Nice, clean sound. Good depth and detail. Really improved sense of space.

A bit slow to "boot up" when first turned on. Also, a few oddities: When you put a disc in, it goes straight to play, and the player doesn't seem to accept input during spin up, so if you want to cleanly go to a deeper track, there's a good chance you'll end up hitting pause after the first track begins. Also, the player doesn't show the track number in the window until the track starts playing, so if you use the track-skip button to advance through the disc, you stand a good chance of landing at the wrong spot. Minor issues to me, but I thought they were worth mentioning. I'm giving the unit 4 stars, because I like it alot, and people give 5 stars too often. 5 stars should be reserved for that unbelievable piece of gear that you can't believe was really made by humans.

Recently moved up from an older Pioneer CD player (don't remember the number, it was the first one with the "stable platter" design and a forerunner of the Elite line). So far, I've been using the Onkyo just for CDs and SACDs. What a difference! I had aquired a few hybrid SACDs over the last couple of years, and wasn't sure what to expect moving from the CD layer to the SACD layer. It's like putting on glasses for the first time, or having your ears flushed. There is a very real increase in detail and depth. Listening to Peter Gabriel's third album, you can almost feel the skin of the drums being hit. I've played the Heifitz Living Stereo SACDs quite a few times now, and you can actually hear the resonance of the violin body. The sound is rich and clean without any midrange honk. My wife was pretty skeptical when the player first showed up here, but she now appears to be sold on it as well. Traditional CDs also sound better on the new unit. I won't give a review of the 502's DVD capability, since I haven't used it for that. I purchased the player mostly for music, but I'm sure it works as well as most other DVD units in it's price range. I'll probably run a cable over to the TV at some point, and if I find anything disappointing I'll make sure to post about it. I'd recommend this player to anyone looking to make the jump to SACD. I'm sure there are better units out there, but for me, this was well worth the 250-300 bucks.

Similar Products Used:

Early 90s Pioneer CD player. Various studio gear.