Meitner CDSA-SE SACD Player

Finally Making Sense of Digital Sound

High quality digital replay is a mess. Conflicting formats and their competing claims have created a complex and confusing field in which the all too prosaic realities of everyday digital performance have been obscured and glossed over. I have severe reservations about most of the claims I have heard manufacturers and other reviewers make regarding “advances” in the sound quality of CD players and about the merits of SACD in general. In far too many cases, I have not heard the benefits that other reviewers have heard, and high cost, high-end players have not differed enough from much lower cost units to justify their price tag.

Underpinning this is the simple, inescapable truth that no player can ever correct the fundamental sonic limitations inherent in the now hopelessly outdated CD medium. As for SACD, far too many highly praised players have offered only limited sonic benefits over CD, and far too many SACDs are simply bitstream versions of recordings made using much older and less advanced equipment.

Yet here I am, listening to (with considerable pleasure) and about to praise (in considerable depth) the Meitner CDSA-SE. It’s not a path I undertake lightly. The Meitner has its own limitations and it also can’t overcome the inherent limitations in what should be a redundant format – but it does do a better job than anything else I have heard to date. It gets more out of CD and mediocre CD recordings that any other player I know. Equally important, it shows just how good SACD can be when the data on the disc is a true, high quality bitstream recording. And those things combined make this the only high cost player I have yet heard that clearly justifies its price tag.

Never Trust a Digital Recording Process Older Than You Are (At Least in Dog Years)

I am not a “digiphobe.” The problems I have heard in CD since the earliest Sony and Phillips players have not stopped me from doing a great deal of my listening to CDs, or from building up a collection of silver discs to match my black vinyl ones. I use an iPod and Apple lossless compression, and even put up with those original Telarc and Denon LPs made from the first, crude digital masters. The fact is, however, that anyone who listens seriously to 24-bit/96 or 192kHz or advanced bitstream recordings quickly realizes that 16-bit/44.1kHz CDs come at a sonic cost that no CD player can possibly correct. You hear those sonic limitations even using direct live recording masters of 16-bit/48kHz digital tapes, or listening to the best 16-bit/44.1kHz CDs. As good as the best CD recordings are there is still less clarity in low-level passages, less articulation of dynamic contrasts and less musical life. There is a loss of harmonic detail in the upper midrange and treble that simply isn’t evident on higher resolution digital discs. More contentiously – as it is less obvious and I can find no technical explanation to justify it – modern digital media produce more powerful and detailed deep bass.

In fact, it’s hardly surprising that the sonic shortcomings of 16-bit/44 or 48kHz recordings are so apparent. It’s like going back in digital time from the latest PC or Mac to a Sinclair or Commodore. CD isn’t just based on outdated technology, it’s technology that has none of the compensating euphonic characteristics of LP or analogue tape. In fact CDs should have died at least half a decade ago, when it became possible to make 24- bit/96kHz recordings just as cheaply, and CD players with 24-bit chipsets to play them without down-sampling. Unfortunately, the sonically excellent efforts of a few recording companies like Chesky and Classic Records to pioneer 24-bit/96kHz discs died in the rush to SACD and DVD-A, and the format wars that followed; wars that effectively killed DVD-A and turned SACD into a niche format for a small number of audiophiles. The impact of higher resolution digital formats was further undermined by the quality of too many of the discs that did appear. Frequently mastered from 48-bit or old analog tapes, often bedeviled by musically unrealistic surround sound effects and by the almost arbitrary assignment of the 5.1 effects channel to bass energy, height information or not at all, results were variable to say the least – often made worse by unusual menus that made proper set up difficult or didn’t really explain the options they presented.

As a result, 16-bit/44.1Khz is still the de facto high-end standard for most recordings, and for most “high-end” digital listening. If anything, the popular trend is away from higher resolution towards various forms of MPEG and digital “lossy” media. A whole generation is growing up having heard nothing better than a digital recording format that is now older than they are; after all – digital ages in dog years. There may be hope in True Dolby and DTS-HD – at least virtually every new Blu Ray player and decent receiver or AV processor will provide the capability to play back the equivalent of lossless 24-bit/96khz recordings, and many will play direct SACD bitstream inputs, via HDMI 1.3). My preliminary experiences with such players and receivers are promising. But, no high-end processors and decks are as yet available that can play True Dolby and DTS-HD, and no firm has as yet announced a commitment to issuing highend music recordings on these formats. Moreover, some receivers that can play True Dolby and DTS-HD don’t play the 24-bit/96khz signal from DVD-As, only ordinary Dolby, and present serious menu problems in playing back SACDs.