SACD's - the best?

[Feanor]

When I purchased my Marantz SA-8001 SACD player, I purchased it primarily for its highly rated playback of redbook CD's, and regarded its SACD capability as an added frill that I probably wouldn't use much. Now that I've had the player for a while, and have had the opportunity to listen closely to CD's and SACD's, and compare the two, I have to state that the sound of a well engineered SACD is second to nothing else out there.

...

As I've said ad nauseum, (1) if only because of better mastering including better dynamics, and (2) because of multi-channel.

There are hardcore vinylphiles who hotly dispute the sound quality of SACD, basically lumping it with CD as just another digital format that can never equal vinyl analog. I suspect the reasons are that these folks:

• Own a relatively great vinyl playback kit in combination with a relatively mediocre SACD player, and/or
• Vinyl as become their absolute reference standard such that anything that sounds different by definition is inferior.