In a quest to organize all my CD's and DVD's, I decided to purchase the new 400 disc multichanger from Sony. This was introduced last October as the first mega changer that Sony has adorned with its 'ES' moniker, and I have to admit that all-in-all it does deliver excellent video and audio.
The unit plays DVD-Video (DD/DTS), SuperAudio CD (SACD) 2CH and multichannel, CD, DVD-R ,DVD-RW, DVD+R ,DVD+RW, Video CD, CD-R ,CD-RW, and MP3 discs. It supports mutichannel SACD with digital bass management and speaker delays and DVD video with built-in Dolby Digital/DTS decoding with 5.1-channel output (if you care to use it).
True to Sony's long standing tradition of designing horrible human-machine interfaces, the on-screen disc management explorer system is pretty darned clumsy and quite hard to get used to - in addition, their 107 page user manual is (as expected) awful. But, I admit after you play with it for a while, it does get easier, although it never really rises above the clumsy feel. Loading, labeling and editing the on-screen text and icons is the worst part - once that's done, it's not too bad. You can use the remote to enter your text data if you're a masochist, or you can simply plug in a standard PC keyboard to the front panel to make this task go a lot easier. I just leave mine plugged in until I've finished entering all my discs - on going hobby.. :Z
The discs are organized in various folders of DVD's, CD's, self named folders, genre's etc. This part works pretty well, with the ability provided to sort, file and find things fairly quick.
If the disc contains cover art and data text information the jobs fairly easy, but it's surprising how few disks support this feature - you get lucky about one in eight for DVD's and almost none for CD's. SACD's all support data tracks.
There is a RS232 port that interfaces with various third party applications (i.e. DVD Lobby) to control and manage the unit from a PC which allows you access to the internets database of DVD's & CD's. Everyone that uses these apps swears by them and says there's no other way to go. I guess for everyone using an HTPC, they could easily use an external manager. Down the road, I'll look into that, perhaps simply for the data management portion. Wouldn't take much to run a 232 cable from my office PC to the Sony changer. I would like a cheap app that I could use to enter and manage the data within the 777, but I'd rather just use the remote to operate the machine itself.
The selectable progressive scan video uses an amazing 216MHz/12-bit video DAC. I don't own a HDTV, so unfortunately I can't comment on the progressive output, but the NTSC output from component out is quite good - no noise. I don't really think it's too much better than the component output from the Sony DVP S7000 that I'm replacing, but it has lots of control settings to tweak it for sure. In fact you can set and store video control settings for 400 discs if so inclined. On top of the usual adjustment items such as color, brightness, hue etc, there are 4 levels of digital video enhancement, block noise reduction, luminance noise adjustment, chroma noise reduction, chroma delay, audio/video delay between picture and sound, sliding scale adjuster between film vs. video for progressive scan, selected area gamma correction.........Well, you get the idea, there's lots to adjust - or you can select blanket video modifiers like cinema, dynamic etc. :roll:
The audio is really quite good. This unit has an audio signal-to-noise ratio of 115 dB and uses a 192kHz/24-bit audio D/A converter. It has a selectable sampling frequency output setting of 48 kHz/16-bit or 96 kHz/24-bit, and you can select the shape of a digital filter to reduce noise above 22.05 kHz (for sources with a sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz), 24 kHz (for sources with a sampling frequency of 48 kHz), or 48 kHz (for sources with a sampling frequency above 96 kHz). The Audio Filter can be set to Sharp or Slow.
If you're using analog out for music as I do, you can shut down quite a bit of the digital circuitry to reduce any noise too (not that there is any). The video circuits and front panel display can be shut down from buttons on the front panel. The digital output can be selected shut down completely or you can select to minimize its influence when playing CD's to eliminate the use of unnecessary digital circuits. I leave the latter one enabled but enable the digital output for use in playing DVD's. You can also adjust the audio line out level with an attenuator setting.
