"Stereo SACD's dead in the water"

Guards! Release the hounds!

I'll give you a 5 minute head start, since you're a decent chap. And don't torture the dogs by playing Deep Purple to them, or there'll be trouble.

-- Ian

 

at last, a use for sacd and upsampling... utrasonic hound repellant. bring em on ian were ready for you... actually i'm low pass filtered noooooooooo
cheers


julian

 

Just one observation :-

Is the average punter prepared to pay a price premium for the high res formats as is currently the situation. My guess is no. Uness the prices of the high res formats drop to regular CD prices (preferably lower), the formats are dead in the water IMO.

 

I guess if I had invested heavily in CDs and CD playback I might fight the PCM corner too. SACD sounding like balls is amusing. I guess only time will tell as is often the way.

 

greg,
i've invested a lot less in my source than many here have. i'm not fighting pcm's corner out of anything other than a preference for it's sound. also no matter which format wins out, when i do eventually buy a player it will be compatible with my existing cd collection so no worries there.
honestly i find it difficult to respect a format that puports to extend the previous formats frequency response and then floods the extended frequencies with noise, this seems to totally defeat the origional purpose. no?
as you say time will tell, however if i'm cynical i too believe that sacd has a better chance of success than dvd-a (titter) but purely down to it's copy protection's soundness rather than a quality advantage.

cheers


julian

 

The trouble is greg, he is right!

 

Prehaps Greg's motto is choose hifi, not music maybe ? we can't all like the same stuff, if we did place would rather yawn mode boys

 

Wow I think I have totally failed to articulate what matters to me. Naturally its only my humble opinion, but i'd put it the opposite way round. If CD is more musical I must really have missed something. Either I've listened to some really bad CD setups or my experience of SACD has been very musical. I'm certainly not looking for an analytical sound so I better investigate further....

 

Not to worry Greg! There are a certain few members of this forum who like to abuse the terms "hi-fi" and "music" and use them as polar opposite terms to distinguish between a sound *they like* and one that *they don't like*. "Hi-fi" is an atempt at ridicule!

I don't care, I LOVE HI-FI!! Must have something to do with my love and appreciation of non-amplfied musical sounds (although I like the amplified sort as well).

 

greg,
hold up. if sacd sounds better than dvd-a (tee-hee) to you then that's good enough (for you). i was just putting an alternative view of sacd's reason for inception and it's technological drawbacks as you seemed to imply that sacd was CLEARLY superior to pcm whereas in reality the issue is still clouded not only due to the codecs but beacuse of the hardware and the way it's used too.
cheers


julian

 

DVD-A (tee hee) ?? is a slightly different subject albeit PCM at a higher bit rate, but...

Incidentally I havent so far read your explanation of the technical drawbacks of SACD beyond the "possession" and marketing of the technology which aren't technical drawbacks and aren't something I am worrying too much about. Of course my view that SACD is clearly superior to pcm is based on my own experience. Whilst my view was formed over a period of time before I took the plunge (including demoing the Naim CD5) the fact it is just my view is something I have doffed my cap to at each stage. Afterall we ALL occupy an empirical existence.

I am interested to understand your experience with SACD - what you have heard and on what hardware - that leads you to dismiss the medium for the purpose of musical articulation?

I bet if Naim did SACD you might hum a different tune (and it would be a higher res one) Anyway off to bed....
Cheers
Greg

 

I feel Ju, would buy what ever he felt 'did it for him', Henry gets possesive of the term hifi , presentaion over life, if your a vinyl lover that don't rock, buy an sacd you'll love it, if however you own a well tempered/avid/N/A then sacd will be as appealing as a stack of mana at a meals on wheels convention
Prehaps greg, you should audition the M/F trivista cd/sacd player, at current rates £2750 should see you right, and a 'nicer' sacd player I've yet to hear
The simple fact is the 2 big players are scared shitless one or other will jump first leaving the other high and dry, and the lack of titles is more than just a fad, and well who knows at the end of 2004, maybe will see sacdvda+++120% ultra blue ray speacials, blowing it all away manufacturers, just gotta love em

 

Greg,

As I mentioned before, the reason why I (and many others) dont think much of high res so far, is that none of the players I have heard have decent groove factor, timing and drive. Things get a little boring without them. many of the top CD players have these things in abundance as well as all of the nice hifi things like image, detail etc.

