SACD - what gives?

most sacd's are being mastered without the consent or approval of the artist....if the labels deal with new artists they get into serious money/control issues....most of the labels older material is controlled in perpituity by the label,not the artist...its cheaper to redo and the artist doesn't have to like it.

I've had SACD for about a year now (Sony 555 played through older 2-channel Spectral electronics and Martin Logan Sequel II speakers). While I noticed an improvement from CDs immediately, I didn't play SACDs that frequently due to a relatively small collection. But over time my collection grew to about 70, and my machine completed its break-in phase, and during the past month or so I have found myself gravitating more and more to my SACDs. Compared with CDs the highs are much more natural, and the timbre of instruments is much richer (unless all of the necessary information has been lost in the recording studio which is sometimes the case) drawing me much more into the music.

I can't compare SACDs with LPs. I am one of those people who was driven crazy by surface noise on LPs and for whatever reason, I was incapable of finding and/or maintaining quiet vinyl, even from some of the well known audiophile labels of the 80s.

What I can say is that this weekend, when I put on a number of SACDs, both originals and remasters, I had one of the most enjoyable listening experiences I've had for quite a while.

The answer to your question is very simple. For the most part, they don't exist. To have them means that the recording studios have to convert to machines capable of making these recordings. If you ask the same question about DVD-A recordings you get the same answer. Why invest in a machine that may be obsolete if the format dies. So even though many studios can make a high resolution digital recording, they are not in native SACD format and have to be digitally converted.

Why reissues? Most of the recordings in the studio vaults are on analog tape. There are millions (well, at least a whole lot) of hours of tape that can be remastered and reissued in a higher resolution format. These are recordings of proven sellers versus the crap shoot of recordings of new music. Which would you do?

Well, I don't completely agree or disagree with anyone. I have a pretty high end system, so I feel I can comment on each medium as played back through some of the best representative equipment around. As to software, things are getting much better. Right now, I have 9 SACD's on order which are due out this month or next, and just got 3 others in the mail (all classical). As to comparisons with LP on analogue material, it depends on the quality of the original masters and the original LPs. Yes, audiophile LPs sound better on a high quality front end, but if you compare lesser sound recordings--like most analogue Columbias--the SACD's are substantially superior, even when you have collected pricy European alternative pressings. As to CD vs. SACD, I have yet to hear an SACD which wasn't superior in most respects to the CD version--especially in soundstage and depth--even when the CD is up-converted through my dCS Purcell and Elgar. As to high frequency response, here I am really baffled, because SACD high frequency response sounds to me much more like analogue LP than CD does, and my tweeters are certainly not overly polite. The one comment I certainly agree with is that there is no point criticizing SACD sound after playback on a bottom end player; that defeats the whole purpose of the medium. Does it matter whether CD or SACD sounds better through a $250 player?

I join Mgottlieb and Tbone and the few others in the minority here who are still enthused about SACD. I find little of the high frequency problems Detlof has found, although I would have to say my system cannot be as revealing in that area as his Soundlabs, and perhaps my mods from Jerry Ozment have something to do with it as well (the latest transformer mod is even more pronounced in its improvements to my SACD player than they were with my DAC, which surprised Mr. O as well as me). As far as new recordings taking advantage of the medium, there are more and more classical recordings coming out in pure DSD recordings that really show off the medium's advantages over CD--the Telarc Vaughn Williams Sea Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony Mahler cycle are absolutely spectacular examples, and there are more and more of them, although admittedly the analog remasters still are in the vast majority here (much as it was in the early days of CDs as well). I still prefer a good LP on my vinyl rig, especially where the master tape isn't the greatest and I don't want to hear everything on it, but the glimpses of what SACD can be I've been getting from the most recent DSD releases are closing the gap on analog significantly and widening the gap between SACD and CD. All that said, I still don't think the medium will be anything more than a niche market; hopefully we'll at least get some good recordings and performances to listen to from the specialty recording companies or perhaps the orchestras themselves (LSO Live, perhaps, as they record in DSD, to go with the SFO).