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Galwin
09-13-2007, 10:00 AM
Here is a link to an interesting blog about the state of SACD, another promising format that seems to be going the way of all things:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-sachs/whatever-happened-to-the-_b_64112.html

curtis
09-13-2007, 10:30 AM
Thanks for posting that.

I am a fan of the sound quality that SACD and DVD-A provide. I have about 30 discs combined.

I agree with the author about DVD-A and having to sit in the correct position to really benefit, and most of the SACDs are 5.1 as well, so they need the same thing.

Both of these formats need special players, so that makes it difficult to hit the mainstream buyer. With compressed music becoming the norm, these hi-rez formats lose out even more.

I really hope a lossless codec takes hold somewhere and offers an online delivery system. I know there are a couple now, but the catalogs are small, and with the pricing, I would much rather buy the disc and rip it myself.

clarke68
09-13-2007, 12:12 PM
I'm an SACD fan (and a DVD-A fan, too, now that I have a player), but I think the best we can hope for is that it lives on as a niche, audiophile format. However, vinyl LPs have been outselling both of the high-res digital formats for the past few years, and that doesn't bode well...

Sony didn't handle SACD well. Format wars are never a good thing...either one format clearly wins (VHS vs. Beta) or neither do (DAT vs. MiniDisc). Sony has never won a format war in their life (so I'm not betting on Blu-Ray, but that's another story), but evidently they attached big licensing fees to all their DSD hardware, making it very expensive for studios to be able to make SACDs, and that did as much damage as anything.

Quinn
09-19-2007, 08:57 AM
Sony has never won a format war in their life...

That should be Sony hasn't won a format war since the floppy disc.

curtis
09-19-2007, 09:51 AM
That should be Sony hasn't won a format war since the floppy disc.
IBM invented the floppy disc.

clarke68
09-19-2007, 10:14 AM
To be fair, we can give half credit to Sony for the CD, which they developed along with Philips (although Philips holds the license for the redbook standard).

Quinn
09-19-2007, 12:20 PM
IBM invented the floppy disc.

Guess I should have specified the 3.5" plastic case floppy.

curtis
09-19-2007, 01:25 PM
Guess I should have specified the 3.5" plastic case floppy.
Ahh..OK....we forgive you. :)

Yes...developed by Sony and made popular by Apple. And did you know that it is not actually 3.5"...it is actually 90mm. For marketing in the U.S. it was called 3.5"

And that is the computer geek trivia for the day. :D

BradJudy
09-20-2007, 02:31 PM
SACD (and DVD-A in my opinion) have been effectively dead for a long time, limping along on a small number of releases that 99.99% of people don't care about. Whenever I see people discussing SACD/DVD-A, I'm always reminded of that line from Princess Bride:

Miracle Max: ...It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.
Inigo Montoya: What's that?
Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.

Both formats were much more than bad timing/marketing, they were flawed concepts to force a new format that gave (to 99.99% of consumers) no benefit over the existing DVD format. The industry could have been spared the black eye of two failed formats (and a reminder that they are out of touch with the customer base) if it had just stuck to albums on regular DVD.

clarke68
09-20-2007, 05:36 PM
Both formats...were flawed concepts to force a new format that gave (to 99.99% of consumers) no benefit over the existing DVD format. The industry could have been spared the black eye of two failed formats (and a reminder that they are out of touch with the customer base) if it had just stuck to albums on regular DVD.It's true, the real motivation behind the high-res formats (trying to get us all to replace our music collections again) was evil in the extreme...however it still resulted in some very high quality remasters that I'm grateful for.


SACD (and DVD-A in my opinion) have been effectively dead for a long time, limping along on a small number of releases that 99.99% of people don't care about.It's actually only 96.1% of people that don't care about new classical & jazz releases, according to the latest consumer trends published by the RIAA (http://76.74.24.142/E795D602-FA50-3F5A-3730-9C8A40B98C46.pdf).

