Just came across this thread and it is amazing. A raft of comments putting down a product none of you have heard and clearly know little about, and also denigrating DSD, which apparently, at least the majority of you have never heard. Sorry, but the height of close-mindedness.
A few points in response to the thread: 1. I own 2 SBT's and a fit pc. The Sony is much better sounding. No comparison. So for your $2000 you get a much better sounding player and DAC, plus 1TB of built in storage. It's extremely well built, with high end parts and very solid construction. Not plastic. Not a bad deal at all, relative to it's actual competition. Obviously, with a $2000 price tag, it isn't intended to be a mass market item and isn't intended to compete directly with a product like the SBT. In "high end" terms, it can certainly be seen as a good buy. 2. The HD of the Sony can be user replaced, and with a much larger one. Not a problem at all. It can also play from an external USB drive. 3. There are something close to 2000 native DSD recordings on the market, if you count SACDs recorded and produced with native DSD. Yes, mostly classical. Several thousand other SACDs of good analog recordings converted to DSD/SACD, music of all types. More and more of this is being released as DSD every day. Lots of people are ripping SACDs these days, and you can even have it done for you. So not a true obstacle. In spite of what you may think, there are lots of people with large SACD collections. So a device like this is quite useful for them. BTW, if you haven't heard a native DSD recording of acoustic instruments, you might be amazed at how good it sounds. I have a couple of native DSD orchestral recordings that simply are the best sounding recordings I've ever heard of a symphony orchestra. Period. 4. DSD is a fantastic medium for digitally archiving analog master tapes. I have several such DSD albums and they generally are the best sounding version, even in some cases better than hi-res PCM versions. This might be due to better mastering, or it might be that DSD is simply better at capturing the sound of analog tape. In the end, the format isn't important, getting better sounding music is. So the fact that a lot of "Old" rock, jazz, and classical is being remastered to DSD is only a good thing in my eyes. No one is making you buy remasters if you aren't interested. I happen to like having better sounding versions of albums I love. Many (not all) of the remasters I've bought in the last few years (both PCM and DSD) sound better than the vinyl or CD versions I previously owned. I'm glad to have them. 5. The "DSD engine". Have you heard it? Take a listen or look online and see reactions/reviews. I haven't read any actually negative ones. The reactions range from "it sounds fantastic, I'm doing all my listening this way" to "I prefer it some of the time, not all". Is there something wrong if people enjoy the sound of it? Find a system that can upsample and play some of your favorite recordings as DSD. You might like how it sounds. GIK Acoustics Room Treatments. Tranquil PC fanless server running Windows 7; SB Touch slaved to Empirical Audio Pace Car; Mytek 192 DSD DAC;Custom Desinged Class AB control amp; Devore Gibbon 9 Speakers; Dual 506 + Ortofon M20 (occasional use); sometimes use PC with M-Audio 192 as digital source. SB Boom in second room. Arcam CD82 which I don't use anymore, even though it's a very good player. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ firedog's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=11550 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=101003 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
