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January 17, 2007
The SACD Player: Perhaps I'm not *Really* Serious about Audio
I've been looking around at CD players with a thought to get something for my office because playing CDs on the computer is just to loud, and I can't realistically rip my entire collection to mp3 (nor do I particularly like the loss in audio quality).
I've toyed with the idea of getting a SACD player and figured I'd start looking at Crutchfield, the company with the catalogs I used to spend hours drooling over as a kid.
Yes, they have Super Audio CD players. Can I afford one? Perhaps the bottom of the line. It would have to be a very, very special occasion to purchase a really good one like the Marantz SA-7S1, which currently rings up at $6,499.99. Then again, how many CD players have you seen that have balanced 3-pin XLR outputs?
I guess I'm not really serious about audio if my price range doesn't include figures in the thousands or tens of thousands.
Posted by mike at January 17, 2007 12:10 PM
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Comments
Hi Mike,
A price of ~$7000 suggests a thin line between "audiophile" and "fool" ("audiophoole"?).
I find the quality of MP3s (or OGGs for preference) fine at a nominal bitrate of 192 kb/s or higher; 160 is acceptable; those at 128 kb/s (still the most common bitrate one will encounter) sound too squished for me -- like FM radio.
Perhaps with harddrives being the size they are now, we should be looking at a lossless format, such as FLAC?
Posted by: Dave Edwards at January 17, 2007 2:38 PM