Another sign SACD is dying

Ben Campbell I'm not going to argue with you, at least I don't think I'm going to argue...

Listening to music is the ultimate goal of all music lovers and audiophiles. We all want it to sound good, or if possible better. Lots of people have said that with SACD the margin of improvement is not great enough to justify the expenditure. My response is that redbook CD in 1985 was a poor format. It has been improved upon by nearly everyone who makes any gear at all. SACD was much better sounding than redbook. If people could improve redbook that much in the last twenty years, you know they can do the same with SACD. Many companies already have. Classe, Reimyo (sp), and Meitner have made some very good units. This technology, if not left for dead would trickle down where Joe Sixpack could afford it soon enough.

My Sony SCD 777es sounds very good in SACD, but it is nowhere near SOTA anymore. The state-of-the-art has left it behind. BUT it's all dollars and sense. If audiophiles won't spend their dollars, it doesn't make sense for Sony/Classe/Meitner to invest in much better sound and formats or playback units.

I have the Dylan set, nearly all of them, and there are none of them that suck. They might not be as good as the best recordings available, but I bought them to support better formats and because I'm a Dylan psycho! I love his stuff!

What will happen when some designer puts together something truly amazing (format wise) but they never build it because they don't think buyers will go for it based on the failure of SACD? What is Sony's motivation to develop better sounding musical formats? What we have today is not the pinnacle of what the human mind can conceive. I want something better, if that means following the red herring of SACD, I'm not sorry I spent the money...

"Only companies as big as Sony and their ilk can design and produce a gamble like SACD or DVD-A."

SACD was never meant to be a long term consumer product, they have not gambled anything as DSD technology will be used for its original purpose, archiving. This is very much like Beta versus VHS. Everyone thinks Sony took a beating but infact they preserved their margins by selling BETA products to the pro-side (TV Stations) for three decades with much less competition. Plus they stole BETA from Ampex so they didn't even have to do R&D. Sony is a four letter word for a reason, buy their formats at your own risk.

From the very first day I attended the East Coast Debut of Sony SACD I knew it was a stop gap till DVD could get itself organized...ie High Resolution Audio DVD-A. It was was a way for Sony to make money on people. I have never seen an indication that SACD was here to stay except as a Consumer Product by overly optimistic small specialized producers of audiophile recordings. I think Sony may very well be shocked at how long DVD-A has dragged out this process and the ratification of a true HD Audio HDMI interface. HDMI now cannot pass 24/96 multi-channel

DVD-A is no gamble either, it is in committee, it takes a while to divide up the pie. Oh lets not forget the real obstacle to this progress. Copy protection.

PS: hope I'm not repeating what somebody already said.

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Nrchy,
I don't disagree with your stance it's both reasonable and understandable.

The two major downpoints I see with SACD with regards how audio fans have reacted to the format are the following.

1.No major differences between SACD and Redbook performance on a lot of recordings.
2.Lack of titles.

The problem is probably not the format but how the early days of it were managed and planned.
As a result potential adopters have tried it and walked away.If it couldn't be sold to us then what chance the general public?

I'd love to hear the Meitner and/or own it-as I see it if you have the dual success of this unit you can't go wrong but with my budget at the time there was no comparable SACD/Redbook player I could audition or buy to compete with my Ayre CX-7.
As a result I went for the player which would give me most enjoyment on listening to music,SACD was/is too marginalised for me.

As for supporting the format,I still have a SACD player (Sony DVPS500)and still buy hybrids as they emerge but if SACD had delivered thaey would have been getting much more of my spending on music.
As it is can you really see it develop as Redbook has?
I can't.

To follow up Cinematic systems point-the DSD process was used recently by Brian Eno for his remastering series (12 albums so far) but are plain Redbook-as was the Miles Davis Jack Johnson box set.