Sony XA-5400ES

[postjack]

I fear the Sony is not expensive enough to use with the T2.

KG could get RAM to mod it, then it would be expensive enough.

[aardvark baguette]

50/50 chance I may try out the H.A.T.S. part of the player soon, as I ordered the ES STR-DA6400ES yesterday. I've never had home theater before though, so I probably won't appreciate it enough. I guess I'll end up owning 2 5400ES's to do this, so I dont have to move the current player.

[Dusty Chalk]

I guess I'll end up owning 2 5400ES's to do this, so I dont have to move the current player.

You are awesome.

[Knuckledragger]

Aardvark is a man with priorities.

[brat]

Right now I'm listening to XA-5400es. Someone here already said it: good player but not great. Mine is not burned-in (about 10-12 hours) but I doubt we can expect some great improvement. My Cary 306 SACD surpasses it in every way except bass depth where the sony goes a little deeper. Sound is more two-dimentional and flat - the most obvious difference. Tonal balance is good with slightly humped bass compared to the cary. There are some peaky highs which may settle down with burn-in, I suppose. Headstage is much smaller. Something interesting: somewhere I've read an opinion that the 5400 makes CD and SACD sound similar. It's completely true: SACD playback is terrible!! The same flat sound as the CD!! My Cary has opened my eyes for the superioriy of SACD standart. I've never heard so spacious and naturally balanced sound, so well shaped instruments and "real" vocals. But I can't feel anything like that with the sony - on SACD mode my hybrid SACDs with original DSD recordings sound worse than their CD layers on the Cary.

Some good words: mmm... The bass is great - textured and well controlled. This player will fit some bass-shy transducers. Maybe If I have another player, not the Cary, I would like this sony but now.... In fact I have another player - an old heavily modded Pioneer PD-9300 (two PCM58 DACs) and it's sound is quite similar to the 5400 but the pioneer has bigger soundstage

I had some hopes for XA-5400ES. I wanted a new player with warmer and more "analog" sound to replace the Cary. This sony definitely is not it's successor.

Edited May 19, 2010 by brat

[purk]

Right now I'm listening to XA-5400es. Someone here already said it: good player but not great. Mine is not burned-in (about 10-12 hours) but I doubt we can expect some great improvement. My Cary 306 SACD surpasses it in every way except bass depth where the sony goes a little deeper. Sound is more two-dimentional and flat - the most obvious difference. Tonal balance is good with slightly humped bass compared to the cary. There are some peaky highs which may settle down with burn-in, I suppose. Headstage is much smaller. Something interesting: somewhere I've read an opinion that the 5400 makes CD and SACD sound similar. It's completely true: SACD playback is terrible!! The same flat sound as the CD!! My Cary has opened my eyes for the superioriy of SACD standart. I've never heard so spacious and naturally balanced sound, so well shaped instruments and "real" vocals. But I can't feel anything like that with the sony - on SACD mode my hybrid SACDs with original DSD recordings sound worse than their CD layers on the Cary.

Some good words: mmm... The bass is great - textured and well controlled. This player will fit some bass-shy transducers. Maybe If I have another player, not the Cary, I would like this sony but now.... In fact I have another player - an old heavily modded Pioneer PD-9300 (two PCM58 DACs) and it's sound is quite similar to the 5400 but the pioneer has bigger soundstage

I had some hopes for XA-5400ES. I wanted a new player with warmer and more "analog" sound to replace the Cary. This sony definitely is not it's successor.

I finally pulled a trigger on the XA5400ES and the unit arrived yesterday. My initial impression is the unit sounds superb given its asking price. I'm comparing the 5400ES with my Exemplar Denon 5910 and thought that it measured up quite well in SACD playback to the Exemplar, of course, with a slight edge going to the Exemplar. The 5400 really outclassed the SACDmods 9100ES that I own, when I compared the two last night. The 54000 is smoother, and has blacker background with more depth & width than the modded 9100ES.

I used to own the Cary 306 SACD also but sold it as I prefer the sound of my modwright 777ES & Exemplar 5910 better. The Cary was extremely detailed as well as having amazing fast attack, but it is too edgy and bright for my taste. I prefer my source to be slight more laid back than the Cary.

[deepak]

I wasn't too impressed with the SACD performance on the 5400ES, I ended up selling it on Audiogon. The soundstage was always quite narrow and flat. Tonally there was nothing wrong with it. But comparing the SACD layer to the hybrird redbook layer on my Assemblage DAC 2.5 the DAC was a clear winner with soundstage depth and size. The RCA Living Stereo discs were my reference and the micing techniques can be strange on some of them, but most are very good.

Also someone on AA debunked what Sony said about using custom DACs and filters, I believe it is using a PCM1796, but I will have to double check on that.

edit: found the AA post http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/hirez/messages/26/267151.html

Sony likes to claim they are using their own DACs.....this is not true....There is no such thing as an "SA" DAC. They are simply using Burr-Brown DACs. They do not convert to one bit. They are multilevel DACs as explained in the paper. They have been using Burr-Brown DACs for years and claiming them as their own thing....total BS! In fact, they used to call the Burr-Brown DACs "current pulse" DACs....because that is what their own older DACs were called and they wanted to make it seem that they were still doing the same thing. They even had Burr-Brown put different numbers on the stock parts to make it seem it was not just a stock Burr-Brown part. What will they call the stock Burr-Brown DACs next year when they release another machine?....Super Duper Current Pulse SA DACs Gen II? How about Burr-Brown?, Sony. What, you cannot tell the truth?There are numerous errors in the paper. Page 9 shows a pic of the Burr-Brown DAC and says it is a multichannel chip. Page 17 says there are six channels of "SA" DACs....totally wrong, and page 29 says there are 12 SA DACs. Totally wrong again. The 6 and 12 numbers came from the older XA series where they used a bunch of Burr-Brown DACs in parallel. Someone who wrote this paper merely passed the info along as if its still true in this machine.

