Sony's high-end SCD-XA5400ES SACD player eyes-on at CEDIA
By Darren Murph 
posted Sep 4th 2008 11:57PM
posted Sep 4th 2008 11:57PM
posted Sep 4th 2008 11:57PM
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What are they smoking?!?!
Wait...so they didn't put 7.1 Analog outputs on it? What's the point of paying top dollar for a SACD player if you're just going to use it as a transport for the DSD over HDMI - the Oppo 980H can do that fine for 1/10 of the price.
Alas, there aren't so many receivers that can actually play DSD over HDMI...
That is to say, if you can afford the gear to do DSD over HDMI (and care about it), you can afford this. Probably.
I know there aren't many HDMI 1.2 receivers. My point was that you can get a cheaper device to send out the DSD signal over HDMI - it's only worth the extra money for high-quality analog outputs. Since there's no surround analog outputs, you're really just getting a really good CD player that can play SACDs in surround with an HDMI 1.2 receiver.
I think the "No Disc" display on the front is very appropriate.
How can anyone purchase a Sony product when they put out misleading tech info: e.g. The STR -DA5400ES receiver uses the full resolution of the DSD signal (32 bit) from input filtering through to processing the signal, then and only then does the amplifier at the final stage convert to PCM. This way you can ensure the full resolution of the DSD signal can be fully utilised.