Last January, at the 2002 CES in Las Vegas, I took a certain ghoulish delight in watching exhibitors try to use the Marantz SA-12S1's remote control—one of the worst I've ever used. It's shaped like the handle of a light-saber: narrow and golden, with no tip-off as to which end is up. Although it defies the law of averages, I picked up the remote upside down seven times out of ten. If, by fortunate happenstance, you end up holding it properly, I guarantee that activating the joystick will give you results you never wanted. It is nearly impossible to push the tiny little metallic twig of a joystick lever directly downward. Most times it will veer off to one side, which will result in a selection other than the one intended. If you steady yourself with a two-handed shooter's grip you can summon the manual dexterity necessary to operate the remote properly . . . maybe. In a dark room, your misery will be compounded by the remote's utter lack of illumination. An alternative super-remote from Universal, Proton, Philips—or Marantz—would be a gigantic improvement.

What's Kind of Blue?
In the past two months I've picked up more than 30 SACDs. The worst, a remastering of Cindy Lauper's She's So Unusual (Epic ES 38930), has all the aural finesse of fingernails on a chalkboard. Early digitally recorded cymbals and high-hats sound like eggs frying over a high flame. Yes, a bad master tape will sound even worse on SACD than it did on CD.

But a good recording can sound splendid. Never had I been as mesmerized by Glenn Gould's rendition of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations (Sony Classical SS 37779). On SACD, his humming was so well-defined and lucid that it became less a distraction than a second contrapuntal line. New SACD recordings made using Sony's DSD were sonically extraordinary. One listen to Yo-Yo Ma's Solo (Sony Classical SS 64114) should convince all but the stone deaf of SACD's superiority to "Red Book" CD. As to whether there currently are or ever will be enough SACD recordings available to justify buying a player, that's a decision only the individual buyer can answer. How much is it worth to you to have the best recordings available of Glenn Gould, Leonard Bernstein, the New York Philharmonic, or Miles Davis? Does SACD sound better than DVD-Audio? Until we see a number of identically mixed titles released in both formats, the question remains unanswerable.

Because the SA-12S1 has only an interlaced component output, its video quality is limited far more by your choice of outboard doubler or scaler than by the SA-12S1's internal circuits. The Marantz's color fidelity was excellent, as was its internal video noise floor. When I compared the SA-12S1 with the other DVD player I had on hand, a Toshiba SD-6200, I could find no color irregularities or technical idiosyncrasies worth mentioning. The SA-12S1 is a perfectly fine DVD player.

Despite its success playing SACDs and its excellent DVD-V picture capabilities, the SA-12S1 did not perform as well with regular CDs. I pitted its CD capabilities against my reference, the C.E.C. TL 2 transport. Through its digital outputs, the Marantz was nearly the C.E.C.'s equal, but the SA-12S1 exhibited a slight loss of inner detail and a lack of upper-frequency air. The TL 2 also had superior lateral focus and less electronic grain. Finally, female vocals sounded more natural and less mechanical through the C.E.C. I rate the SA-12S1's performance as a CD transport below the Meridian 596 and just about level with the California Audio Labs CL-2500.

Although Marantz claims to have devoted a lot of attention to their analog stages, and touts those 12 discrete amplifiers, I was disappointed by the SA-12S1's performance with CDs through its analog outputs. Not only was its harmonic balance tipped-up, threadbare, and unnaturally hi-fi-like, but the soundstage was pinched and 2-dimensional. The overall effect was not unlike going from a good D/A to one that was merely adequate. I found that the (admittedly much more expensive) Meridian 568 DVD player, for example, sounded decidedly superior.

Whether the source was a CD or a DVD, the SA-12S1's digital outputs, fed into a high quality surround sound processor such as the Lexicon MC-12, produced a far more enjoyable result than its analog outs. This begs the question: If I found the sound from the analog outputs so noticeably inferior to the digital outs on CDs, why was it so impressive on SACDs, which also used the players analog circuits? I have no way of answering this conundrum, but it does suggest that improving the SA-12S1's CD playback might raise its SACD sound to an even higher level.

The Pony for You?
For $3800, one should expect a level of performance on a par with the best available, and anyone who buys a Marantz SA-12S1 will do so primarily for its sound. If you can be happy only with the finest CD sound available, you might not be satisfied using the SA-12S1 as your primary CD transport or player. While there are few SACD players currently on the market to compare with the SA-12S1, there are some fine DVD/CD players—such as the Meridian 596—that deliver noticeably superior sound from CDs and DVD soundtracks for only slightly more money.

But these players don't play back SACDs. And well-recorded SACDs did sound superb through the SA-12S1. Is this alone enough to warrant buying it? Is its lack of SACD bass management compatible with your system? And are you also interested in DVD-Audio, which the Marantz, like most other SACD players, does not support?

Those are your calls. For me, the SA-12S1 is a superbly built, attractively appointed one-trick pony. It prances brilliantly, but you might want to save your hay for a more versatile mount—one that can run, jump, perform dressage, and dance.