There is only one stereo Burr-Brown chip in the 5400. It does not convert the signal CD signal to one bit. It does the same job that hundreds of other machines do with the same burr-Brown DACs. By the way, almost all the existing DACs today by all the companies use similar types of DACS (AKM, Analog Devices, Cirrus Logic, etc.). This in now the defacto standard. Other names they go by is "Advanced Multibit....or Multibit Delta Sigma". Same basic thang. No conversion directly to one bit.....but a mixture of one bit and multibit.....at least that is what I gleem.

As I said in my original reply, there are two, maybe more companies that directly convert 16/44 to double speed DSD one bit and then convert. By the way, the Korg software can do such a thing....ie, convert 16/44 directly to DSD (single or double speed). As far as I know, there are no single bit DACs being produced today....the Philips, Sony and NPC converters are long gone....(Playback design and Meitner make their own discrete one bit converters....not off the shelf parts).

[purk]

I wasn't too impressed with the SACD performance on the 5400ES, I ended up selling it on Audiogon. The soundstage was always quite narrow and flat. Tonally there was nothing wrong with it. But comparing the SACD layer to the hybrird redbook layer on my Assemblage DAC 2.5 the DAC was a clear winner with soundstage depth and size. The RCA Living Stereo discs were my reference and the micing techniques can be strange on some of them, but most are very good.

Also someone on AA debunked what Sony said about using custom DACs and filters, I believe it is using a PCM1796, but I will have to double check on that.

edit: found the AA post http://www.audioasyl.../26/267151.html

Yes, I can confirm that there is one single DAC not multiple DAC as stated earlier. I'll do more listening and report back. Here's picture of the DAC/Audio board.

Here's a bigger one at the DAC.

Edited February 20, 2011 by purk

[aardvark baguette]

I read that Sony spent some coin in R+D on it. If its not their dacs, what did they spend that on? Hookers and blow?

[Dusty Chalk]

American real estate?

[mypasswordis]

Blu Ray DRM?

[The Monkey]

I read that Sony spent some coin in R+D on it. If its not their dacs, what did they spend that on? Hookers and blow?

[Grahame]

^

Lawyers? They both get paid to screw people, and and they don't come cheap

[deepak]

Blu Ray DRM?

lol we have a winner. Or maybe they spent it on another dying high resolution format the mega sack dee with root kit installer

[aardvark baguette]

[jgazal]

Does someone really know what these circuits between the cd-rom drive and the BB DAC are supposed to do?

Edited February 20, 2011 by jgazal

[luvdunhill]

Convert between the various digital standards. Typically these are CPLDs running custom logic code.

[jgazal]

Convert between the various digital standards. Typically these are CPLDs running custom logic code.

Thank you for answering. I am very intrigued now. I would like to compare XA-5400ES circuit to a dCS model, for instance:

First we have all these Xilinx FPGA or CPLD with dCS custom code for "convert between the various digital standards" and then a digital signal goes to:

...this beautiful top board, which receives such digital stream and then uses some kind of comparator to create an analog current pulse by switching those flip-flops thought-out the resistors array, right?

p.s.: I suppose dCS would not match these resistors into 0,1%, right?

So that BB chip inside XA-5400ES is only doing what the first half of this dCS top board is doing, right? Converting a digital signal into am analog current pulse, right?

Then we have the same opamp's integrated circuits to do the current to voltage conversion, although the dCS seems to have a lot of op-amp's...

So that custom code to convert 16bit/44khz into a raw 1bit signal which feeds such comparator does influence the sound? I thought the analog stage had a major role in sound quality.

The culmination question: did Sony put all the money into a conversion code?

I thought they already had that kind of code to launch DSD in the first place. How studios can master a 1 bit signal without converting it into a PCM digital stream with multi-bit format? I thought that kind of conversion was already in the state of the art simply done by computer workstations with ordinary software.

How digital filters and up-sampling or over-sampling relates to those programmable chips? Could Sony do some digital relevant digital interpolation before the BB DAC to justify the customization? At least is that what dCS claims with its custom software approach, right?

Edited February 21, 2011 by jgazal

[luvdunhill]

it's hard to really compare the approaches using pictures. Do you have schematics? Also, note that Sony will have less integration to do, then say dCS, which goes against my argument a bit I suppose. I think if we had some schematics, we could better discuss this.

[jgazal]

it's hard to really compare the approaches using pictures. Do you have schematics? Also, note that Sony will have less integration to do, then say dCS, which goes against my argument a bit I suppose. I think if we had some schematics, we could better discuss this.

Unfortunately, I do not have the schematics... Anybody?

I totally agree with you.

[Dusty Chalk]

So that custom code to convert 16bit/44khz into a raw 1bit signal which feeds such comparator does influence the sound? I thought the analog stage had a major role in sound quality.

Yes. And yes. Companies pride themselves on the software they use to do all the digital filtering (which is what the conversion is, essentially), dCS in particular. One of the guys from Wadia used to post a lot on head-fi. We had many a discussion on upsampling (which is another form of processing done before the actual D-to-A conversion). But yeah, all the work in the world can be undermined by a mediocre analog output stage.

[Pars]

Interesting post from Allan Wright on diyhifi regarding the apparently religious use of the 5532/5534 in digital equipment output stages...

My link

[Driftwood]

Unfortunately, I do not have the schematics... Anybody?

Don't know if this helps, but here is a link to the Sony SCD-XA5400ES Service Manual.

Edited February 22, 2011 by Driftwood