Per ora ho solo questa review del predecessore mai arrivato in Europa:
By Inet un Utente
I picked this unit up while in Tokyo last month. At the time I was hoping to buy one of the cheap, Japan-only single disc Sony players, since changers always seemed mechanically unsound to me.
Tokyo electronics stores aren't exactly great environments for auditions: a tiny room packed with gear and speakers, no acoustic treatments, and noise from other parts of the store blaring in the background. Nevertheless, I was not impressed with the sound of the cheaper Sony players. You get what you pay for, I suppose. I then moved on to the $1000 range players: the Sony 333ES and the SA-8260. I found the Sony to sound too much like, well, a Sony. Accurate, but dry and uninvolving. The Marantz sounded more like music to me, and had a cheaper price tag to boot: JPY73400 vs. JPY99800 for the 333.
I've now had the player at home for 4 weeks or so, and have a good impression of its strengths and weaknesses. First the strengths:
The SA-8260 is a super redbook player! I wasn't expecting much. I've had an original Rega Planet for a couple of years, and have never found anything under $1000 that would make me want to trade up. Mind you, the Rega is not a perfect player: it is quite poor at detail extraction, and is often too laid back. However, its sins are of omission. It doesn't have the harsh, glarey sound that is mistaken for detail in most cheap players that makes them very fatiguing to me.
Well, imagine my surprise when this cheap little Marantz kicked my Rega into the closet. On CDs, it picks out far more detail than the Rega. The music seems much more alive and vigorous on the 8260. What is missing is the grain and glare that seem to accompiany this detail on most budget players. Listening to some of my favorite ear-bleeder CDs (e.g. Ryuichi Sakamoto's BTTB, Sarah McLachlan's Surfacing, anything by Tori Amos), I was impressed with how the Marantz sounded much more 3D and open without causing horrible listening fatigue after an hour.
Well recorded CD's, such as John Williams "The Magic Box," are served even better by this machine. The soundstage is wider and deeper, and the presentation is smoother overall than the Rega. I'm happy enough with the sound of this disc, that it'll be a while before I bother to upgrade to the SACD version! The combination of musicality and high resolution clearly isn't limited to the big buck players anymore.
Prior to buying the 8260, I had exactly one SACD: the SFSO's hybrid multi-channel disc of Mahler's Sixth. Thanks to Tower's 4th of July sale, I have a couple more now. However, I'm likely not as qualified as some to dissect the 8260's hi-res performance.
Sonically, the overall character of this player does not change from redbook to SACD. It has the same wide, deep soundstage, excellent detail extraction, and smooth, grainless presentation. SACD simply allows the 8260 to more completely express the same nature it shows on CDs.
In particular, I've noticed the following improvements with SACDs:
1. Deeper soundstage. In redbook, the 8260 throws a very wide stage, but SACD doubles its depth. Overall, the feeling of three dimensional space is greatly enhanced in SACD.
2. More realistic percussion. I was expecting instruments like snares and cymbals, with their extensive ultrasonic content, to sound better in SACD. What I wasn't expecting was for bass drums to sound a whole lot more realistic. Percussive attacks seem to have more snap, and decays seem to linger more realistically.
3. A great deal more harmonic depth to the music. I have only two hybrid discs: the aforementioned Mahler and Telarc's new DSD Symphonie Fantastique. On both, I noticed the same phenominon. The redbook layer, though it sounds good, is harmonically flat in comparison to the SACD. Harmonic lines are submerged in the melody on CD, while on the SACD layer they are much more present. Not emphasized (at least not unnaturally so), but rather not obscured. Large orchestral works have much more compelling texture on the SACD layer than on the CD layer. This effect is also audible in single-layer discs, of course, but I have no standard of comparison with them.
I'm not able to use the multichannel outputs of this player in my system, but look forward to the time when I can. The few MC SACD demos I've heard have been very impressive and increase the sense of real space even more.
Sonically, this player is great, but for less than 1000$, there has to be some compromises, right? Certainly, but luckily most are confined to secondary concerns.
A big downside with this player is its complete lack of bass management and speaker setup options. You can choose to play the disc in either stereo or MC, but there is no way to set the default. MC discs automatically get set to MC mode and I have to manually switch to stereo each time.
There is no bass management at all. What is recorded on the six channels of the SACD is exactly what comes out the six channel outputs. If you want to use this player with a sat/sub system, you'll need to get an external analog crossover/mixer for the subwoofer.
A more minor nit is the speed of the mechanism. Everything works slowly. The tray moves slowly in and out. It takes a good 10 seconds to read the TOC. Even switching tracks has a disconcerting half second delay between the time you push the button and the time the next track starts playing (actually what is most weird is that during this delay, the first track keeps playing). To play in stereo only, you have to sit through two annoying TOC reads, because you can't switch to stereo mode until after the MC TOC has been read.
So far, I've noticed one problem with this player: it sometimes has a hard time with Sony single-layer discs. I occassionally have to try two or three times to get it to read the TOC on these discs. Cleaning helps somewhat. The two non-Sony, hybrid discs I have and all CDs read with no problems, leading me to believe that this may be a problem with the discs not the player. At any rate, getting service for a Japan model player in the states will likely be difficult and the discs play fine after the TOC is read.
Finally, the "champagne" finish the Japan models come in is quite tacky looking. It reminds my of the gold plastic emblem options people get for their luxury cars. Yuck. The black US model is a bit more attractive, but I'd have prefered uncolored brushed aluminum personally.
At any rate, these problems are all relatively minor, at least in my setup. I got this player thinking it'd be a good entry into the world of SACD and ended up with an unexpected upgrade to my redbook frontend as well. Will this player beat a $3600 Linn Ikemi on redbook? No, probably not. Is it better than the two box Accuphase on SACD? I wouldn't count on it. But for less than $1000, you get a darn good CD player that works even better with SACDs.
-Jon
La mia opinione:
E' ancora meglio il cd 17 (solo cd) che tale SA8400 (SACD):in effetti il cd 17 costa il 20% in piu'(scontato).Ma se volete iniziare ad ascoltare i nuovi sacd e' un prodotto che consiglio,se non riuscite a comprare solo un cd come il cd 17 .I moduli HDAM sono gli stessi in entrambi,la sorgente e' migliore sul sacd ma il risultato per me NO.Quindi e' per chi vuole la massima trasparenza e dinamica a discapito di una minore dolcezza e musicalita':quindi piacera' a molti ,in effetti sono in molti con questi gusti, vedendo quello che tipicamente la gente compra se non e' abituata a lunghi ascolti.Sicuramente meglio dei lettori dvd sacd, a meno di arrivare al 8400 dvd da 2500 euro...che suona uguale ma e' multicanale e dvd..insomma inutile.Tenete presente che i dvd attuali non vivranno molto (DVD ad alta definizione).Quindi ok un lettore come questo pensando al futuro della musica su sacd ma con un lettore dvd economico come Il FASE per il cinema.
