SACD

I have an expensive player that does both SACD and Red Book CD well, but while some SACD are good, very little of my music that I like the best is on SACD, so I use the SACD part very seldom. Hope this helps.

SACD solves my two complaints with CD and most other digital formats: 1) it restores the flow to music, and rids that sense of the music sounding chopped up, and 2) it provides the sort of low-end foundation and solidity to the music missing in those other digital formats.  Yes, I have some poorly recorded SACDs, but they still do not commit the two aforementioned faults.

My biggest problem with SACD is the same thing as my biggest disappointment with SACD - the format flopped.  And because of that, very little SACD content exists.  Had the record companies stayed on board, I would have likely triplicated (already vinyl and CD) my library with SACDs.  And oftentimes, what content does exist costs a lot.  Content's enough of a reason not to worry about whether your player supports the format.  If the machine you buy plays SACDs, that's certainly not a negative.  But sadly, it's no longer one of my top priorities in a machine I'd buy

I am a person who has tried a lot of tweaks over the years. Some didn't help or made things worse; and yet most have found a place as a permanent part of my system(s). I have a fair number of SACDs and they sound really good, but not necessarily better than my standard CDs.
I also had a high end analog set-up which blew away early CDs, but newer ones have come a long way and there are a lot of things that can be done to improve these red book CDs and bring them to a very competitive level with high end analog rigs.

Don’t forget there are also those called XRCD which are Supposed to be better than the SACDs

SACD sounds better right???

Ah, no.

Cheers George