Playback Designs MPS-5 SACD/CD Player

[dmnc02]

Originally Posted by Ricardo Nonato

Joe,

this is one of the factors for me to choose the MPS-5. Not to mention the use of CAD, and USB module with native DSD.


Best regards,
Ricardo Nonato.

CAD as in Computer Aided Design?

[joeinid]

Originally Posted by dmnc02

CAD as in Computer Aided Design?

[Ricardo Nonato]

Originally Posted by dmnc02

CAD as in Computer Aided Design?

I'm sorry, the correct word is DAC. Not CAD.

[joeinid]

Thanks Ricardo.

[tom]

I have an MPS 5 and it is an excellent player.
I am a big vinyl fan and have a Kuzma XL 4 with 4point arm.
Previously I owned an ARC CD 5 but always found myself playing LPs. With the MPS 5 it does start to rival the lp playback. However it just misses out on the rhythmic organic flow of the best vinyl. However it is very detailed and and of course there is an awful lot of modern music unavailable on vinyl, so I find myself listening to CD for hours, which is some thing I had not been able to do previously.
Also as I have not got many SACDs, most of the listening is CD. Some SACDs are well recorded but quite frequently I don't miss the extra resolution when listening to CD. The Playback does up-sample CD (or oversample as they call it) so detail from CD is tremendous.
BUT!! after all these positives my machine has just broken down the power supply seems to have burnt out. The CD mech has also been very temperamental and noisy (although this noise is common for esoteric mechs dcs suffer from similar problems apparently) it is always skipping tracks even though discs are scrupulously clean.
So for such an expensive machine I am concerned about it's reliability.

[Still-One]

Originally Posted by tom

I have an MPS 5 and it is an excellent player.
I am a big vinyl fan and have a Kuzma XL 4 with 4point arm.
Previously I owned an ARC CD 5 but always found myself playing LPs. With the MPS 5 it does start to rival the lp playback. However it just misses out on the rhythmic organic flow of the best vinyl. However it is very detailed and and of course there is an awful lot of modern music unavailable on vinyl, so I find myself listening to CD for hours, which is some thing I had not been able to do previously.
Also as I have not got many SACDs, most of the listening is CD. Some SACDs are well recorded but quite frequently I don't miss the extra resolution when listening to CD. The Playback does up-sample CD (or oversample as they call it) so detail from CD is tremendous.
BUT!! after all these positives my machine has just broken down the power supply seems to have burnt out. The CD mech has also been very temperamental and noisy (although this noise is common for esoteric mechs dcs suffer from similar problems apparently) it is always skipping tracks even though discs are scrupulously clean.
So for such an expensive machine I am concerned about it's reliability.

tom
Thanks for your detailed comments about your MPS 5. It is one of the players I have been considering. I will add your reliability concerns to the lack of SACD playback when I am considering the plusses and minuses of different products.

Jim

[Amfibius]

MPS-5 owner here. I have had mine for close to two years, and I use it nearly every day. The only issue I have had was running out of battery on my remote Apart from this - not a thing wrong with it.

My previous CD player (Cary CD306 SACD) had issues with "eating" discs - press eject, and the disc was retained inside the mechanism. The disc drawer sometimes became stuck, and sometimes it would fail to read the TOC of a loaded disc.

My CD player before that (Sony XB 940) eventually stopped reading SACD entirely and started acting up intermittently with RBCD.

At 2 years, I can not complain about the reliability of my MPS-5.

[tom]

Jim
Looking at my post I see it was a bit unclear. The MPS-5 does have SACD capability. What I was trying to say was, the CD playback is so good that SACD is a bonus if you happen to have a large SACD collection. I do not, I have some classical on SACD but most of the digital music I buy is only released on CD.

cheers
Dave (tom)

[doggiehowser]

New firmware out for the MPS-5. Did the upgrade from v21 to v23 earlier. I haven't had a chance to do a proper A:B though.

[TommyC]

Originally Posted by doggiehowser

New firmware out for the MPS-5. Did the upgrade from v21 to v23 earlier. I haven't had a chance to do a proper A:B though.

Some users noticed a slight improvement.