The Philips scd2000 is an handmade multichannel SACD player prototype, build in the year 2000. A stunning looking machine. Only 2 exists. It was used by Philips to demonstrate the new multichannel SACD format at HIFI shows. The costs of the mechanical realisation were fl.35.000,- per player.

Philips SCD2000 SACD prototype

It has no manual. Nor has it a remote. Specifications are unknown for me, but it appears the technique used is mainly similar as used in the Marantz SA-1, only times 3 (source). At the rear it featues 2 large fans and 6 XLR outputs: left, right, centre, LFE, left surround and right surround. The cd mechanism appears to be an Philips VAL3000, same as used in the Philips dvd960 (and perhaps others). Philips used the scd2000 at conventions to demonstrate multichannel SACD.

For now only the extriour photos and a photo of the controler board. Photos of the d/a converters and audio output will follow (as soon as i know how to open the thing ;) )

I have contacted Andrew Demery, who was part of the SACD development team at Philips and Sony. He shared this information with me:

Andrew Demery:
The SCD2000 was a 'fake' prototype player that never went into production. Unlike Sony, Philips was not really very good at investing in prototypes for demonstration at shows. When it came time to demonstrate a multichannel SACD player, Philips had their Advanced Development group make up a lab model. It used one of their cheap plastic DVD drives, and had two main PCBs: one for the disc reading/decoding electronics and one for the DACs. They then put all the parts into the chassis of two of the ugly, cheap DVD players that they were making at that time. There was a parallel connection between the transport and decoding electronics in the top chassis and the D/A converter board in the bottom chassis.

For a time, we would use this lab model for public SACD demonstrations. It was embarrassing because:

  1. it looked cheap and ugly;
  2. it was not representative of what Philips would eventually release;
  3. it looked terrible next to the highly engineered Sony prototypes;
  4. it had front panel controls on it that, when pressed, locked the thing up, requiring considerable time to dismantle and reset it. There was no way to stop people at hi-fi shows from pressing the buttons!

After a number of complaints to the people in charge of the project, they asked Marantz to provide a chassis to make it look sexier (that is why it is in the champagne color of Marantz, rather than the silver or black of Philips). So, Marantz made a custom chassis, and the electronics from the lab model was hidden inside, and two fans were placed in the back to provide cooling for the Class A output section.

I don't know which transport was used, but I do remember it being plastic. The DAC used was the Philips TDA-1547 (also known as DAC-7). If I remember correctly, there were 3 DAC chips, one TDA1547 for the left & right (stereo), one TDA1547 for the surround left & surround right and one TDA1547 for the center & LFE. This was needed to achieve the signal-to-noise ratio for SACD. There were linear power supplies and a custom analogue output stage designed by Philips' legendary Carel Dijkmans. It sounded great, and that was partly why we wanted the nicer chassis, as the ugly, cheap plastic original turned audiophiles off immediately.

The reason I described it as 3 x SA-1 is because the SA-1 essentially used the same differential DAC-7 D-to-A stage, however, Marantz used their HDAM modules and their own output stage in the SA-1. The first Philips player was the SACD-1000, but it used completely different components, and so bore no resemblance to the SCD2000. The DAC-7 was quite an expensive chip, and Philips only kept it in production for Marantz's top CD and SACD players. Philips Consumer Electronics decided on a very aggressive pricing policy for the SACD-1000, and so that meant it had to be based on cheaper components, so the only production player that had any similarity to the SCD2000 was the Marantz SA-1. I'm not sure, but I think Marantz had also dropped the DAC-7 by the time of their second SACD player, as Philips Semiconductors had no interest in making a chip in small numbers (a few thousand compared to orders of millions).

Since the SCD2000 was a prototype, there is no information about it on the web.

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