[Nightfall]

Hello,
 
I really need a quality source, suddenly, due to a change in situations. I have an excellent Bryston BDA-1 DAC available, and free access to a mint condition Sony DVP-9000ES DCD/CD/SACD player, that was used only a 3-4 hours a week, for a year before being stored. These very well made units (28 pounds, all copper chassis, etc.) were modded heavily, and expensively, by Modwright, and also Vacuum State Electronics some years ago, so I suspect the transport must be good.
 
I would appreciate your thoughts on whether this would result in high quality sound. Your thoughts would be appreciated. Alternatively, I could buy a transport for under $1k, but cannot find any good units which allow SACD playback, which is necessary. Thanks for any assistance.
 
 
JC

 

[Funambulistic]

JC,
 
I had the privilege of owning a 9000ES and it is a very, very good machine. Unfortunately, I had to sell it a few years back because I was strapped for cash. I expect with the Modwright and Vacuum State Electronics mods, it is an exceptional machine and, sound quality-wise, will give your Bryston a run for its money, if not beating it in certain areas. I am sure it will work just fine as a transport. Keep in mind, though, that you cannot send the SACD signal via coax or optical to an outboard DAC – Sony made sure of that. Newer SACD players have an HDMI out that can send the signal to a HT receiver – I am not sure if there are any DACs out there that receive and convert DSD via HDMI. As far as transports go, the only SACD ones that I know of are by dCS, are proprietary and have to be used with their own outboard DAC (i.e., $$$). Meridian may have had one years ago… If someone were to offer me for free (or even a couple hundred bucks) a 9000ES in the condition you have described and the mods, I would be all over it. Unless you want to spend A LOT of money, you cannot go wrong with this player. Sony got this one right!

 

[Nightfall]

Thanks for your thoughts, Fun, I appreciate the commentary. And yes, I realize there is no way to send the SACD signal to the DAC (I too have never heard of any SACD compatiable DAC's). My intention is to have the player directly connected to my preamp via analog cables to route SACD playback signals to preamp, whilst the cd signal will route through the DAC.
 
I've also read glowing reviews in the past of both the ModWright and Vacuum State mods for this unit, and so, assumed that the transport must be solid.
 
 
JC

 

[Funambulistic]

Good deal - enjoy!

 

[Boom Shaka Laka]

The transport used in both the SCD-1 and SCD-777ES models is particularly well designed and built, fittingly so for a flagship model displaying the new SACD technology, and has been rated as excellent. The transports in the other listed models, DVP–S9000ES are very good, but not on the exalted level of the SACD-1 and SCD-777ES models. It has something to do with the lasers which I just don't recall the details of without a little more research. It can get so technical as to make my brain hurt.
 

DVP–S9000ES digital signal path was optimized for SACD, and they do not in any way convert the pure bitstream DSD/SACD signal to any form or variation of PCM.
 
Interestingly, some of the upgrades for the 9000 concern themselves with low jitter clock by replacing the inferior but necessary parts such as the timing clock and takes the digital signal and completely bypasses the original DAC and audio output sections of the original player. While it is a very good transport on its own there are improvements. If 

only playing CD's, starting with the 

SCD-1 and SCD-777ES would be an upgrade in itself if merely using for transport.
 

my $.02