Denon DVD 2900 - DVD player
It's only overkill if you don't care about sound quality.
I first started collecting hybrid SACDs, quite some months ago, out of necessity: Certain record labels are only releasing performances in this format. Also, both BMG and Decca/Philips have gone back into their RCA Living Stereo and Mercury Living Presence vaults respectively to release some of their very best recordings (and long-time favorites of mine) from 4 and 5 decades ago in this format. I had read enough about the theoretical technical advantages of SACD, and the DSD (\\"Direct Stream Digital\\") technology involved, to convince me that this would be enough of a measurable improvement over conventional \\"redbook\\" (16-bit) CD sound that even my elderly ears would likely hear the improvement. So I needed a player, and one capable of playback of either layer (SACD or redbook CD) in such hybrid discs. But which one?    A little bit of digging demonstrated to my satisfaction that all of the low-end players capable of this did so by taking circuitry shortcuts that could turn out to be displeasing in the long run, the most common of which is the practice of converting the DSD signal to analog by first passing it through a DSD-to-PCM filter, and then converting the PCM signal to analog, something every garden-variety CD player already does today. Even if the PCM coding is 24-bit (rather than 16-bit), where's the advantage to that?    While this Denon DVD-2900 player is not inexpensive, it is one of the least costly players that has its own dedicated (and highly sophisticated) circuitry for directly converting DSD to analog, totally separate from the PCM converter. This alone makes the Denon somewhat unique; a true \\"professional\\" deck.    For now, and the foreseeable future, I'm using this deck strictly for two-channel SACD and CD playback, despite the fact that it is a true \\"universal\\" player that handles every conceivable type of multi-channel disc source (home theater DVD-V, true 5.1 channel surround-sound DVD-A and SACD), as well as such oddballs as MP3 and even KodakPhoto CD. The video and Dolby Digital capabilities of this deck are truly state-of-the-art. But that's all I'll say about these features, because I'm not into home theater. \\"I just wanna hear the best-quality two-channel music!\\"    Hookup for this simple mission is no more complicated than adding any two-channel source to a sound system: Plug the stereo signal cables into the deck and the receiver, plug in the power cord, and \\"let 'er rip!\\" Despite the forbidding look of complexity in the controls (and the remote), the deck works like any standard CD deck with one minor exception: a push button control that selects either (a) multi-channel SACD, (b) two-channel SACD, or (c) two-channel CD by reading the \\"redbook\\" CD layer of a hybrid SACD. (For conventional CDs, this latter step is accomplished automatically.) The chassis is a perfect style match for my Denon DRA-685 receiver (reviewed elsewhere at Amazon), and is built like the proverbial tank, with all controls silky-smooth as one would expect of Denon.    For auditioning the SACD performance, and comparing it with the redbook-layer CD performance, I selected a few recently-released classic Mercury Living Presence and RCA Living Stereo hybrid SACDs. The first of these was the Byron Janis/Antal Dorati/London S.O. recording of the Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto (on Mercury Living Presence). Listening to the SACD layer was like listening to the original 30\\"/sec master tape: woodwinds had a natural sense of \\"air\\" around them, strings - even high violins playing fortissimo - were never harsh, the heavily-scored cymbals in the finale of the work were crystal-clear, and the piano image was rock-solid, sounding as if the piano was there in the room with me. The redbook CD layer also sounded fine (it has only been relatively recently been remastered by Wilma Cozart Fine, the original engineer on the project), and, while I must say that the differences were small, they were comfortably above the limits of perceptibility,particularly in the silky smoothness of the strings and the absence of overload in the cymbals while listening to the SACD layer.    I next auditioned the classic Charles Munch/Boston Symphony recording of Ravel's \\"Daphnis et Chlo\\" (on a recent RCA Living Stereo hybrid SACD release). Again, it was like removing a veil in terms of the subtle yet noticeable improvement in naturalness and the total lack of \\"glare\\" in the sound quality. (Here, the differences were somewhat more obvious; the redbook CD layer mastering had not been of the quality of the Janis/Dorati/Mercury one.)    I suppose I could quibble about the lack of a headphone jack on this deck. Its absence constrains me to \\"go where the deck is,\\" and use the headphone jack on my receiver, rather than carry the deck around to some other place in the house. But that's about it.    As for all those other features (multi-channel surround sound, home theater video/audio, etc.), they'll just have to wait for another day and a whole bunch more speakers. Right now, I'm just happy with the ability to listen to the finest two-channel sound I've ever heard.    Bob Zeidler