I could not pass it up any longer. The Best Buy here had an open box "500" for $149, and I said "What the heck" and bought it. I am going to keep it up on the PC, not in the main stereo, as I am holding out for that MegaChanger, whenever Sony does it.
Anyway, the thing is GREAT!! Anyone who is waiting should jump on this sucker! It even has an internal DTS decoder that works perfectly!!
I took the 6 analouge outputs and connected them right to my Yamaha Multi-Channel sound card and immediatly started sampling the SACDs I had accumulated over time. I fired up Mx51 so I could watch and mute the individual channels while I listened and hey, it was cool!
The two Billy Joel surround SACDs are very interesting. I muted all channels but the center, and you can hear Billy singing solo, I even heard him say stuff that I could never understand after all these years.
The James Taylor is VERY nice, and Tapestry is still Tapestry. I am going to record these to wav files and compare them to the Q8 wav files to see if they are similar in the mix.
As a bonus, I now can play a DTS CD and "decode/unencode" it back to a wav file by using this machine's internal decoder. This will allow me to "go back" and clean up some of the earlier DTS conversions that I did where I did not save the unencoded wav files!
On top of all of this, I got a rebate coupon to get 5 Free DVDs!! Heck, what a deal!
Let's go SACD!!!
:-jon
Anyway, the thing is GREAT!! Anyone who is waiting should jump on this sucker! It even has an internal DTS decoder that works perfectly!!
I took the 6 analouge outputs and connected them right to my Yamaha Multi-Channel sound card and immediatly started sampling the SACDs I had accumulated over time. I fired up Mx51 so I could watch and mute the individual channels while I listened and hey, it was cool!
The two Billy Joel surround SACDs are very interesting. I muted all channels but the center, and you can hear Billy singing solo, I even heard him say stuff that I could never understand after all these years.
The James Taylor is VERY nice, and Tapestry is still Tapestry. I am going to record these to wav files and compare them to the Q8 wav files to see if they are similar in the mix.
As a bonus, I now can play a DTS CD and "decode/unencode" it back to a wav file by using this machine's internal decoder. This will allow me to "go back" and clean up some of the earlier DTS conversions that I did where I did not save the unencoded wav files!
On top of all of this, I got a rebate coupon to get 5 Free DVDs!! Heck, what a deal!
Let's go SACD!!!
:-jon