Although both formats can be sonically excellent, I do believe that SACD is gaining a significant advantage over DVD-A for a number of reasons. The larger variety of Super Audio software may be the biggest factor. However, SACD is also more user-freindly and in many ways less annoying than DVD-A. No distracting video display is required to easily navigate the disk with SACD, and more SACD titles are geared toward stereo rather than multichannel audio performance. No matter how much the manufacturers want us to believe to the contrary, most consumers do not have (or probably want for that matter) a dedicated multichannel home theater with five or more speakers to support multichannel audio. Other properties of DVD-A that detract from the listening experience are the often silly and unrealistic surround mixes, painfully slow track access times and an inability to numerically select a track with the keypad on the remote control. Most of the DVD-A titles seem to try to "imbed" the listener in the music, but I (and I expect many others) find musicians suddenly playing behind me to be distracting, not pleasurable. I also believe that almost everyone who has used a CD player is accustomed to being able to select a track from a disk easily from the remote, but that is simply not the case with DVD-A players. While it is "possible" to navigate a DVD-A disk without a video display, it is not "convenient" unless you are willing to watch TV when you want to listen to music or you can tolerate repetitively pecking at the track forward button on the remote while watching a tiny display across the room! As for compatability with mobile listening, look for the next generation of computer soundcards to support both DSD and MLP. I suspect that Sony will also incorporate DSD/SACD capability in future Walkman and car audio products, and that could be the "death blow" for DVD-A.
