Quote:
Originally posted by bundee1
Why dont you just get a used NS500V? There are plenty on Audiogon. The SACD performance is nice and the cd although being nothing to write home about still holds its own. At $130-$150 used you cant lose. |
CD performance of the NS500V nothing to write home about? Boy are you demanding
How good does $200 CD performance have to get to write home about in your terms? I have an NS500V and am extremely happy with it in all fronts, as a DVD player, of course as an SACD player, but also as a CD player. Particularly given what I paid for it, US $200 new a year and a half ago. With respect to its CD playback capabilities, have you seen the following:
http://www.avguide.com/newsletter/AV...2/sony_dvp.jsp
That review puts the NS500V in the same league as dedicated CD-only players like the Rega planet.
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...r-10-2002.html
Section "Comparing CD playback to the Sony SACD/DVD DVP-NS500V" of that review places the Sony above the NAD 541i in standard CD playback quality.
Well, but those are just 2 reviews someone might say, maybe matters of opinion. In my particular system (Sony NS500V player-->Outlaw Audio's ICBM->Marantz SR-4000 receiver-->Paradigm speakers+subs, or Grado's SR-60's) I like the CD playback throught the analog outs of this player (meaning the player doing the PCM decoding) better than to have the Marantz decode the coax-digital out of the player. The sound of voices in particular is more natural and smooth (less "digital" as people usually refer to that). Also voices and sounds in general are more precisely localizable in the soundstage when the player is decoding instead of my receiver. Anyway, even though I think my Marantz sounds good enough already when decoding PCM, but when this Sony does the decoding it just sounds better to me.
I should say, however, that I have two complains about the NS500V:
1) A minor one, when playing DVD's and there is a layer change, there is a slightly annoying pause that freezes the image for almost a second.
2) A not so minor one: between CD/SACD playback modes on the one hand , and Dolby Digital or DTS on the other, all through the analog outs of the player, there is a MAJOR bass level inconsistency. Let me elaborate on this a bit because I haven't seen this issue pointed out anywhere with respect to any universal or multiformat player.
Again I have an Outlaw Audio ICBM and 2 subwoofers. Have all speakers set to large in the player, and do all bass management in the analog domain with the ICBM, which is connected between the NS500V and my Marantz receiver. The player doing the decoding, so the receiver is in "multichannel amplifier-only" mode so to speak. I calibrate my system's bass using Stereophile Test CD 2. So notice, that's an optimal calibration for CD playback. There's no Stereophile Test *SACD* yet, with bass warble tones encoded in DSD, or not that I know of from any source. So I was trusting that calibrating using bass warble tones in a CD would yield a satisfactory calibration for SACD playback. In fact, with the CD-based bass calibration, the bass from SACD in the NS-500V sounds basically flawless, or I should say as good as it can get in my system, and IMHO.
How about DD/DTS playback using the same CD-based calibration? Well, that's a whole different story.
Using that same CD-based bass calibration, and still having the NS500V instead of the receiver doing the DD or DTS decoding, the bass is noticeably weaker than it should be. And I mean way weaker, more than 6dB's below where it should be.
Because of that inconsistency, when I play DVD's I actually do set the receiver to do the decoding, and I switch to a special calibration I've done for Dolby Digital playback using the AVIA calibration DVD. And I assume calibrating for dolby digital works for DTS. Same as for SACD, there is no DTS-specific calibration disc with bass warble tones encoded in that format, at least not that I know of.
In summary, when playing CD's or SACD's I use calibration A, which is based on PCM-encoded bass warble tones, using Stereophile Test CD2, player doing the decoding. And when playing DVD's I use Dolby digital-encoded bass calibration tones, using the AVIA calibration DVD, receiver doing the decoding.
The difficult thing is tweaking the system parameters (ICBM crossovers, the subwoofer's crossovers and volume levels, receivers sub volume etc) to flatten the bass in both setups. But once all those parameters are satisfactorily found, switching between the two choices is relatively easy, basically a matter of changing the overall bass level either in the ICBM or in the receiver + enabling or disabling the receiver as the decoder.
In any case, it's an extra hassle that true bass consistency in the different formats supported by the player would have eliminated from the shoulders of the user. That's why it's one of my complaints.
Other than that, I have no complaints about CD playback quality per se from the NS500V, most importantly considering its very affordable price, and all the things besides CD playback that it also does very well.
Cheers,
Raul