There are still more than I can keep up with, including the new Zanph Re-performance of Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000LE0THE/ref=s9_asin_image_1/104-6676189-6391118?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=121B2M29TFPWE41Y66HV&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=278240701&pf_rd_i=507846), Michael Brecker's posthumous recording, Pilgrimage (http://www.amazon.com/Pilgrimage-Michael-Brecker/dp/B000QFCCSM/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/104-6676189-6391118?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1190334121&sr=1-3), Tierney Sutton's new one (http://www.amazon.com/Other-Side-Tierney-Sutton/dp/B000LV6RBE/ref=sr_1_7/104-6676189-6391118?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1190334213&sr=1-7), and of course all those killer RCA Living Stereo (http://www.elusivedisc.com/prodinfo.asp?number=RCASASET7) remasters.

Galwin
09-21-2007, 06:05 AM
Sadly, this does not reflect well on our culture in general. We have sophisticated technologies and people with the skills to apply them. High fidelity sound could easily be the baseline and it would not even cost more money. However, music is treated as product/comodity rather than art, at every level. One could argue that American Idol performers and all that stuff on corporate controlled radio should be compressed and streamed into the torrent of useless information that fills cyberspace (with the exception of this thread, of course :) ). I am all for free markets (if they are truly free), but taken to its logical conclusion, greed predominates. Fundamental things like art and health care are crushed under the weight of market forces that seek only bottom line objectives. Materialism can leave you pretty well impovershed!

I remember Tom Waits once saying in an interview that he liked listening to music through a store front PA speaker. I think I might prefer that over a high end audio system playing compressed files.

Thanks for the tip on the Micheal Breker SACD - that sounds like a must have.

BradJudy
09-21-2007, 02:10 PM
I'd have to argue that the current situation is the opposite of what you described.

That fact that people are not spending tons of money on crazy high-end audio reflects that materialism is not the dominant force here. In fact, the increasing ubiquity of music (online, on the go, in the car via satellite, etc) means that people actually care more about the content than the delivery mechanism (which is what I expect Tom Waits meant). The three major arguments people have with the industry and 1) crappy music 2) high prices and 3) being locked down with DRM. These all point to people who want good music at good prices that they can use in whatever way they want. This is good for music IMO.

The lack of interest in HiFi doesn't mean people don't love the art of music, it's just that the modern way of embracing music is to totally integrate it into their lives rather than putting it on a pedestal. Ubiquity over audiophilia. This is where SACD and DVD-A really missed the target on where the future of music was headed.

Just wait, we're getting to the point where ubiquity is a given, then ubiquity plus audiophilia will become more of a trend. The smart companies are embracing this idea, and those who don't will be left serving a dwindling customer base.

curtis
09-21-2007, 02:18 PM
Just wait, we're getting to the point where ubiquity is a given, then ubiquity plus audiophilia will become more of a trend. The smart companies are embracing this idea, and those who don't will be left serving a dwindling customer base.
Brad, I really hope you are right about this. I am working hard so my kids understand quality by playing lossless music through my Ascends as much as possible.

It seems to be working because my daughter asks if she can play music she likes from my Sonos. :)

Galwin
09-22-2007, 05:50 AM
BradJudy, I too hope that you are right. I am not so confident that high fidelity will matter, though I will not miss the snob factor in the least. From what I have read, many (not all) recording engineers are producing recordings that match the limited capabilities of MP3 players. If that becomes a trend, the rest of the Hi Fi discussion becomes irrelevant. The artisitic merrit of music is probably best left for a different discussion, but I do feel strongly that rampant materialism eventually leads to a diminishing aesthetic - I see our culture as a testimony. But that aside, the technology will eventually be available to merge ubiquity and audiphilia (those two dreaded diseases :)). I hope to see and hear the day.

azanon
10-18-2007, 09:54 AM
I think some people don't like them because its hard to get them to sound right. I use an oppo 971 now which only supports DVD-As, but even with it (as my older pioneer which supports both), I can never seem to get enough bass. In my H/K menu, I +10db the sub specifically for DVD-A, and they still seem to be lacking in bass compared to 2-channel tracks.

I hear some of the newer HD-DVDs supporting the newer HD sound formats (when using the analog outputs) are having the same bass management issues.

Lizard_King
10-19-2007, 03:44 AM
Me i really dig SACd yet I listen to the stereo mode.