Whatever happened to SACD?

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Something's mystifying me (hey, lot's of things are mystifying me but . . .) - if SACD is supposed to be to Hi-Fi what Blu-ray is to TV, why don't we hear as much about it? Especially as you'd think with Hi-Fi we'd be even more obsessive about our audio quality as we are with TV, so if there's something new out there which is better we'd have been on to it like a shot.

So,

[*]Either SACD isn't actually as much of an improvement over CD as Blu-ray is to DVD
[*]There's not as much of a market for it in the Hi-Fi world as there is to push blu-ray to a wider general audience
[*]It's just around the corner and I'm about to find out my new CD player needs urgent replacement!
 
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Anonymous

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FrankHarveyHiFi:
What happened to SACD? Sony found something new to play with :)

Yet still put SACD in 200 pound HTIB's.
 

jaxwired

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Jarnesque:

[*]Either SACD isn't actually as much of an improvement over CD as Blu-ray is to DVD
[*]There's not as much of a market for it in the Hi-Fi world as there is to push blu-ray to a wider general audience
[*]It's just around the corner and I'm about to find out my new CD player needs urgent replacement!

Number 2. The Hi Fi market is tiny compared to the Home Theater market. Here in the United States, Hi Fi is almost a dead hobby. The market size difference over here is probably 100 to 1 and that's being generous. I literally do not know a male coworker or friend that does not have some type of home theater setup and interest in the hobby. At the same time, I have zero male coworkers or friends that share my Hi Fi hobby.

Virtually everyone watches DVD's. The CD buying population is much smaller than the DVD buying population. And of the CD buying population, only a small fraction care about SACD. In fact, I'd be very surprised to find anyone that's even heard of it outside of audiophiles...
 
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Anonymous

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SACD is pretty much dead, as is DVD-Audio, sadly. Even (as mentioned in another thread) HDCD's are less common than they used to be just a few years ago. I just upgraded to a universal player that can do both SACD and DVD-A a year ago, only to find a severe lack of titles in the genres I like. :(
I'm less and less hopeful that a new higher resolution physical music medium will ever be developed for the hi-fi set.

mike
 
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Anonymous

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If they didn't appeal to the masses they were never going to get it of the ground. Until a new format is integrated in your mini-systems or portable media players, sadly its only for us audiophiles to enjoy.

I'm not a massive pink floyd fan, but recently I acquired dark side of the moon on SACD and its just incredible. Huge sound staging, the highs are higher and lows lower, guess its because there is no compression. But wow, when I go back to regular CD's its like going down to 196k MP3.
 

oldleodensian

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MurcieMe:

SACD is pretty much dead, as is DVD-Audio, sadly. Even (as mentioned in another thread) HDCD's are less common than they used to be just a few years ago. I just upgraded to a universal player that can do both SACD and DVD-A a year ago, only to find a severe lack of titles in the genres I like. :(
I'm less and less hopeful that a new higher resolution physical music medium will ever be developed for the hi-fi set.

mike

The (seeming) demise of high def and multi-channel audio like SACD and DVD-A is sooo disappointing...I only just recently finally got round to installing a surround set-up with a universal player. I already owned some special edition CDs, bought several years ago, that include a second DVD-A disc with 5.1 versions of the CD album. The irony is that now that I can at last play these lovely recordings, there's so few new discs being produced.

I still find that few people I know have a surround system, and those who do usually have one-box systems, to which it is not always easy, if at all possible, to then add new kit like a universal player. Besdies, those with a DVD player-receiver are only likely to want to ever upgrade to a blu-ray player. It irks me that there are still no BD players that can play DVD-A (or SACD).
emotion-40.gif
 
T

the record spot

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It depends on where you look, what you listen to, how well hi-res is recorded (SACD, or for that matter, DVD-A is no guarantee that it'll sound the bees knees), and crucially, which record labels and top of the pile, which manufacturers care to spend enough time supporting it.

Blu-Ray only succeeded when it won out over HD-DVD, and that was a mini VHS v. Betamax all over again. It probably helped Sony's cause in no small way that they shipped the PS3 with a Blu-Ray player on board. It should be noted the PS3 came equipped in several territories outwith the UK (doh!) with....SACD compatibility!

In the US, DVD-A was the hi-res format of choice, in the UK and possibly Europe, SACD was the preferred option. Unfortunately, as with so many cases in the past where the consumer is the last one to have any say, the hardware manufacturers went with one or the other and nobody really did a very good job of supporting the format at most of the music labels out there (a handful excepted however).

I made a point of buying an SACD player for my last CD player purchase - a Marantz SA7001 KI. I find I'm picking up plenty of SACDs for good money these days, but the player does a fine job with standard CD too, so I get the best of both worlds.

Is SACD any good? Yup, but so too apparently is hi-res through the latest DSD capable AV amps. The problem is whether you want to build up a collection of multiple formats with titles for each or stick with a couple, or just one. As ever, the manufacturers can't decide on the best format, the support is likely to be limited from the labels and the marketing minimal. Much as happened to SACD. SACD is at least still alive however but you have to do a little looking to find it.
 
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Anonymous

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i bought both sacd player and dvdaudio players and lots of discs to play on them i liked dire sraits brother in arms
and war of the worlds on sacd very good both in stereo and surround
the dvdaudio discs sounded better imo to sacd ,and my fav dvda discs were the eagles hotel california,,fleetwood mac rumors
and santana supernatural awesome in both stereo and 5.1
i still have about 35 dts encoded discs these sound pretty good in dts 5.1 as i sometimes like to listen in surround sound
all these formats are now dead and almost gone .. what a waste
 

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