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Let's take Beggars, Fools and Thieves by McKinley Black for example. Günter Paul mastered this recording for Stockfisch. It's a good example because I heard this artist perform live during this year's High End Munich show. She played there with a guitar and pre-recorded accompaniment. I played back the recording right after I got home from Munich to be deeply disappointed. I listened to "High Noon" as the first tune of the concert to quickly realize how this was a really poor recording—quite unusual for Stockfisch—whose dynamics were dramatically different from what I’d heard in Munich. There was no comparison. None! Maybe that's why high-efficiency pro-audio systems are the reference for some audiophiles?

With this particular recording the Soulution clearly proved that the SACD layer was far better than the CD but it was still incapable of bringing out the voice to the front and it didn't handle its quite nasal recorded quality very well. I could clearly hear some recording (mastering?) failures like certain HF content spiking through the laidback upper midrange. Surely this presentation was not coherent. Even though the player tried to pull all of it together, the result was compressed dynamics and leaned-out tonality. Perhaps I exaggerate just a bit (not with my description but diagnosis). I did not mean to suggest that the Soulution did anything wrong. It simply tried to improve the experience by making it sound less ‘digital’. But this can’t be done without leaving traces of a signature on the sound.

On the other hand it was the 745 which for the first time allowed me to enjoy the Love Is The King SACD by Nat King Cole [Analogue Productions reissue] in comfort. Here you must know that each stereo version of this recording (on this one you can find mono, stereo and multi-channel versions) sounds inferior to mono by exhibiting more sibilants and brightness. And as we know Nat King Cole at this stage of his career was a crooner, a mild balm to the listener’s heart. Any playback harshness in his voice simply ruins it. The Soulution nicely showed the differences between both versions even though mono was no longer significantly better. In the mono version Cole’s voice had wonderfully developed rich tone and definition. It was the first time I heard this recording that way. I loved it very much and the Soulution won my heart again (it had already done so with the entire discography of Clan of Xymox as the best presentation of these recordings I'd ever heard!).

Something similar happened with Ken Ishiwata’s 30th anniversary recording of his work for Marantz. Prior I had not found it all that interesting - until I listened to it with the Soulution. Surely an important contributor was the fact that this was an SACD. The 745 clearly demonstrated its station as a hi-res recording. The general sonic character of both CD and SACD layers over the 745 was similar. Both sounded more like SACD. CD merely seemed to deliver a bit less of everything. But tonality, timbre, dynamics and soundstaging were always comparable. This surprised me as the 540 didn't make SACDs clearly superior to CDs. Even though the signal converts from DSD to PCM the outcome here is as compelling as from a very good 'purist' SACD deck.

And that might be the clou of this review. The Soulution 745 delivers a sound which combines the qualities of SACD and vinyl. It takes from both their tonality, timbre, smoothness and resilience to digital distortion. There also are some flaws from either but the reality is that even when you invest a huge amount of money into an audio machine, you need to agree on some compromise. This Swiss player will present each recording in a very gratifying even beautiful way and each reading will deliver new details and impressions. Dynamics will be slightly civilized and the treble always smooth. The bass will surprise everybody with its power, richness and differentiation. It is really neither an analogue nor digital sound but something in between. Additionally it performs exceptionally well as a DAC for file playback (I used the USB-S/PDIF Halide Design Bridge interface) where it delivered superior performance to CDs. The resolution of this player is great and very turntable-like. This deck redefines what most people understand by the term digital player.

Description. Soulution’s Super Audio CD 745 player is an impressive device and physically much larger than its smaller 540 stable mate. The width of the front panel is 480mm and the two boxes together weigh more than many integrated amplifiers. The casing is made of thick clear-anodized aluminum plates whilst the side panels are black.

The fascia is very plain with just a few well-placed controls. Most of the space is taken up by a large plate with a display behind it. The latter is not too big and—pity!—won’t show text from CDs or SACDs. There is no sample-rate confirmation via the digital input which is really inconvenient. The display is a red dot-matrix affair that will show you track number, time, the present state of the transport (stop, start, pause) and whether the device is on. The last feature is a mere gimmick. When the player is off the display too extinguishes to leave just three LEDs lit. There is no way you could mistake the present state of the machine.