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You can hook up all stereo SACD players to any receiver. However multichannel surround SACD players can NOT be hooked up to all receivers. SACD players only output anlog to protect the record companies. Thus, you must have a 5.1 input array on your receiver if you want to hook up and use a multichannel SACD player in the multichannel mode.

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Soundog's HT Systems

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Just to expand on soundog's comments a touch...

The SACD player will not output an SACD (er, "DSD") DIGITAL stream to your receiver. On the other hand, there are no receivers that would no what to do with it anyway. To play ANY sacd, you need to connect the analog outputs of the player to the receiver. In the case of a two channel SACD, this is not a problem - hook em up to any available input. However, if you get a multi-channel SACD player, and play a multi-channel SACD (anybody seen one?), your receiver will have to have mutli-channel ANALOG inputs.

If you play a CD, you CAN hook the digital output of the player into the receiver, as it will be passing a normal SP/DIF two channel digital data stream.

If you get an SACD / DVD combo player, you can digitally connect the player to the receiver to play DVDs.

If you get a CD / CD-RW / DVD / DVD-A / SACD / MP3 / XYZ compatible player, you're on your own, dude, let us know how you make out.

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Music is art

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Ray's Music System

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watch out - analog inputs and direct inputs are 2 dif beasts. analog ins use the a/d converters, dsp, d/a; whereas direct ins bypass all those. or maybe you could still use the analog ins & use direct mode & still play a 2 channel in sacd. or by analog ray meant

directs. so confusin - i'm waiting for the firewire Smile.gif

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mike, yes digital connect for that would be nice but looks like 1st they'll use a firewire. just 1 connect to replace all those cables.

it'll be a dif connect than digital coax or fiber optic. my pre/pro & many of the newer receivers have an ieee port. couse they'll have to be upgraded w/ a card when they decide on the standard.

anyway, good excuse for me not to spend the dough yet.

cwm34.gif

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bought 6 sacd's at one time, 5-2ch., billy joel-the stranger 5.1 ch. avman.

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sony kv36xbr450 high-definition 4:3 tv

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Mike -

Firewire, or more officially the standard known as I triple E 1394, is a new multi-purpose high speed general digital interconnect protocol.

IEEE 1394 was conceived by Apple Computer and then developed within the IEEE 1394 Working Group. The IEEE 1394 standard is a scalable, flexible, easy to use, low-cost digital interface. The IEEE 1394 standard defines both a backplane physical layer and a point-to-point cable-connected virtual bus implementations. The backplane version operates at 12.5, 25 or 50 Mbits/sec. The cable version supports data rates of 100, 200 and 400 Mbits/ sec. Both versions are compatible at the link layer and above. The Standard defines the media, topology, and the protocol layers.

FireWire is Apple's implementation of IEEE 1394.

It is comprised of a digital interface, a physically small thin serial cable that is hot pluggable (devices can be added and removed while the bus is active), scalable (the Standard defines 100, 200, and 400 Mbps devices and can support the multiple speeds on a single bus), flexible (the Standard supports freeform daisy chaining and branching for peer-to-peer implementations), and fast.

FireWire supports two types of data transfer: asynchronous and isochronous. For traditional computer memory-mapped, load and store applications, asynchronous transfer is appropriate and adequate. One of FireWire's key features is its support of isochronous data channels. Isochronous data transfer provides guaranteed data transport at a pre-determined rate. This is especially important for multimedia applications where uninterrupted transport of time-critical data and just-in-time delivery reduce the need for costly buffering.

This leads to perhaps one of the most important uses of FireWire as the digital interface for consumer electronics and AV peripherals. FireWire is a peer-to-peer interface. This allows dubbing from one camcorder to another without a computer. It also allows multiple computers to share a given peripheral without any special support in the peripheral or the computers. It is a result of all of these features that FireWire has become the digital interface of choice and its acceptance is growing.

Initially, FireWire will be the computer attachment of digital cameras and digital video applications. IEEE 1394 has been accepted as the standard digital interface by the Digital VCR Conference (DVC). The European Digital Video Broadcasters (DVB) have endorsed IEEE 1394 as their digital television interface as well. The VESA (Video Experts Standards Association) is evaluating IEEE 1394 for the digital home network media.

In the world of video editing, FireWire enabled cameras remove the need for costly analog video computer frame buffers to capture digital video. FireWire will gradually improve upon existing interfaces such as SCSI. FireWire provides higher speed, lower cost, and is more user friendly than most existing interfaces. SCSI products such as scanners, CDROMs, disk drives, and printers are already evaluating when they will move to FireWire.

