I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but I was quite unimpressed with the SACD performance of the 563a. My wife also bought one for "us" this Christmas, and it's being returned tonight. SACD's did not have the same luster that they did with my older 5-disc Sony DVD/CD/SACD player (DVP-655). Let me say that I truly dislike the Sony player (it's been in for service twice and still locks up from time-to-time), so I was terribly excited about the prospect of banishing it to the guest room and using the 563 as our primary player in the Den. In fact, I was totally ready to be biased in favor of the Pioneer, almost no matter what. My receiver is a Pioneer Elite 43TX so I was also happy about having the same brand components as well.
Back-to-back comparisons with between SACD's yielded quite a difference. Cymbal clashes on several SACD's lost quite a bit of definition, details heard (YoYo Ma's breathing, for instance, on his Solo Cello SACD) weren't there anymore. And where did all the warm mid-range go? Yes, I double checked to make sure the speaker-size management was set up correctly, but it sounded like it was routing next to nothing to the subwoofer channel, even after adding +6db (the max it will do) to the subwoofer. Yes, we were listening to the SACD layer too. Perhaps if you have more full-range speakers it would better, or if you used an ICBM to route the bass correctly, but in my standard 5.1 connected, m22 + sub setup I found the sound unimpressive and weak. Still, it simply didn't sound as fine as the old Sony does (sigh).
I didn't even bother to test CD and DVD performance, so I can't comment on that.
Last edited by PeterChenoweth; 12/29/03 07:13 PM.
