Image DP 700 06 08e

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Full review in image hifi magazine (Germany), issue 6/2008

Accuphase Super Audio CD Player DP-700
by Heinz Gelking

The CD tray of the Accuphase DP-700 is gliding out with distinctive noiselessness and politely asking you for music - no one does behave better!
Hats off to this classy entry of the Accuphase DP-700, but then let's first have a look at the spot where this luxury player could be vulnerable: in the year 2008,
could anyone still be interested in disk players with a four- to five-digit price tag in view of the fact that CD and SACD are gradually vanishing in the haze? After vinyl has been replaced by polycarbonate, most of us are currently encountering the second big revolution in our hi-fi life: traditional sound carriers are about to leave the stage and make room for data packets.
If SACD had been widely accepted instead of becoming merely a medium for the connoisseur, we would not have to worry about it any further. Although the music industry missed a big chance we are not yet facing a standstill or decline of topquality digital music reproduction. There is still more than just MP3. In these days we can download music data with a resolution up to 24 bit/192 kHz, of course not for free and not at every corner. Moreover, anyone interested in a premium digital appliance like the Accuphase DP-700 can acquire it in good faith that the production of CD and
SACD will not be ceased overnight, and that the second-hand market will likewise be inexhaustible as was the case with analogue records in the past twenty or so years.
Therefore, in my point of view, SACD players are as up-to-date as ever,
provided they feature digital inputs in addition to their integrated CD transport. It's because you could then also use the high-quality D/A converter for processing digital music data from a hard-disk, a flash memory or from wherever you like. Even a device Roland Kraft tested for our last issue, namely the music server Sooloos, could be employed as data source. Enough admiring the stars: the Accuphase DP-700
features three different digital inputs (HS-Link, co-axial and optical) and can process music data with sampling frequencies of 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz
(16 to 24 bit, 2-channel PCM) as well as 176.4 kHz, 192 kHz (24 bit, 2-channel PCM)
and 2.8224 MHz (1 bit, 2-channel DSD). Altogether five pages of the owner's manual are dealing with the connection of external devices as data suppliers for the DAC
section of the DP-700. As far as I'm concerned this alone would be sufficiently futureproof for me, although I'm regrettably not in the position to ever reflect about the acquisition of a player in this price range.
Before Accuphase started developing the DP-700, there was actually no real need for having an additional integrated SACD player in the portfolio. Because with the DP-78 there is already an excellent player on the market which I had the pleasure to audition for image hifi 3/2006. And I liked it very much indeed, whereupon I wrote:
"From the three best digital sources I've ever heard this is the least expensive one".
Now, after having once again examined some of the photos used for my article two years ago, I was even more wondering that the DP-78 was apparently not the foundation on which the DP-700 was to be developed. Sure, there seem to be some similarities between the two SACD players, yet such an impression is always
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received after having opened any Accuphase device, whereupon one is to encounter the same elaborate array of components and high-quality design. Between DP-78
and DP-700 there are indeed big differences in the details, because the DP-700 is evidently a direct descendent from the currently most sophisticated and costly digital