Demise of SACD?

[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.

[Galwin]

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]

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]

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.