Incog, BTW, Great party you threw tonight...as usual!

My only question is:

Do you really listen to your music at +100db level when sitting on your couch? You know, that is really FREAKING loud!!

You know, I would say that your 2910 Denon sounds "better" than your current Pioneer. Maybe you ought to consider a quality equalizer for your home theater (when you feel like cranking the volume). I don't think that an equalizer is necessarily a taboo?

Opinions from other Outlaws are acceptable regarding using equalizers....

Also, if you are happy with your Pioneer DVD player, then that is what really what counts!


Your Bud,

Nert

I like my Pioneer more than the Denon. I just dont like those really loud highs that it hits. It gets up there pretty quick...even if it's not really really loud. I'm just wondering if there are any other good players out there I aught to look at....I know Gonk has a Panasonic...and Pioneer has some newer ones in the same price category as mine. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Incog

I had a Panasonic DVD-Audio player (DVD-RA60) that was a pretty nice unit if you didn't need progressive scan and didn't wand SACD, but I've recently replaced it with a Yamaha DVD-S1500 universal player. I had considered Denon's DVD-2200 (which looks to have been replaced by the 2910), but that was outside my price range and I never did listen to one. I haven't heard the 563 or any other Pioneer players to know how they sound in comparison to the Panasonic and Yamaha, but I've found DVD-Audio playback on both units I've used to be very comparable. Another thought - if you like the Pioneer's DVD-A and SACD performance but want a video performance boost, you could keep the Pioneer and try an entry-level Denon DVD-V player like the DVD-1910.

Oh, yeah, I haven't had a chance to finish digging into the question of "P.PCM". Since we are using analog outputs for DVD-A and SACD, what we are hearing is not PCM (the lossless digital format used by CD's), and neither DVD-A or SACD use PCM for storage on disc. My old RA60 would also show P.PCM during DVD-A playback, and my new S1500 does it as well. My initial suspicion is that this is referring to the digital audio output being created by the player (which is a downconverted datastream scaled back due to copy protection concerns) since PCM would be easy to generate on the fly, but I haven't been able to verify that anywhere.

Here is a site that deals with SACD. If you switch to DVD-Audiobahn you will get DVD-A talk.
These sites talk about hardware and music.

http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/hirez/bbs.html

Gonk, There is an excellent discussion of packed pcm at http://www.hifi-writer.com/he/dvdaudio/whatisdvda.htm
Your assumption about down conversion is correct; only 48KHz/16 bit due to copy restriction excepy as the article states, meridian. My Denon specifically states PPCM is downconverted on the digital out. Anyway think of packed pcm as sort of a zip compression. The compressed dat can be perfectly expanded again. Pretty neat. I just wish they'd allow it to go between processor/dvd player. I actually think the sweet spot for outlaw would be to make a combo DVD/DVD-A/SACD/Pre-pro. After all they have the Dolby/DTS decoding done. All they need is a transport + the DVD-A/SACD decoders.
Mike