Toshiba SD-4960 Universal Player.(Product/Service Evaluation)

Manufacturer: Toshiba America, Inc., 1251 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 4110, New York, NY 10020; www.toshiba.com

Price: $199 (purchased for $119)

Source: Reviewer purchase

Background: Howard Ferstler and other estimable contributors to this publication have reviewed any number of DVD players in home theater or surround sound systems. This review is a bit different: it is written from the perspective of an audiophile with a high-quality two-channel system.

So why the Toshiba unit, which is marketed primarily as a DVD player, in a plain old two-channel, non-home-theater system? The Toshiba is one of a small but increasing number of low-cost "universal" players. It plays not only various DVD formats as well as music CDs, but also SACDs, and DVD-As. (The latter two, of course, are audio formats.) It also handles recordable CDs (CD-R and CD-RW), as well as recordable DVDs (DVD-R/W and DVD+R/W).

Over the past few years, record companies have released increasing numbers of SACD and DVD-A disks. Admittedly, the marketing efforts for these disks have been off and on, as have the release schedules, but we are now to the point of having substantial catalogs on these new formats. For example, Sony (the SACD ringleader) alone has a few hundred SACD releases in its online catalog; companies such as Linn Records are releasing SACDs at a good rate. The DVD-A market seems to be a little slower, but taken together there are enough SACD and DVD-A releases available to prompt interest in a universal player. Moreover, many of these new universal players sport prices only a little higher than plain vanilla DVD players.

A slight digression." several T$S reviewers have expressed doubts about the superiority of either SACD or DVD-A to regular CDs, at least in practical situations. In my experience, the SACDs that I've heard sound very good indeed, but given the potential differences in mastering, recording techniques, and a host of other variables, it's difficult to make comparisons. I'll leave it to readers to decide.