There is a supercharged Technics version of that player. Technics badge. Technics power supply and technics graded components on the boards. Really hard to find.
My dealer has them but they seem to be like gold dust and not advertised in any way. And cost five times more.
I enjoy a lot of Steve Wilsonās music, and his re-masters. So, I respect his opinions.
Like you, I am doubtful about multi-channel music.
What caught my attention was his statement that, there is no compression with Atmos.
This might lead to interesting things. But, probably not. A VERY niche market methinks.
Speakers:
With five speakers and three subs I think I have pushed my luck to the limit 
The SDE Shop in London specialise in remasters of old albums with ATMOS and also new albums, Ive boubht a few from them and have a couple on order, but Im buying fhem for the Hi-Res Stereo rather than the ATMOS. Their website is pretty good.
Steve Wilson certainly seems to be involved quite a lot wifh multi- channel music, he is very experienced with it and well regarded.
I agree that at the moment its a very niche market, maybe it will grow much bigger, who knows, SACD and DVD-A never were too successful with multi- channel audio maybe the BluRay medium will do better as the players are not specialist machines, which should also help.
I got my 4K player and discs yesterday. I set everything up and did a few comparisons.
The 4K disc version of 2001: A space odyssey, does look noticeably better than the streaming version (both versions are 4K Dolby Vision). There is more depth to the image, and slightly more detail. The streaming version looks just fine, but the disc version is better.
One general trend I noticed with the discs I tried, is that the sound quality is even better than the picture image quality difference. I find it worth it for that alone.
I listened to some episodes of āPlanet Earth IIIā on disc as well. Wow! Just wow. I highly recommend!
I also checked out a few scenes from āThe red shoesā. Just stunning. Seeing Moira Shearerās beautiful red hair and green eyes in 4K Dolby Vision is something to see 
Yes, Iāve found this too, and itās the main reason I buy 4k Bluray movies as well.
There is really something to be said for the lossless packaging of the audio streams on Blu-Ray.
I remember when I went from LaserDisc with plain old linear PCM Dolby Stereo at 16/48 (just slightly higher sampling than CD) to DVD with AC3 5.1, it wasnāt a step up, as many claimed, it was a step down. The loss of detail and dynamic range resolution was pretty obvious.
These days, a 4K stream still generally packs the audio at no higher rate than DVD or lower. And considering most peopleās setup, thatās still overkill. Iām pretty sure most of my old DVDs still sound better than streaming. Especially the ones in DTS-X.
The audio on a suitably mastered disc through a similarly capable setup is, quite frankly, āworld creatingā in the realism.
Itās almost impossible to stream reliably here in the countryside so having films, documentaries, TV series etcā¦ available on disc is essential. Worryingly though Iām finding more and more new content is, at best, getting difficult to source on disc, and at worst, impossible to do so.
A recent example of this was that a friend had recommended I watch Werner Herzogās Into the Inferno. Itās available to stream online, but not available on disc, unless you can find a screener disc for awards such as BAFTA, Oscars etc. Iāve seen other films and TV series crop up on DVD and Blu-rays only available via eBay and the like, but either these donāt look like legitimate releases, or they may only be releases for certain markets. Itās hard to tell for sure, but surely thereās a market for a legitimate disc release, even if it has to be like the WB on-demand service?
My dealer expressed a similar concern. Je specialises in home cinema. However, the majority of his amps and processors costs on excess of $10k and a handful of high end players like Reavon are increasingly displaying advanced functions that are to service legacy content. While old studios still release content pn disc (and DVD has had a bit of a resurgence of late as the path to releasing old libraries not available to stream), they are getting rarified. And films made by the streaming studios themselves are locked away behind their platforms.
Ergo, weāve gone backwards quality-wise. All these amps with HD and ATMOS and the content for them rapidly drying up. Yes, new video games are in HD ATMOS but no one is dropping that money on a home theatre room for games.
Manufacturers are pressing forward with ever more sophisticated amps but it wonāt be long before there is no new content for them.
Studios seem to think clawing back on the quality of both audio and video is acceptable given their holy grail has always been to grip distribution with an iron fist and get people subscribing and make worrying about DRM nearly a thing of the past.
So you canāt get quality streaming because of youāre connection? I have a good connection but I also canāt watch a lot of things because they are streaming platform specific. I limit my subscriptions to 3 but invariably movies come out on Apple Studios or similar and I feel like the studio rang my doorbell and when I opened the door they flipped me the finger. And besides, all that platform only content is wasted on a modern AV amp.
Is anyone here using a Panasonic UB9000 4K Blu-Ray player?
It is pricey, but looks like a formidable machine.
Ive had a UB9000 for about 5 years now, its very good and been perfect all that time. I bought it for its very high performance in video and audio. I had a legacy pre-HDMI Denon AV Amp so needed the 5.1 analogue audio outputs at that time so it was the obvious choice based on excellent professional reviews plus i did not need SACD or DVD-A playback.
The video upscaler for DVD and regular Bluray discs is fantastic.
I have a Panasonic UB9000, had it for about a year, Iām very pleased with it. I started buying 4K Blu-rays last year but at this time I donāt have a 4K TV, yet.
The image into a Panasonic HD TV is good and the sound quality into my SN3 is great, I donāt need or want Dolby Atmos.
The UB9000 is well built and heavy.
Thanks for that informative reply!
Itās a real shame a lot of good mid-market spinners like the Panasonic donāt play SACDs or DVD-As. I really couldnāt have a player that couldnāt do so, which really restricts my choices. Iām happy with my upper-budget Sony, but it would have been nice to have a wider choice.
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Well you need a Magnetar UDP900MR Multi Region 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player, itāll play owt you ask it. At a price.
In addition to Magnetar, Reavon do universal disc players that play SACD and DVD-A, but they are also very expensive and professional reviews of the Magnetar and Reavon are not too impressed with either the picture or sound for the money they charge for them.
Hopefully, Pioneer will get back in the market after their recent financial problems so people can get a top spec/performing UDP, if they need one (not me as I dont have any SACDās or DVD-Aās).
And in a more relevant and on topic comment. I bought a Panasonic 9000 4k blu ray player about a year ago. I have an 8k Samsung TV and have bought a bunch of disks. I also have a Synology running plex with most of my old DVDs scanned on it.
I find the 4K disc player worth the investment in tech and discs. I find that if I rip the 4k discs then a) the file sizes are really very big and b) sometimes Plex chokes on transcoding.
I have 900mb fiber and 4k streams fine from the usual sources but both Plex and the 4K Blu Ray are better.
Yes I had a Denon universal Blu-Ray transport and it was superb. It was a Denon badged and tuned Pioneer model but really incredible. As a strict transport, it had two HDMI outputs (one audio only) and proprietary DenonLink HD which was some non SPDIF coxial output that needed a Denon amp or DAC. But it played everything including sending SACD out via audio only HDMI or DenonLink and even was able to access Plex natively. Sadly, this was pre 4K and Denon left the video player market after that. End of an era really. Iād started on the mid 90s with a Denon LaserDisc player.
Pioneer merging with Onkyo could mean anything. Iām not holding my breath.
Yes, its my Desmosedici, bought it new in 2008 when they came out. The deal I had to make with my wife was to sell my World Superbike Race Replicaās; Honda RC30 and Bimota SB6 to get the Moto GP Race Replica, but well worth it.
Sorry for the thread drift, motocycles are my number 1 passion/hobby, been riding them for 50 years now, since I was 13 starting off with offroad racing scramblers my elder brother had.
Thread drift was my fault. Have a few bikes here too (debolex db25 based on Monster 1200 is my pic). Two good passions, Bikes and Hifis!
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