CD vs SACD in STEREO

@big_greg 

Source? You realize that most early SACDs and players were two channel and the same holds true today for most high-end SACD players

I think you will find that is a huge con played on the North American cohort!

Not one of my hundreds of SACDs is only two-channel, and none of my player / transports has been.  But if you have been conned into using I2S (which is inherently only two-channel) then who can blame manufacturers for charging a fortune to satisfy the market?  

Check out the 6,000+ SACDs on Presto where SACD is mainstream, not some quirky remastering for the audiophile market

@richardbrand 

@lordmelton 

I need @lewm to translate the Japanese, but it cannot be a Redbook CD.

There's no denying that silver disks can hold 24-bit PCM - Pure Audio Blu-ray can and Digital Versatile Disks should.  But 24-bit is also a bit of a con, owing its existence to computers having pretty much standardised on 8-bit bytes.  In reality, you would be lucky to find a dac that can resolve 21-bits.

I originally bought SACDs, a quarter century ago, for multi channel but while I still have a MC setup most of my SACD listening is 2 channel.  My Oppo 105 outputs DSD over HDMI into the HDMI input on my Bryston DAC 3.

We were cleaning rugs upstairs yesterday, and my upstairs 2 channel listening room was off limits for the day, so for the first time in a while I spent several hours in the Man Cave listening to multichannel SACDs.  I listen to classical and as an earlier poster stated the rears in a 5.1 are primarily for ambience, reflections, etc.  The pop records that I have played in 5.1 sound so much more gimmicky in their effects