All of this sounds like a digital pancrea, but be advised that early tests by Stereophile and other "hig-end" magazines that compared FireWire digital connections with SP/DIF digital connections (standard co-ax or optical digital outs) found the early generation FireWire implementations subject to a lot of noise and jitter, to the degree that they measurably degraded the signal significantly.

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Music is art

Audio is engineering

Ray's Music System

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Hey Too Much to Say Ray,

You must have two or three computers going at once; 1 to see what questions need to be answered on this BB, another to research the answers, and yet another to research the research.cwm20.gif Now seriously, that was a great explanation on what firewire is, and its history. It seems I learn more on this BB than I do at school. Keep the classes (and the info that comes with them) a' comin.

Da' Hog

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Gee Ray, You pretty much fried what's left of my brain with that post.

Now is this particular interface similar to what's used for DSL cable modems LAN or whatever?

I can kind of understand what your saying by higher speed and better data transportation without buffering.

But does the cable consist of wire?

What materials are used in this interface?

Nice post!

(Hell, I thought maybe going to Belden interconnects would be a upgrade.)

THANX!

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Whew boy Ray! Let me catch my breath.uuuuuhhhhuuuhhhhuuuhhhuuhhhhuuuhhhhuuuuhhhhuuuhhuuuuhh.....

There, that's better.

WSN axed which would be preferred; SACD or DVD-A. (Perhaps you were specifically axing Ray, in which case please excuse my intrusion,) I kinda think I prefer SACD, but for a non-technical reason. Actually, I think either one would sound great, but SACD was conceived as an audio medium from the start, and seems more straight-forward and simple in it's implementation. Wheras I don't know of even one dedicated DVD-Audio player (no video). In fact, most of them cannot even access a DVD-A disc's features unless a video display is connected.

But that issue aside, I don't think either format is ready for prime-time. For the following reasons:

No digital outputs for hi-rez data stream.-------------

Little or no DSP on players for setting delay time, channel balance and bass management.-------------------

Incompatible formats and players.----------------------

Titles in either format are overpriced and too limited in selection.------------------------------------------

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JDMcCall

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Well, not to disagree with James but I prefer the DVD-A format. Only because I have not heard SACD at this time. When I was looking for a DVD player, my only 2 criteria were progressive scan and DVD-A, and I ended up getting the Panasonic RP-91 from www.ecost.com for $480 delivered to my door. This unit got a lot of positive feedback on www.hometheaterforum.com , which played a large part in my getting it. I would have considered SACD except I really only had the room for one player in my rack. James is right about the bass management in these players but I have recently picked up the Outlaw ICBM , which is connected between the DVD player and your receiver/pre-pro via 6 analog RCA cables (yeah, unfortunately you have to buy 3 more pairs of cables). You also have to set all the speakers to LARGE on your player so that the full signal is sent to the ICBM. You can then set the ICBM's crossovers for Mains, Center, Surrounds and Rear Center/Surrounds with separate knobs. Unfortunately, it is only in 20hz increments from 40hz to 120hz, but this machine still makes a huge difference... all for just $249

For receivers with a fixed crossover to the sub (ala my Denon 4800), you could place the ICBM in between your receiver/pre-pro and a 5-7 channel amplifier (or separate amps with at least 5 channels of power). By doing this, you could have bass mgmt for all your sources as opposed to just the DVD-A player. Since I only have a 3-channel amp for the front soundstage, I have the ICBM between my player and receiver. Eventually, I will purchase a separate 2-channel amp and move the ICBM between the amps and my receiver.

After having listened to all the sources from my DVD player (DVD-V, DVD-A, DD 5.1, DTS, PCM) in a variety of ways, I decided to eliminate the digital output altogether by turning it off on my DVD player. This basically means that I am using the DAC's on my DVD-Player and bypassing all the DSP's on the Denon for all material. The Advanced Resolution Stereo versions of DVD-A (2-channel versus 6-channel) sound so much better since I added the ICBM. My Chorus's couldn't handle anything below 40hz on the 2-channel mixes and I was missing a lot of the music, especially on Pat Metheny's Imaginary Day and Bach's Organ Works. Aside from the bass mgmt issue, I just felt the DAC's were better on the Panny (192khz/24 bit) than the ones in my Denon (96khz/24 bit). It sounded like there was more air around the instruments and voices, and just seemed clearer with more detail to me. Others who have listened to my system felt the same way.

The channel balance issue can also be resolved by adjusting the channel levels on your receiver/pre-pro versus using them inside your DVD-A/SACD player. On the Denon, when I want to listen via the analog cables from the RP-91 (which is all I do now), I have to monitor the External Inputs (EXT-IN). To make the settings you just pop in your AVIA or Video Essentials DVD and adjust using your RS SPL meter. You do not want to set the EXT-IN values to the same as your DD 5.1/DTS settings. Mine are nowhere near the same.