I did some audio listening tests using the latest Diana Krall SACD since it has both a CD and SACD layer. My setup was listened in analog to SACD(2CH) and CD from the 777ES through my Bryston analog preamp and Bryston 4BST with ProAc 3.8 speakers. My usual CD player for comparison was my ARCAM Alpha 9. This is a fairly good player in the C$2100 range. Nothing scientific in this test. I just wanted to compare the three signals.
I guess it's no surprise that I thought the SACD was the best (it is stellar), but I had a lot of trouble between the Alpha 9 and the 777ES on CD. I guess I have to conclude the 777ES is a pretty good CD player - I was surprised, because my Alpha 9 is considered quite good and any other time I've compared my other players against the Alpha 9, it's a no contest. I suppose when a player supports SACD, there's a spill-over advantage for the CD in better power supplies, audio circuits, drive etc.
With the volume on my preamp up full, the noise floor on the Sony was slightly higher than from my Arcam - I'm pickin' at straws here... :roll:
This player is heavy and large. I had to modify my shelves to accommodate. Specifically in depth - the player is 21 1/8" deep. Most shelves won't accept that too easily when you consider connectors and cables protruding from the rear. You need about 2 feet in depth.
I give the audio and video quality a big thumbs up, :T , but there are a few things I would change if I could:
I think the blue interior light that shines through the door opening is quite cool, but I would switch it to a white light when the door is open loading disks to allow you to see better. The discs are quite close together and without enough light it is very hard to see the slot to fit in a new disk.
I would allow for a few more characters in the text Title line and I would allow use of the second line of text that you can't seem to access when editing. The full first and second line of text are used when an SACD data track is read, why not in the manual edit mode. -(maybe there's an app that uses the RS232 port to allow more characters to be entered into the explorer and make use of the second text line? - I think member KingDaddy has one of these units and likely knows the answer to this question)..... :W
I would have perhaps chosen a faster processor for the on-screen system. Refreshing the folders has a frustrating lag that shouldn't really be necessary.
I attached (hopefully) a picture of my system with the new player. I'm not too fussed about the silver color, but what can you do. This unit will keep me amused for quite a while I'm sure..
Sony site on DVP CX777ES
brucek
EDIT SEPT 10th: Test of inserting image into text body:::
The unit plays DVD-Video (DD/DTS), SuperAudio CD (SACD) 2CH and multichannel, CD, DVD-R ,DVD-RW, DVD+R ,DVD+RW, Video CD, CD-R ,CD-RW, and MP3 discs. It supports mutichannel SACD with digital bass management and speaker delays and DVD video with built-in Dolby Digital/DTS decoding with 5.1-channel output (if you care to use it).
True to Sony's long standing tradition of designing horrible human-machine interfaces, the on-screen disc management explorer system is pretty darned clumsy and quite hard to get used to - in addition, their 107 page user manual is (as expected) awful. But, I admit after you play with it for a while, it does get easier, although it never really rises above the clumsy feel. Loading, labeling and editing the on-screen text and icons is the worst part - once that's done, it's not too bad. You can use the remote to enter your text data if you're a masochist, or you can simply plug in a standard PC keyboard to the front panel to make this task go a lot easier. I just leave mine plugged in until I've finished entering all my discs - on going hobby.. :Z
The discs are organized in various folders of DVD's, CD's, self named folders, genre's etc. This part works pretty well, with the ability provided to sort, file and find things fairly quick.
If the disc contains cover art and data text information the jobs fairly easy, but it's surprising how few disks support this feature - you get lucky about one in eight for DVD's and almost none for CD's. SACD's all support data tracks.
There is a RS232 port that interfaces with various third party applications (i.e. DVD Lobby) to control and manage the unit from a PC which allows you access to the internets database of DVD's & CD's. Everyone that uses these apps swears by them and says there's no other way to go. I guess for everyone using an HTPC, they could easily use an external manager. Down the road, I'll look into that, perhaps simply for the data management portion. Wouldn't take much to run a 232 cable from my office PC to the Sony changer. I would like a cheap app that I could use to enter and manage the data within the 777, but I'd rather just use the remote to operate the machine itself.
