Sacd

I think spending money for a hifi system above 4000$ for 16bit CD is not good.
after 6 month i decide to buy a SACD player, what's your idea?

 

It dosn't matter how modern the technology is you can't buy software it. A lot of people have said that a similary priced CD player will outperform a SACD player when playing traditional CDs.

 

personally, everytime i've heard sacd i've been either dissapointed or unsettled by it. i'd certainly think long and hard about whether or not it's going to be the 'future' now that dvd's have a cd capacity too. not that i'd advocate going the dvd-a route either. i'd say that pc audio is the future with 24/96 or 24 / 192 becomming more common via specialist download.
cheers


julian

 

I would not bother with SACD unless you are into western classical music.... personally I'm very keen on the sound of SACD and as a big classical fan I'm well served by it. But other forms of music have very little representation on this format.

 

I'm with Alan. Really good for classical, and Jazz I have to add.
I do find that a badly recorded sacd sounds worse than a badly recorded cd though.

Yes a similarly priced cd player should sound better (although not necessarily a lot) than the sacd player when playing cds, but (for me certainly) when playing sacd it will make the cd player sound woefully inadequate.

just my $0.02

Ian.

 

I agree.

It all depends on the music you like.
If you can get it on SACD, then it's worth going that way. My Philips 963SA sounds better as an SACD player than my Audiolab/DAC20 cd replay - it's not far behind as a cd player, either!

 

i totally agree.

and regarding sacd music availability - my bottleneck is money and not availability

 

I normally buy hybrid discs if possible and what I have found is that on the SACD layer, the sound is more open and the image is much deeper both ways. The more you crank it up, the better it sounds compared to the redbook layer.
Cheers

 

One important note that i missed is record quality
i think it's more important than CD or SACD and because i listened to good recorded SACD i think it's far better than CD's.

 

Western classical music by Mark Knopfler

I just purchased Mark Knopfler's new album entitled Shangri-La on the Universal label. This hybrid CD includes a SACD layer that sounds superb.

 

Rumours seem to suggest Sony have lost interest in SACD and are moving on to Blu-Ray et al. It's had the smell of death about it for a long time, ISTM.

-- Ian

 

IMO both SACD and DVD-A were pretty much doomed to fail. To the vast majority of people who buy music they don't add anything that CD doesn't already do for them. The improvements in sound quality are a matter of debate even for audiophiles so others are hardly likely to notice it and the multichannel stuff, of which there are even fewer recordings, only a minority have the kit to take advantage of and it's generally shunned by the audiophiles who might like the format for the sound quality.

A format that only audiophiles might appreciate will never succeed. Vinyl (which is such a format) is only succeeding because it was once all there was and has a huge back catalogue of existing music and playback equipment. If vinyl were launched as a new format today it would fail just as miserably and probably even more quickly than SACD and DVD-A.

Michael.

 

Rumours :SLEEP: Universal, although only a minor player in the music industry, obviously aren't aware because they're releasing more and more SACDs. If SACD dies, and my player dies too, I will have to make do with the CD layer

 

I agree entirely, and I think the lack of any great revolution in sound quality with the new 'high-resolution' formats shows that CD is actually a much better format than people like to give it credit for. While I haven't a lot of first-hand experience, ISTM from what I've heard and the debates on here and elsewhere - and, for that matter, the lack of SACD / DVD-A uptake - that while a really good SACD might sound slightly better than the equivalent CD recording, it's not a difference the man in the street is likely to notice readily, if at all.

I don't know what the way forward is, though I suspect julian's suggestion of largely computer-based audio is much more likely than another new ultra-high-data-density format.

 

Not the only ones. Naxos are steadily releasing new sacds, and the LSO are releasing all new recordings on sacd also. DG seem to be releaseing more and more as well.

These are all classical labels, so maybe the format will become a niche thing, rather than dissapearing. Of course this may just be me being hopeful

 

I think the format's always been a niche thing, there's no "becoming" about it.

No doubt smaller labels who've invested in the necessary technology will continue releasing the stuff, but in the mass-market I think it's finished before it ever really started. Sales figures still show that sales of new vinyl are higher than sales of SACD and DVD-A combined, and this several years after launch (in fact, RIAA sales figures I read recently showed that SACD sales had fallen by some 50% in the past year in the US). A couple of years ago Sony Music were committed to releasing all of their catalogue on hybrid SACD, but in the past year they've released hardly anything. The format may not be quite dead yet, but it sure isn't going anywhere.

-- Ian

 

For people who like figures. Here is an extract from an article in High Fidelity Review recently.

Quote:
DVD Audio Unit Shipments

2001 - 0.3 Million copies and $6.0 Million in dollar value

2002 - 0.4 Million copies and $8.5 Million in dollar value

2003 - 0.4 Million copies and $8.0 Million in dollar value

Super Audio CD Unit Shipments

2003 - 1.3 Million copies and $26.3 Million in dollar value

Vinyl LP Unit Shipments

2001 - 2.3 Million copies and $27.4 Million in dollar value

2002 - 1.7 Million copies and $20.5 Million in dollar value

2003 - 1.5 Million copies and $21.7 Million in dollar value

Compact Disc Unit Shipments

2001 - 881.9 Million copies and $12,909.4 Million in dollar value

2002 - 803.3 Million copies and $12,044.1 Million in dollar value

2003 - 745.9 Million copies and $11,232.9 Million in dollar value

http://www.highfidelityreview.com/news/news.asp?newsnumber=11109165

 

Another one below.

http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/102004.asp

 

I personally think one has got to compare thye red book and the Sacd format within an setup. I did with the help of two friends and their top notch cdp. All agreed that the sacd layer sounded much better. I know there are badly recorded sacd same goes with red book. All the ones who dont own an SACD player can blab on about the dying breed of sacd but can't really comment on the sound unless an AB comparison has conducted with a well recorded SACD disc.
cheers

 

Well, I have a DVD player that plays SACD so I feel I can blab all I like.

My comments have nothing to do with how it sounds (although from my experience of owning only 2 SACDs the CD layer sounds more lifelike to me on both). Commercially it's a dodo, regardless of whether it's better than CD or not.

-- Ian