The original Esprit pre and power amps are the one to look for Very expensive and few reached the West Many Record Companies had these as there reference.
Would an amp like this be sufficient to power 2 to 4 speakers in a school gymnasium setting? Strictly as a P.A. setup. Any thoughts?
Probably not. Or at least, not if you're expecting distortion free room filling sound. Depends what you need it for though, the event, etc, etc....
Not a collector either but I wish I still had the TA-F707ES integrated amp I owned. That was a beast of an amp. Biased class A for the first 15 watts, one of the cleanest sounding amps I've ever owned. When you're riding on the upgrade merry-go-round you can make some pretty foolish decisions.
I saw one recently at a thrift and thought about getting it. Fifty bucks. It was a STR-GX5ES. How do those sound? I left it because a dealer friend of mine who works on equipment said the circuitry isn't much different from other similar models.
Just got my first one, HAP-Z1ES. Nice to see Sony still making high quality components! Great sound quality and build quality, software could be more polished. For a digital source, I don't think you can do better for the price with an outboard DAC.
Used to have 2 Sony TA-E80ES preamps. One in my man cave and one in my living room. Sadly they were lost in a fire with all the other stuff. Really loved them.....
I am sorry man that is a sad story, it is one of my nightmares - fire on the ship and around my hifi.
CDP-XA7es is my Sony. I have owned it since new and thoroughly enjoy its sound and build quality. I only regret that it does not decode HDCD. When I want to spin an HDCD I use my Denon Universal player.
I have an MDS-JA20 ES minidisc deck in my main music system but I seldom use it these days. It's built like a tank!
I have a SONY XA20ES CDP that I found on the sidewalk one morning. It was just sitting there with the remote and cables. Even had the little weight inside. It's worked perfectly for over a year now.
I am a Sony ES fan for excellent Sound & picture quality, have the StrDA 5400EsS AVR & XA 5400ES sacd player. However I have found these items to be unreliable. I had three DA5400ES receivers before getting a reliable one. My 7 year old DA5400ES HDMI board failed and Sony could not repair it, however fortunately I did find a very expert enthusiast service man locally and its now working again. My XA 5400ES player is with him as it drops out with sacds works fine with redbook CD. By contrast I have the 25 year old Marantz CD94 player and it still plays faultlessly, the belts have been replaced. a friend has the Philips 960 version again plays fautltessly with only the belts being replaced. Sony make their products deliberately difficult to service and IME can not be recommended for reliability.
I have one that's broken. I bought it on e-Bay. The seller shipped it in totally inadequate packaging. I didn't get any traction trying to convince e-Bay that the seller should take it back. On the outside it looks good but you can hear loose pieces inside. It powers up but won't do anything but turn off, or did. It's been sitting in my garage for at least 2 years. I have not found anybody locally that wants to try fixing it. It's really heavy. It's hard to ship. It must weigh near 20 kilos. This dead end is because the seller thought she could just wrap this beast in bubble wrap and stick it in a single soft box...
Dude, In Brooklyn! How does stuff like this happen, who in Brooklyn throws out a perfectly good Sony ES player?
After about 12 years my SCD-1 started doing the same thing with respect to SACD's and CD's. I completely agree with you that Sony repair service is worthless. I hope I can find someone here in the states to repair it, London is a bit far to go for a repair.
I second that motion! Sony's Hanover "House of Horror" had two goes at my SCD-XA777ES. It always, and still does play Sack-Dee's just fine but won't play all CD's. Each time I paid about $50 to ship the bloody, heavy thang to 'em, it came back with one or two functions not working. Still, it wouldn't play CD-R's or long CD's. On long CD's it got to some point late in the album and started miss-tracking. I talked to the dealer and he had a go at it. He did better. It still wouldn't play CD-R's but it played long CD's for about 6 months and then returned to form, doing the miss-track shuffle. The 5 year ES warranty don't mean sheet!
Sony's not really Sony anymore. It's an insurance and videogame company that does audio as a kind of hobby. For the moment, anyhow. Until they close the brand down or sell it off.
I have the UK version DA5400ES which features HATS my third one purchased 7 years ago as the first two were faulty, The HDMI board failed and Sony engineer was unable to obtain replacement board. Fortunately a local very expert service guy was able to repair it. Whilst waiting for Sony repair , I tried out the latest Marantz & Yamaha receivers which for SQ are just not as good as my Sony 5400ES , the FM tuner ,the pre & MM phono stages on the 5400ES are as good as high end separates.
