Demise of SACD?

[Galwin]

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-s...-_b_64112.html

[curtis]

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]

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]

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]

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

IBM invented the floppy disc.

[clarke68]

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]

IBM invented the floppy disc.

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

[curtis]

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.

[BradJudy]

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]

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.

There are still more than I can keep up with, including the new Zanph Re-performance of Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations, Michael Brecker's posthumous recording, Pilgrimage, Tierney Sutton's new one, and of course all those killer RCA Living Stereo remasters.