Gonk,

To your ears, can you hear an audible difference in any player? I would consider upgrading my Pioneer dv-45 universal player, especially if sacd playback sound was noticeably better. Didja get the Yamaha before your daughter arrived? Was it an improvement? (The player, not the baby! LOL!)

Jay

The Yamaha did arrive before Kate, and I've been using it since September. Video performance was quite pleasing (it trounced my old interlaced player and my progressive scan DVD recorder, although it had some troubles with the Secrets benchmark tests), DVD-Audio was very comparable to my previous DVD-A player, SACD is on par with or perhaps a little weaker than DVD-A on the Yamaha (based on the small sampling of SACD's in my collection, several of which are stereo discs that may not be the cleanest recordings and mixes), and CD performance was a bit stronger than my previous player. It's hard to say how the SACD performance might compare to your DV-45 since my previous player didn't suppor SACD at all. My biggest gripe with the Yamaha is definitely the user interface - no discrete FF/rew buttons and a display that is too small to show title/chapter information and timer simultaneously.

Gonk: I'm probably going to stand pat until a universal hd-dvd, sacd, dvd-a, cd, dvd player is created. I'm always interested to know if other people with "big ears" and "big eyes" notice any difference in different equipment. I've found, as a professional musician that I can "listen-through" just about any medium to the intrinsic music. 78's, lps and cassettes don't bother me if I really want to hear the music but, I can appreciate fine sound too.

Jay

PS The comments about keeping the background noise in your house at normal levels is right on. Here's another tip: respond quickly to Katie's cries. That way she won't learn that she needs to cry long and hard to get a response from you!

Waiting for the HD part may take a while considering the format war on that front, but if you've got a universal player you're content with I would say that sitting tight sounds like a reasonable move.

Noise levels around the house are unchanged during the day. My mother-in-law even vacuumed the den last Tuesday while Kate was sleeping in my lap, and Kate didn't fuss a bit. Once we put her down at night, we keep the lights low and sounds to a minimum in her room to promote the idea of night being for sleeping, but that's about it. As for crying, she definitely doesn't get much chance to tune up before somebody's checking on her. She's been good about crying, only crying when there's a reason and calming down once it's taken care of.

One neat idea for a universal player would be one intended to be used with an outboard video processor (like the DVDO ultra or such). Something that had good audio characteristics (or even digital multi-channel out) but was designed to send a digital interlaced (480i) signal over dvi/hdmi to your display or processor directly. I am finding I want a processor to hook my cable box and dvd player both into. Why pay for 2 sets of good video processors? This would be a little bit of a niche product but you could probably get by with cheap conversion parts and good connectivity.

Aaron