A few years ago I purchased a Sony CDP-XA7ES, which I connected directly to
a nice power amplifier, no pre-amp between the two. This CD player does
have two balanced outputs, however if you want to control the gain to your
amplifier, you must use the single ended outputs, which I did. The small
volume control on the front of the Sony is all I needed to do the job!

If this arrangement worked so well for so many people, why can't we have a
Multi-Channel SACD player with balanced outs for all (5) channels,
controlled by a single gain control on the front of the player, driving (5)
mono block amplifiers?? I asked this question to several prominent
amplifier manufacturers, and their response was, "who would want such a
player". Additionally, two manufacturers said the volume or gain control on
the SACD player would degrade the SACD signal so badly, this arrangement
could never even be a consideration.

For those of you out there that understand why the above is not a
possibility, I would like to hear why. With all the technology available,
nothing can control the volume of (5) SACD analog channels, fed directly
into a (5) channel power amp???

Thanks,

LiteJazz53