You could try a Mark Grant HDX RCA to BNC digital. Very cheap at £30.
Not bright to my ears just more detailed and warm but one man’s meat is another man’s poison and all that.
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Interjecting here, no need to, the SA12SE is very enjoyable and at £1600 compared to the current £9499 for the SA10 from same supplier, just adds icing to the cake.
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That’ll be the new SACD10. I imagine there will be a fresh 12 before long. Which would likely explain why that deal was available.
The ‘old’ 10 can be had for £4K now. If you can still find one. Clearly the 12 at £1600 was a very good buy however. As mentioned in a post some time back, I suspect that was your lot though. Unless they find another stash.
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For me I bought it as a nice transport. But it’s alot more than that. The DAC is also very good if you put a streamer into it. Tried it with Limetree Bridge and worked well.
And CD analogue very good. It’s a very versatile machine. Glad I bought if for £1600. Yes I could have got the big brother. But I have no reason to change it out. It’s a surprise just how good it is.
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That’s actually the new model, the “SACD 10” with the £9499 price.
SA-12 was originally £3200 and the “SA-10” was around £6,500. The SA-10 has a bunch of improvements to the chassis etc (a bit like NAC 552 over a NAC 252). However both SA models are being phased out, hence the price reduction for the SA-12 down to £1600 and i think the SA-10 could be had for a bit under £4k from last summer.
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The two machines were both on great deals at that vendor. I have wanted a CD transport for some time. I got alot of kit for the money with the SA12SE.
Yeah sure SA10 would be better still. But as transport not sure it would make much difference. As DAC and analogue it would.
Very impressed with Marantz 
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Old SA-10 was 8k.
It’s v nice.
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Thanks for the correction. The only down side I can say of the SA12SE is since connecting it to the mains on November 10th, I have spent another £500 on CD’s ….
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Still, 500 CD’s from the charity shop represents good trade…
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Yes it does, if only….
You haven’t hit MOFI’s SACD stocks yet then?
I’m struggling with this plus the tone poet vinyl list which is on another thread….
Not yet, did look at CDJapan. I know those SACD’s will add up. Maybe I should ask ‘ should be on commission JamieWednesday ‘ for streamer advice to connect to the SA12SE’s DAC .
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I have an Auralic G1.1. However, I have also used my Wiim Ultra into it with a naim DC1 interconnect and it’s really good. Not quite as detailed as the Auralic but very musical imo and just sounds ‘right’. Spesh for the price. Great App. Nice touchscreen for ‘instant on’ radio/presets.
And every couple of weeks there is a firmware update with something fresh. And you can stick usb drive into it.
If I didn’t already have the Auralic I reckon I’d be happy with the Ultra into a decent DAC.
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Well, this is a good question. I have a Cambridge Audio CXUHD Bluray player. This doesn’t have an on-board dac and I have been outputting using the digital coaxial to my ND555. Over on this other thread I learnt that restricts Bluray audio to 24/44. But, heres the good thing - you can use a HDMI audio extractor to get full resolution digital output. I’ve just installed a Blustream HD11AU extractor and the sound quality from Pink Floyd’s 24/196 re-mastered Animals is stunning.
Now, I think this extractor might enable me to use my Bluray to send SACD to the ND555. I’m keen to give it a go, but does anyone know if it will work? Plan B would be to get some more hi-res Bluray audio discs, but I’m keen to try some SACD reference material.
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Thank you, the Wiim Ultra is now on my list. What plug types are on your Naim DC1 interconnect? I’ll be using the DAC in the SA12SE, is optical or a DC1 the way to go?
RCA on the DC1. Optical can’t handle HiRes but OK for CD only.
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yes, that was a very expensive thread for me… 
with regards digital out from SACD players, In my AV setup i have an Oppo 203 which will output DSD on its HDMI output, and that feeds a Yamaha RX3060 which supports DSD so i can play back 2 and multichannel SACDs in that system.
For feeding SACD data into my ND555 and my NAC272 i rip the DSD 2-channel data from SACDs using an older sony bluray player (with a small software hack that turns it into a network file server) and some freeware software on a windows pc sacd_extract. The resulting DSD files i copy over onto my Naim Core and then playback just fine on the ND555, NAC272 and my previous NDX2. Sadly my older Qute2’s that i have in my bedroom and kitchen don’t support DSD, so i also rip the CD layer of SACDs onto the core for them.
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