Toshiba SD-4960 Universal Player.

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.

Construction and Controls: The Toshiba unit is rather spartan, as one might expect at this price point. The case is sort of gun-metal gray, with a chrome-colored front strip. The front panel has small buttons for power on/off, disk drawer open/close, track skip back and forth, stop, and play/pause. Other than turning the unit on and off and opening the drawer to insert disks, though, most users will control the unit with the remote control. I can't help remarking that the player looks rather cheap; while one hardly expects elegance at this price point, the thin metal strip and the nondescript buttons on the front panel are rather tacky. On the plus side, though, the 38-page owner's manual is fairly comprehensive and useful.

As is common, the unit has native support for DTS and Dolby. For most users, that's rather pointless, as the typical setup would have digital output running directly to the receiver for decoding there. Of course, this doesn't work for SACD because SACD outputs only an analog (converted from digital) signal--but SACD doesn't use DTS or Dolby, so the point is moot. In any case, the Dolby and DTS features don't get in the way.

The back panel has perfectly serviceable jacks for 5.1 analog audio output, mixed audio (2-channel), standard video, S-video, and component video, and finally both coaxial and optical digital output. In keeping with the spirit of this review, I mainly used the mixed audio outputs for listening, although I also tried using two of the 5.1 channels.

Use: The first order of business was to compare the Toshiba to my nice but aging Parasound CD player. When playing standard CDs, the initial results were happily anticlimactic: I heard no consistent differences. Occasionally, I thought that there might have been some subtle contrasts between the two units, but any such differences were quite ephemeral.

But there were performance differences of a different kind. To start with, the old Parasound would not play newer CD-Rs and would not play CD-RWs at all. (We're not talking about piracy here: like many audiophiles, I burn the occasional compilation disk or make backup copies of CDs.) The Toshiba played all of them without compliant. Lately, the Parasound has been pretty touchy about the condition of the CDs it was fed, refusing to play some lightly scratched ones. The Toshiba played everything but the most abused ones. Finally, I tried the CD Check disk from Digital Recordings. This disk has five levels of artificial "scratches" of increasing severity and is designed to measure the ability of a CD player to deal with disk problems. The Parasound had some difficulties on the second track; the Toshiba sailed through all five levels. All in all, the Toshiba was about as competent is one can imagine in terms of playing everything that one might be inclined to try.

Things were not quite so good in the ease of use department. To start with, as soon as you load a disk, the Toshiba starts playing it. I suppose this is meant to be a convenience when playing DVDs, as most start with a menu. But with audio disks, it means that by the time you walk from the player to your chair, you've missed something.

Next, the Toshiba remote control is rather frustrating. You have to hold down a button for a second or so before it takes effect, which is difficult to get used to. And you can imagine how interesting this makes using fast forward, especially on video: you press the button to stop and a second or two later the player responds. (An email to Toshiba's support department yielded a prompt reply--a good thing--confirming that the remote was supposed to work like that--not such a good thing.) Or at least the player should respond. Issue number three is that the player often simply did not respond to the remote control. That is, it would take several button presses before the desired function actually engaged.

Let me add a few words about video performance. While my primary concern was audio, I did quickly audition video performance also. An S-video connection to my 10-year-old Magnavox TV yielded fine video performance with the few DVDs that I tried. Needless to say, this setup does not allow for critical comparisons, and I have none to offer.

Value and Recommendation: In terms of basic functionality, the Toshiba SD-4960 definitely does the job. It is as close to a "universal" player as you are likely to find. It's tracking and error correction abilities were outstanding. And it certainly has the virtue of low price. (A recent check of Amazon.com came in at $112.).

My only real complaints are about the remote control. It really would be nice if Toshiba could do a little better in this department, but I can live with the weak remote given the otherwise solid performance.