Pioneer DV-578A-S DVD Player with DVD-Audio / SACD
Doesn't deliver SACD quality playback
I bought this after reading a review that it sounded about as good as a Denon SACD player with 4x the price.  However, I find it to be unacceptable as an audiophile SACD player.  I did an A/B comparison with my 3 year old Sony DVP-NS500V player (which sadly is not now recognizing the SACD layer on most new Hybrid SACD/CD discs!).  The difference is decisive.  With the Pioneer you cannot hear the \\"space\\" of the hall which you can hear with the Sony.  And sibilants sound hissy and sandy on the Pioneer, while they sound airy on the Sony.  In short, it suffers the defects of CD sound.  I have read that some SACD universal players convert the DSD signal to 192 KHz PCM streams upon which they do D/A conversion.  I suspect this is one of them.  There ought to be some regulation requiring the disclosure of such \\"cheats\\".  Caveat emptor. Don't buy this as an SACD player because it doesn't deliver SACD quality sound.