Quote:
Originally Posted by Toccata
Even the Cipher?
How does your Oppo compared to your Esoteric...or is there even any comparison? 
Another issue that has been gnawing on me is having to settle for less than stellar performances/performers and artists I've never heard of in order to get a slight increase in sound quality. For instance, the Shostakovich 11th on BIS has amazing bass and dynamic range, and I generally liked the performance, but when I compared it to my Gennadi Rozhdestvensky version on JVC, which I had not listened to in a few years, the latter ate the BIS performance alive! The old Soviet recording is close and a bit coarse, but for me, the performance is more important. (Sticking with Shostakovich, I compared an RBCD and SACD of the 8th String Quartet this morning: the old Borodin Quartet pretty much trounces the Mandelring Qt! In stereo, there is not that much difference in sound, either.) I think the Sony does some sort of upscaling, so maybe that's why RBCDs sound so good. I guess my point is that there is plenty of life left in older CDs! I'm going to scale back my frequent purchases of SACDs unless the music is rarely recorded and/or is a truly superior performance than one can find on RBCD. |
John - I think the Cipher might be around $5000. At that price you may want to go with a used Esoteric K-03.
In terms of the Oppo/K-03 comparison, I did the experiment because I was thinking of trading up to the XA100.8 Pass Labs amps using the K-03 for a trade it, but after trying the Oppo by itself (in my normal configuration I use the Oppo transport to feed the K-03 DAC for most listening so I don't wear out the K-03 transport) I missed the density of information and harmonic richness that the Esoteric offers. So for me, I cannot part with the K-03 and just use the Oppo after I've experienced the K-03 for over a year.
I find well recorded RBCD every bit as good as SACDs in terms of sound quality (see my top 20 disc list elsewhere), so in my view is best to have both options available.
My 20 best sounding albums all formats