On to the important stuff; how did it sound? Even straight out of the box it was better than my highly modified-to-
high-end standards Denon 5900, and if memory serves me right, far better than any other player that's been in
my system, and that's saying something. Not only did the unit pass 16/44 through the RCA digital output, it even
sent 24/88 two-channel audio from my home-produced DVD-Audio. Again, there was a marked improvement in
musical reproduction compared to using the Denon as a transport. As noted above, with DVD-Audio 5.1 discs,
when placed in two channel mode, most of the surround information was included into the two channel signal
which could be sent to a pre-pro and decoded into surround. While not as good as true 5.1 it was certainly
better than listening to the DD or DTS track of some of my combination DVD-Audio 5.1 DD-DTS discs.
The real enlightenment came after letting it break in and after proper setup. Here I have to be careful with
superlatives. In the past I've painted myself into a corner writing that a particular unit was the best thing I've
heard or could expect to hear, only to find another product a couple of months later that improved upon the
other. Also, one has to remember the "Law of Diminishing Returns," which is very important in audio. While one
can climb the nearest hill for little cost except for maybe some lumbago ointment and aspirin afterwards, it costs
north of $100,000 plus several weeks out of your life to climb Everest. In high-end audio it's the same. As one
goes up the ladder in audio reproduction, the costs gets steeper and steeper for the sometimes-minimal
improvement obtained. Remember, this unit is actually on the middle rung for cost in the Esoteric line, but at
$4600 significantly more expensive than the vast majority of high end players for both video and audio offered
by the majors such as Denon, Sony, etc. On the other hand, the source is either the most important qualifier for
how your system will sound or the second, the speaker in some quarters felt to be more important. Garbage in -
Garbage out as they say.
Trying to hold back on the superlatives, the SA-60 has produced the cleanest most analog-like sound that's
come out of my speakers from any digital component. While I'm sure it's probable that their more expensive
units, and possibly those mega-bucks transport-converter and disc players both from TEAC and others, such as
EMM Labs, Linn, etc., may add some quality or improvement missing from the SA-60, I cannot imagine that
there would be anybody out there who wouldn't be satisfied with this unit, unless they possibly had a chance to
hear what the more expensive units can do (see below).
First for my few gripes with the unit, which are matters of omission rather than commission. While in the
instruction book they recommend directly feeding the unit into a 6 channel amplifier, which would make sense to
eliminate the pre-pro, unhappily the unit doesn't have a master volume control, and I don't know of any multi-
channel amps that do. The remote control doesn't have the ability to switch between the various digital filters. It
would be great to be able to do this from the listening chair instantly. It would also be nice for the instruction
book to have explanations as to what several of the controls do. For instance, there is an option called " CD
Direct", which allows some of the circuitry to be bypassed, but it doesn't mention which circuitry and how it
should affect the sound. Perhaps Mr. Gurvey will discuss this in his words at the end.
Now for the accolades. This is by far the best sounding player I've had in my system for all forms of digital discs.
While I've only heard the EMM Labs units at shows, and it rated the best for SACD reproduction, the cost of
those units are double to quadruple what the SA-60 costs. DVD-A while not quite as analog as SACD
reproduction is far superior to anything heard here previously. Even with CD's that old demon digititis has been
vanquished, especially when using the combined FIR-RDOT filters. Not only have the spaces between the
digits been narrowed, the discontinuity of the soundstage that 16 bit digital has had appears to be eliminated,
with the best CD's sounding almost like Dolby A 15 ips master tapes that I loved to listen to in the 80's. While
some people may think, "Bits is Bits", its how they are accurately picked up and translated that makes all the
difference. I firmly believe this unit is picking up all of the bits.
Playing DVD-Audio and SACD surround discs takes the music reproduction up another level. The highly
modified Denon 5900, which with the mods cost about as much as this unit, is left in the dust, ready for the
Audiogon site. The surround effect is immersive. Where before there was some unrecognized discontinuity at
the time in the surround effect, the stage now envelops 360 degrees in the horizontal and actually almost fills in
the overhead effect. On some Telarc discs that have overhead sounds built into the subwoofer channel, the
envelopment is total. I cannot believe that other companies haven't realized how important that third dimension
is to the reality of the music.
How is the unit as a transport and how does the unit's sound compare to one of the best pre-pro's out there?
I've been fortunate over the past couple of months as videophiles have been selling off their Lexicon MC-12
processors for the new video HD units, which are exactly the same save for their HDMI in and outputs. While
this unit does not quite have the fluidness of my previous EAD Theatermaster, its ability to do 8 channel room
correction and its superb D/A conversion and surround signal processing put it in a class of its own. With it I can
on the fly hear the audio from the SA-60 coming through as 2 channel or 5.1 channel either directly passed
through or room corrected and changed to 7.1, or use the coax or Toslink output of the SA-60 with an without
correction. In all cases, the sound directly out of the Esoteric beat anything the Lexicon could do except when
the Lexicon converted two to multi-channel. Then the preference went to the Lexicon re-digitizing the FIR-
RDOT two track analog signals from the Esoteric rather than the coax digital signal even though a second A/D
and D/A had to be done.
