I've been intending to buy a new CD/SACD player for a while. Now that
all the shops want to sell blu-ray they seem to be flogging some high
end DVD machines very cheaply. the Yamaha S2700 has gone down from £1000
to £300 in a few months. This, I find very tempting... Does anyone have
any experience with it as an audio player?
Roger Thorpe

Roger Thorpe wrote:

I've been intending to buy a new CD/SACD player for a while. Now that
all the shops want to sell blu-ray they seem to be flogging some high
end DVD machines very cheaply. the Yamaha S2700 has gone down from £1000
to £300 in a few months. This, I find very tempting... Does anyone have
any experience with it as an audio player?

I have an Arcam DV79 as my main DVD and CD player. The picture it
produces when playing a DVD is one of the best I've ever seen, using it
as a CD player it easily sounds as good as something like Arcam's CD73.

It has HDCD decoding, will play DVD-Audio discs (no SACD but its
replacement the DV139 will) and MP3 CDs.

Normally I just use the digital out to the Arcam AVR250 but when playing
HDCDs or DVD-Audio discs I use the analogue out - and yes, it does sound
far better than a £2-300 DVD Video player.

--
Squirrel Solutions Ltd Tel: (01453) 845735
http://www.squirrelsolutions.co.uk/ Fax: (01453) 843773

Registered in England: 05877408

Glenn Richards wrote:
Roger Thorpe wrote:

I've been intending to buy a new CD/SACD player for a while. Now that
all the shops want to sell blu-ray they seem to be flogging some high
end DVD machines very cheaply. the Yamaha S2700 has gone down from
£1000 to £300 in a few months. This, I find very tempting... Does
anyone have any experience with it as an audio player?

I have an Arcam DV79 as my main DVD and CD player. The picture it
produces when playing a DVD is one of the best I've ever seen, using it
as a CD player it easily sounds as good as something like Arcam's CD73.

It has HDCD decoding, will play DVD-Audio discs (no SACD but its
replacement the DV139 will) and MP3 CDs.

Normally I just use the digital out to the Arcam AVR250 but when playing
HDCDs or DVD-Audio discs I use the analogue out - and yes, it does sound
far better than a £2-300 DVD Video player.

But only if the listener knows how much it costs.

--
Eiron.

Eiron wrote:

Glenn Richards wrote:

Roger Thorpe wrote:

I've been intending to buy a new CD/SACD player for a while. Now that
all the shops want to sell blu-ray they seem to be flogging some high
end DVD machines very cheaply. the Yamaha S2700 has gone down from
£1000 to £300 in a few months. This, I find very tempting... Does
anyone have any experience with it as an audio player?


I have an Arcam DV79 as my main DVD and CD player. The picture it
produces when playing a DVD is one of the best I've ever seen, using
it as a CD player it easily sounds as good as something like Arcam's
CD73.

It has HDCD decoding, will play DVD-Audio discs (no SACD but its
replacement the DV139 will) and MP3 CDs.

Normally I just use the digital out to the Arcam AVR250 but when
playing HDCDs or DVD-Audio discs I use the analogue out - and yes, it
does sound far better than a £2-300 DVD Video player.


But only if the listener knows how much it costs.

FWIW I did actually buy the Yamaha in the end. What can I say about it?
well it's mechanically quiet, which few machines manage, and the high
strings now sound much smoother than I am used to hearing (except in
concerts) Downloading a high definition "studio master" recording of the
late Mozart symphonies and burning them to DVD-A was an interesting, if
uneconomic experience. Why would you sell a download at a higher price
than the SACD?
As Glenn indicated, it's impossible to be objective when you know how
much it cost, but these 50 year old lug-holes are happy.
Roger Thorpe

Roger Thorpe wrote:

concerts) Downloading a high definition "studio master" recording of the
late Mozart symphonies and burning them to DVD-A was an interesting, if
uneconomic experience. Why would you sell a download at a higher price
than the SACD?


Details? Where can you download them and how do you write DVD-A?

My broadband's bandwidth is less than the Amazon/postman solution.

--
Eiron.

Eiron wrote:
Roger Thorpe wrote:

concerts) Downloading a high definition "studio master" recording of
the late Mozart symphonies and burning them to DVD-A was an
interesting, if uneconomic experience. Why would you sell a download
at a higher price than the SACD?



Details? Where can you download them and how do you write DVD-A?

My broadband's bandwidth is less than the Amazon/postman solution.

the downloads are from Linn
http://www.linnrecords.com/
they are by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Charles Mackerras.
The files are available as 24/88.2 FLAC and WMA , CD resolution and MP3.
There's a very short sample available for free to test your software and
hardware.
Although it's a modern orchestra (they use modern instruments) the
performance is what I think is called "historically Informed", so not
too much vibrato and a very brisk, exciting approach.
There's a "Messiah" up there that got rave reviews too.

I didn't find the download straightforward because, to download all the
tracks at one click you need to use a download manager. I used
http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/
but it took me a while to realize that it won't work with Netscape!

To write the DVD-As I used DVD-Audio Solo as an evaluation from
http://www.cirlinca.com/
This part was blissfully easy, there's some freeware around, but I think
that it might be a more difficult operation. I will buy the license,
even if I do no more HD downloads I'll be able to assemble long pieces
at CD resolution.


Roger Thorpe