glut of SACD's make that a better choice for purchase than a stand-alone CD player, in terms of listening quality and flexibility to build my digital library. I am loading my music onto my iMac and playing it through the DAC, through my Rogue Sphinx integrated amp. Eventually I have a dedicated music server for all of this.
Very knowledgeable contributors to this forum have strongly recommended the NAD CD player for about $299 as a real bargain and more than adequate for my purchases.
Should I go the extra mile and instead invest in a combo CD/SACD player, like the OPPO 103 or whatever else someone can recommend? Is it worth the extra cost and is the SACD sound quality that much improved over the equivalent CD version (NB: I have not done many A/B comparisons of the two formats, but my colleagues strongly recommend the SACD format for overall audio quality)
Final note: I don't care about 5.1 video, blue ray, or any of the other surround sound fanfare. I care only about audio quality and the listening (and not visual) experience. Most SACD players seem to cater to this later category to accomodate watching movies with big sound. I'm not one of them.
Can some advice and direction be offered here? It would be greatly appreciated.
I've noticed a surfeit in the cost and availability of SACD's - prices are really cheap for some top notch music, often recorded in Europe with the cost for many disks below $12- with shipping no less!
I'm in the process of digitizing my vinyl along with ripping hundreds of CD's to my Mac, but I also like playing a single disk through my Cambridge CD+ player running through a Peachtree DAC. All is well with this.
I'd like to upgrade my digital source equipment and is seems that the value offered by the glut of SACD's make that a better choice for purchase than a stand-alone CD player, in terms of listening quality and flexibility to build my digital library. I am loading my music onto my iMac and playing it through the DAC, through my Rogue Sphinx integrated amp. Eventually I have a dedicated music server for all of this.
Very knowledgeable contributors to this forum have strongly recommended the NAD CD player for about $299 as a real bargain and more than adequate for my purchases.
Should I go the extra mile and instead invest in a combo CD/SACD player, like the OPPO 103 or whatever else someone can recommend? Is it worth the extra cost and is the SACD sound quality that much improved over the equivalent CD version (NB: I have not done many A/B comparisons of the two formats, but my colleagues strongly recommend the SACD format for overall audio quality)
Final note: I don't care about 5.1 video, blue ray, or any of the other surround sound fanfare. I care only about audio quality and the listening (and not visual) experience. Most SACD players seem to cater to this later category to accomodate watching movies with big sound. I'm not one of them.
Can some advice and direction be offered here? It would be greatly appreciated.