PHILLLIPS NEW DVD963SA PLAYER

[jbufka2]

Has anyone in the group had any personal experience with the new Phillips DVD963SA SACD Player? I might be in the market for a little better SACD performance than I believe I'm getting from my sub $200 Sony. I'm also interested in the 24/192 upsampling feature of this new Phillips for improved quality playback of my existing CD library. There seems to be a less than unanimous consciences that upsampling really works all that well. Opinions on CD upsampling in general are also welcome.

 

[cupboy]

Why buy a player that is only useful for SACD when
there are now players that will do both SACD and DVD Audio? You can get the Onkyo for around $800,
and the Yamaha for a bit more (only price I've found
is $969 at Ultimate)

 

[jbufka2]

I currently have separate SACD (Sony) and DVD-A (Panasonic) players and I'm generally happy with both. What is most interesting about the new Philips for me is the "24/192 upsampling" feature for all my regular CD's. I'm currently using an older, although very expensive at the time, Yamaha CD player as a transport feeding a seperate Adcom D to A converter for regular CD playback. I'm pretty happy with the sound quality of this setup but thought I'd start to look into upsampling (which the new Philips provides) if there is any real audio benefit or improvement. Now that I've heard the better performance of SACD and DVD-A I'd like to know if there's anything that could help improve my regular CD playback without spending a few thousand of dollars on a super hi-end player. Upsampling looks like it holds some promise but I can't find much in the way of good answers on the web. Some like it, some say it doesn't make any difference, some say it makes CD's sound worse. I'm just trying to gather as much information as possible before spending any of my hard-to-come-by money. Ultimately the best way to judge upsampling would be to find a good hi-fi store and go listen but that's not to practical in my location.

 

[cupboy]

The original Technics DVD-Audio player has this upsampling feature but the recommendation is to turn it off (forget what magazine I read this in). That's what I did. By the way, do you know the warranty on that
Philips machine is only for 90 days? I think I had 2 years on the Technics, but it didn't need any service as it turned out.

 

[AllAroundSurround]

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>By the way, do you know the warranty on that[/quote]

That brings up a good point
What's with the short warranty periods of late.
Don't these companys stand behind their equipment anymore ?

0] Rob

 

[marnie6771]

I owned this machine for one week, before I changed it to the Pioneer 656. It seemed the Philips didn't do VCD and SVCD. Although that wasn't such a problem for me, I am not the only one in this house to use it! Anyhow, it was a very big mistake; the SACD sound quality (which was the main reason for buying it) on the Philips is MUCH better than the Pioneer's! In addition to the Philips I should have bought one of those cheap DVD players who do not have any trouble with reading these VCD/SVCD formats. But at least I am now able to play any format I like, even DVD Audio, which isn't that bad after all.

Kind regards,

Marcel

p.s. I almost forgot: I've tried the CD upsampling feature (yes, until 192 kHz!), but I couldn't hear any difference. What's the point of upsampling 'low-resolution' cd's anyhow? One couldn't expect them to sound any better by 'filling up the blanks'? Anyhow the Pioneer 656 has that option too, though only up to 96 kHz...

 

[Eye of Horus]

I owned this machine for one week, before I changed it to the Pioneer 656. It seemed the Philips didn't do VCD and SVCD. Although that wasn't such a problem for me, I am not the only one in this house to use it! Anyhow, it was a very big mistake; the SACD sound quality (which was the main reason for buying it) on the Philips is MUCH better than the Pioneer's! In addition to the Philips I should have bought one of those cheap DVD players who do not have any trouble with reading these VCD/SVCD formats. But at least I am now able to play any format I like, even DVD Audio, which isn't that bad after all.

Kind regards,

Marcel

p.s. I almost forgot: I've tried the CD upsampling feature (yes, until 192 kHz!), but I couldn't hear any difference. What's the point of upsampling 'low-resolution' cd's anyhow? One couldn't expect them to sound any better by 'filling up the blanks'? Anyhow the Pioneer 656 has that option too, though only up to 96 kHz...

