Sony SCD-XB940

...quailty -this is a sign Sony are serious with this deck.

The Fascia is by comparison somewhat minimalist offering track selection via a Jog dial on the right hand side, basic play,pause,stop contols etc and an Eject button. Losing the remote is fatal-you would not be able to select the SACD mode for a compatible disc...which would defeat the whole purpose of it.

Ok so what about sound quality?

In a word ...
...I replaced it with a Sony TAFBE-940 which resulted in an even bigger increase in quality especially in standard CD playback. So an all round brilliant buy so far...

And the Drawbacks?

The main issue is the fact that critical funtions such as SACD mode selection are Remote dependant-this is fine in one sense as it produces an uncluttered fascia but if it's lost or broken you will have a shadow of your lovely machine.
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A quick confession.

I've been purchasing high resolution format CD's known as Hybrid SACD's for over 5 years-without the facillity to play them back to their full potential.

"What's the point in that?" you may ask

" Better sound quality potential for the future, CD Text and the same price as a standard CD" I reply.

I digress.. anyway back to the player.

I'd been looking to replace my worn out Technics CD player for some time. So I set myself a budget of about £400 and started out on the trek of finding a quality replacement . My basic requirements was to have the following

1) SACD compatibility-I own almost 30 Hybrid SACD titles and wanted to listen to them at their full potential.

2) CD Text-I hate looking at CD covers to find out what the track is.

3) Excellent Sound Quality

4) Ease of Use

5) A recognised brand

Some models from brands such as Rotel offered fantastic sound quality but were missing the first two requirements. Others such as Denon and Marantz fulfilled all requirements but exceeded budget by a sizeable amount. Still others were what is termed "Universal" players which are really souped-up DVD players-in my opinion the sound quality was likely to be compromised without spending a four figure sum-which was out the question.

So I trekked around and by complete chance spotted this ex display model in James Beattie PLC Wolverhampton. I asked for a quick demo and was pleasantly surprised by the fact it fulfilled all my requirements. Priced at £400 down from £539.99 it was nicely within my budget. Some quick bartering resulted in me getting a further £50 knocked off the price for taking the display model. So I had the player I wanted for £350-BARGAIN.

On getting it home, I was impressed by the solid feel and the easy to understand instructions, clear and simple. Everything seemed easy to follow so things like connecting it up to an amp for example was easy as was some of the more advanced functions such as indexing (when you may want to jump between parts of a track repeatedly for example) was also easily done.

Connecting it up to my Pioneer amp was easy, I plugged it in at the mains and could see a nice clear display showing playback mode (CD or SACD), disc time etc clearly in a blue LED display.The CD draw opened a little jerkily which concerned me a bit at first but a quick call to a friend assured me that this is normal-short of a very expensive deck.

The Remote Control offers the whole funtionality of the deck such as track selection, programming , CD/SACD playback selection, indexing, various display modes such as track title (when applicable-sadly only relativly few CD's have CD Text) and can even turn the display off altogether-some audiophiles believe that displays on CD players etc compromise sound quailty -this is a sign Sony are serious with this deck.

The Fascia is by comparison somewhat minimalist offering track selection via a Jog dial on the right hand side, basic play,pause,stop contols etc and an Eject button. Losing the remote is fatal-you would not be able to select the SACD mode for a compatible disc...which would defeat the whole purpose of it.

Ok so what about sound quality?

In a word stunning.

I noticed a huge jump in quality over my previous Technics CD player with whatever CD I used . But the real gem was switching to SACD mode. I played "Time is on my side" by the "Rolling Stones" first on CD then on SACD mode and the clarity was untrue...I could have sworn I saw Keith Richards in my room. every little nuance and tone was stunningly revealed. And it carried on through the whole album. Then onto "Survivor" by "Destinys Child"-I was in pure audio heaven.

Sadly my Pioneer amp started to fade and I replaced it with a Sony TAFBE-940 which resulted in an even bigger increase in quality especially in standard CD playback. So an all round brilliant buy so far...

And the Drawbacks?

The main issue is the fact that critical funtions such as SACD mode selection are Remote dependant-this is fine in one sense as it produces an uncluttered fascia but if it's lost or broken you will have a shadow of your lovely machine.

In my experience for optimum playback, a dedicated amp is required for standard CD mode

And finally it's hard to get-Sony appeared to have pulled out of two channel Hifi-which in my opinion is crazy.

But in my opinion I've landed an absolute bargain. A comparable Marantz player costs almost £600 and isn't any different regarding sound in my experience.

Highly recommeded-if you can get it.

 

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