The selectable progressive scan video uses an amazing 216MHz/12-bit video DAC. I don't own a HDTV, so unfortunately I can't comment on the progressive output, but the NTSC output from component out is quite good - no noise. I don't really think it's too much better than the component output from the Sony DVP S7000 that I'm replacing, but it has lots of control settings to tweak it for sure. In fact you can set and store video control settings for 400 discs if so inclined. On top of the usual adjustment items such as color, brightness, hue etc, there are 4 levels of digital video enhancement, block noise reduction, luminance noise adjustment, chroma noise reduction, chroma delay, audio/video delay between picture and sound, sliding scale adjuster between film vs. video for progressive scan, selected area gamma correction.........Well, you get the idea, there's lots to adjust - or you can select blanket video modifiers like cinema, dynamic etc. :roll:
The audio is really quite good. This unit has an audio signal-to-noise ratio of 115 dB and uses a 192kHz/24-bit audio D/A converter. It has a selectable sampling frequency output setting of 48 kHz/16-bit or 96 kHz/24-bit, and you can select the shape of a digital filter to reduce noise above 22.05 kHz (for sources with a sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz), 24 kHz (for sources with a sampling frequency of 48 kHz), or 48 kHz (for sources with a sampling frequency above 96 kHz). The Audio Filter can be set to Sharp or Slow.
If you're using analog out for music as I do, you can shut down quite a bit of the digital circuitry to reduce any noise too (not that there is any). The video circuits and front panel display can be shut down from buttons on the front panel. The digital output can be selected shut down completely or you can select to minimize its influence when playing CD's to eliminate the use of unnecessary digital circuits. I leave the latter one enabled but enable the digital output for use in playing DVD's. You can also adjust the audio line out level with an attenuator setting.
I did some audio listening tests using the latest Diana Krall SACD since it has both a CD and SACD layer. My setup was listened in analog to SACD(2CH) and CD from the 777ES through my Bryston analog preamp and Bryston 4BST with ProAc 3.8 speakers. My usual CD player for comparison was my ARCAM Alpha 9. This is a fairly good player in the C$2100 range. Nothing scientific in this test. I just wanted to compare the three signals.
I guess it's no surprise that I thought the SACD was the best (it is stellar), but I had a lot of trouble between the Alpha 9 and the 777ES on CD. I guess I have to conclude the 777ES is a pretty good CD player - I was surprised, because my Alpha 9 is considered quite good and any other time I've compared my other players against the Alpha 9, it's a no contest. I suppose when a player supports SACD, there's a spill-over advantage for the CD in better power supplies, audio circuits, drive etc.
With the volume on my preamp up full, the noise floor on the Sony was slightly higher than from my Arcam - I'm pickin' at straws here... :roll:
This player is heavy and large. I had to modify my shelves to accommodate. Specifically in depth - the player is 21 1/8" deep. Most shelves won't accept that too easily when you consider connectors and cables protruding from the rear. You need about 2 feet in depth.
I give the audio and video quality a big thumbs up, :T , but there are a few things I would change if I could:
I think the blue interior light that shines through the door opening is quite cool, but I would switch it to a white light when the door is open loading disks to allow you to see better. The discs are quite close together and without enough light it is very hard to see the slot to fit in a new disk.
I would allow for a few more characters in the text Title line and I would allow use of the second line of text that you can't seem to access when editing. The full first and second line of text are used when an SACD data track is read, why not in the manual edit mode. -(maybe there's an app that uses the RS232 port to allow more characters to be entered into the explorer and make use of the second text line? - I think member KingDaddy has one of these units and likely knows the answer to this question)..... :W
I would have perhaps chosen a faster processor for the on-screen system. Refreshing the folders has a frustrating lag that shouldn't really be necessary.
I attached (hopefully) a picture of my system with the new player. I'm not too fussed about the silver color, but what can you do. This unit will keep me amused for quite a while I'm sure..
Sony site on DVP CX777ES
brucek
EDIT SEPT 10th: Test of inserting image into text body:::
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