Strange, I have the Philips for a few months now and it has no problem at all playing SVCD or VCD (Pal or NTSC) !

EoH

 

[Bob R]

Sorry, wrong thread.

 

[HD590]

Although it's not new now, I still want to add a few words to tell my story about this machine. It is amazing how good it is sounding compared to its low price ($400). I came across this machine at a local Goodguys which shares the same location with a Tower Records CD store. I found this machine in the Goodbuys' 4-star listening room with $10,000 (list price) parasound's preamp/amp pair. I asked why not any more expensive machines, such as Denon's $1000+ player, and was told that this machine sounds better. I couldn't believe what they said. This is absolutely ridiculous! Are these guys aliens? Since I don't like their listening room, I asked if I could get one home (for their 30-day return policy). They told me it was out of stock and I had to go another location to get one. I did. The result is that I never returned the machine. These guys are not aliens at all!

Oh, I forgot to say that although 96/192 upsampling is good, I used the optical link to my HK DPR1001 more often. I know the DAC inside 963SA could outperform (probably because of the higher overall quality standards of DSD), but the DPR1001's PWM conversion already has had a high carrier frequency so the shorter/simpler path might well be compensating it out.

The downside of this machine is that it probably has had an inferior firmware which causes glitches sometimes. I heard rumors that the later machines (after Oct03 from Hungary?) are less buggy.

 

[sspsandy]

I have found that the best improvement you can get on Redbook CDs is to run a good player (I have a high end Denon) through either a Fosgate Tate II or Model 4 surround processor. They turn all CDs into high resolution surround. And if your source material is a mono bootleg, it is remarkable how much improvement in sound you gain using the mono surround mode.

 

[HiRes_PR]

I bought one because the Pioneer DV-47A I still have is bad with SACD. The 963SA bass management has a bug. It grossly overemphazise bass making it useless. So I had to use it with the Outlaw ICBM. And to me, the Upsampling feature really made CDs sound muddy.

But I replaced it with a Marantz SA8260. The 963SA was overly warm for my taste and it lacked detail. The highs were muted. In fact, both extremes are rolled off. The Marantz has the warm but also the highs and deep lows. It sounds livelier and bigger than the 963SA. Certainly, the Philips can't match the Marantz in CD or SACD playback. However, the Marantz has no level, time delay or bass management controls.

Trust me on this. I love Americans when they say: "You get what you pay for." And is really true.

 

[bmoura]

But I replaced it with a Marantz SA8260. The 963SA was overly warm for my taste and it lacked detail. The highs were muted. In fact, both extremes are rolled off. The Marantz has the warm but also the highs and deep lows. It sounds livelier and bigger than the 963SA. Certainly, the Philips can't match the Marantz in CD or SACD playback. However, the Marantz has no level, time delay or bass management controls.

One of the nice things about the Marantz SA 8260 is that it has the Philips/Marantz developed High Definition Analog Module output stage circuitry on each of the 6 output channels. So I imagine it would outperform the sonics on the Philips 963 which uses ICs for the analog outputs.

I have an SA 8260 in my home office for Stereo SACD listening. It's a nice little player for the money. No doubt about it !

 

[HiRes_PR]

One of the nice things about the Marantz SA 8260 is that it has the Philips/Marantz developed High Definition Analog Module output stage circuitry on each of the 6 output channels. So I imagine it would outperform the sonics on the Philips 963 which uses ICs for the analog outputs.

I have an SA 8260 in my home office for Stereo SACD listening. It's a nice little player for the money. No doubt about it !

Also, the SA8260 has the same DAC (CS4397) for all channels. The 963SA doesn't. In fact, the 963SA has an Analog Devices AD1955 for the front L/R. The rest are handled by a Crystal CS4362 low cost 6 channel DAC block. The front left and right sounds totally different to the rest of the channels. If you're looking for a good multichannel player, this is not. Even for a 2 channel player, it lacks resolution.