James is also right about the minimal selection and prices but I have found shopping online to be the way to go here. You can't beat the prices on www.deepdiscountdvd.com (mostly $18.74 w/free shipping) and www.dvdplanet.com (about $1 higher and $.50/S&H for each disc after paying $2.50/S&H for the first disc). www.dvdempire.com is another place to pick up some of this material...

Hope this helps,

Mike

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This message has been edited by Mike Lindsey on 02-01-2002 at 01:50 PM

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There is an article in the Feb issue of Home Theater Mag that compares the SACD, DVD-A, and regular, plain old CD formats. I just gave it a cursory read last night, but they seemed to favor SACD a bit. The specs comparisons are interesting. It looked like a good, decent depth article dealing with specs, cost, sound, and the risks potential for "forgotten formats". There was something else that seemed important to me at the time I read it, but I fell asleep and can't remember now.

They don't have the Feb issue up on their web page yet(http://www.hometheatermag.com/).

There was a letter to the editor or something in the article about someone wanting to wait for firewire interconnects before upgrading to a new format too. I put a firewire card in my PC to copy over video from a Sony cam. I still haven't figured out how to get "noise free" transfers either. It might be the crappy software that came with the card too.

I'm waiting for fibre interconnects. No EM interference, just don't kink the orange wires! It would be interesting to see how Monster would market fiber!

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sacd is the ONLY digital format discussed thusfar that does not use pcm (PulseCodeModulation). instead it uses dsd (DirectStreamDigital) as the method of encoding the original material. this more closely follows the analog waveform, and is not subject to jitter, and other types of 'interpretation errors' in the recording/playback process. i already put my $'s on sacd. avman.

------------------

1-pair klf 30's

c-7 center

ksps-6 surrounds

RSW-15 on the way!!

sony strda-777ES receiver upgraded to v.2.02 including virtual matrix 6.1

sony playstation 2

sony dvpnc 650-v 5-disc dvd/cd/SACD changer

dishnetwork model 7200 dishplayer satellite receiver/digital bitstream recorder

sony kv36xbr450 high-definition 4:3 tv

sharp xv-z1u lcd projector w/84" 4:3 sharp screen

Bello'international Italian-made a/v furniture

panamax max dbs+5 surge protector/power conditioner

monster cable and nxg interconnects/12 gua.speaker wire

KLIPSCH-So Good It Hz!

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I decided to try SACD because I could get the SONY SACD multichannel changer CE775 for less than $300. and multichannel hybrid SACDs were available for around $18. I fully expected to try it out and then return it. I have had it for a number of months and I am really pleasantly surprised by the quality. Got to be a promotional loss on the part of SONY. I now have about a two dozen SACDs and I think this format will win even though I haven't compared the two side by side -I don't think there is a big difference. Hybrid SACDs offer all options thus may replace regular CDs eventully. The same disk could be played on any CD machine - portable, car, stereo - but can also be played on an SACD multichannel player in stereo or multichannel. Some BIG marketing and inventory advantages in that!

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Soundog's HT Systems

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Soundog,

I bought the same Sony SACD unit. Have you compared it to some of the more expensive units? I have not decided that it is significantly better than my CD transport with MSB upsampling DAC. I was not willing to buy the more expensive units until SACD has a definite future. I have been burn by that in the past (Sony Beta comes to mind).

Jim Norvell

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My Sony c222ES to my ears sounds significantly better than my Denon DVM-3700 DVD. Even regular CDs come through with clarity that I have not heard before. I have been surprised. My purchase could be considered an impulse buy. I attended an open house given by my Audio dealer with a friend who had come along specifically to buy this particular unit. This unit was on sale for $600.00. My friend had auditioned it the week before and was really impressed by the sound. So at his recommendation I also purchased one. I have never had a truly dedicated CD player always relying on combos. I think I made a really great spare of the moment decision.

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Bill J.

My Music System

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j-

I have compared the SONY 775 SACD to CDs played through my Perpetual Technologies P1A which reduces jitter and converts 16/44.1 to 24/96 and their P3A which have done wonders for my CD collection. The 775 keeps getting better ... I bought it on a lark but have come to really enjoy it ...the sound is amazing for $300. ...some multichannel SACDs like the Chesky Bucky Pizarelli Swing Live multichannel is neat - sounds like your siting among an enthusiastic audience in a jazz club ... these DSD recordings are really great but the CD version on the hybrid sounds pretty fantastic through the PT devices too. I do love surround for live concerts!

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Soundog's HT Systems

This message has been edited by soundog on 02-07-2002 at 11:50 AM

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