 

To be fair to Greg, both WM and Robbo have £5K red book players that a re very good, whilst Ju likes hard core trance.

I would disagree about the "groove" factor - SACD does possess something that makes the music involving. The truth I feel is that if you have a high end CD player you won't really be bowled over. But for the majority who listen to CD on their DVD players on a basic setup, the improvement can be revelatory. But the multichannel thing mostly sucks IMHO.

 

Well who knows, If one of the specialist companies comes out with a player that beats what I currently have now, then I might be interested. However I still have huge reservations about softaware availibility and pricing, which currently need to be sorted, or it not going to take off.

 

greg,
it may be worth reading before criticising however my experiences with hi-rez formats have been about 4 shop demos, 1 a quite serious sit down jobbie the other 3 more informal, leeching onto the back of someone elses demo. kit for the serious demo was the new (then) pioneer i link universal player and matching amp with a b&w cdm 5.1 speaker system (which i use at home) and a sony sacd player with lots of 5's in it. i've also listened to merlins rotel / proac / cant remember the player system. in all of these cases (except the sony obviously) i've preferred dvd-a to sacd due to dvd-a having more punch and life to it. whilst sacd was anaemic and had a twittering quality to it - as best i can put it although all opinions are subjective in the extreme as it's difficult to hear the same recording on sacd and dvd-a and at that time i was using others musical selections to demo with.
if naim made a sacd player that sounded like the ones i've heard up until now i doubt i'd go for it. if they imparted some life, PR&T and musicality into the format then i'd hail them as the hardware gods they would be however the fact that they've plumped for the dvd based music format perhaps says that those who like their music with a dose of life should look in that direction instead of dsd's.

merlin,
just because the gabba i brought over minced your jbls timing don;t ridicule my choice of music... you own futureshock and some other gems too you know... also i'm not just into hardcore trance i listen to techno, electro and d'n'b too.
cheers


julian

 

Didn't mince mine

 

Its funny that I have ended up fighting the corner of a digital format - I look back at my posts and I appear evangelical :JPS:

WM hit a big nail as did Robbo - our musical tastes make this debate very difficult as does what "does it for us" regards style, content and reproduction.

Merlin:
Yep I agree with you regards owners of 5K+ CD players not being stunned. Coversely those people who have argued the results are poor don't seem to take a balanced view - unless they have compared mid/lower end SACD machines to higher-end CD which detracts from any real judgement. The multi-channel thing sucks donkey kong as far as music is concerned (IMHO).

Robbo:
Groove, timing and drive can be found on the right SACD machine, just as they can't be found on the "wrong" CD players. My concession is I should reinvestigate what the better CD machines have to offer - I have been sufficiently convinced to do this from yours and WM's comments. Its probably worth me placing my context: I'm comparing what a 1500 to 3K SACD machine can do compared to a 1500 to 3K CD player. This is an important component of my view. Also if SACD dies I'll need to pickup a CD player

Yep the software availability is an issue and I completely agree this will probably make or break the format regardless of the playback standard....

 

Greg - as another owner of a serious CDP (Wad 861), I tend to agree with you about SACD, despite not wanting to. In the only semi-serious comparison I had between CD and SACD, I was quite shocked to hear substantially more ambience and downright believability from the SACD. (I've not had a serious listen to DVD-A). And this was comparing a topnotch CD system - dCS Verdi/Purcell/Elgar+ with all the firewire gubbins - although not one I would consider particularly good VFM.

It is of course possible that the demo disc (Stravinsky's Firebird, dual layer) was tweaked to show up the superiority of SACD. The main reason I don't have SACD is that I don't want to be restricted to a very small (although increasing) selection of repertoire and performances, and/or spending another £15k to replace my CD collection.

Personal preferences are clearly important here - but I am now convinced that WM's are so far to the PRATtist end he's as blinkered as his betes noires, the rabid-Naimies. Last time I heard his system the PRAT and dynamics may have been good, but judged by the more roundy values of tonal balance and stage presence it was quite vile - so far from being "hi-fi" it was "no-fi" (it was a pretty good PA system though ).

 

Graham,

You should come and have a listen to the Eclipse sometime, I think you'll like it a lot.