Post by Darwin June 11, 2007 (11 of 16)
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Polly Nomial said:
So it has come to pass that people are flogging deluxe iPod docking stations/RBCD players/vinyl players that wouldn't stand up against the cheapest of MCH SACD players... Even sadder is that some people actually buy these electronic snake oils. And then think that these products are great.
I suspect a big part of it is that "great" to the majority of the market has very little to do with the actual fidelity of the sound. I don't think the average person who buys an iPod docking station does so in the hopes that it will provide the highest possible sound quality.
If you've ever tried to convince such a person of the merits of SACD, you've probably noticed that they don't seem to have the same set of priorities that you and I do. If your priorities are centered around portability, low cost and ease of buying music, then SACD won't make much sense to you.
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It is pages on the internet like this one that may actually be a major part of the problem. These sites that deal with home audio may be seen as an authority on the subject of home audio, but some might actually call this more of a smear campagin against multi-channel. You don't see Multi-channel enthusiasts creating pages like this. They call MCH a "gimmick" or "unnatural", but in the end, isn't all music reproduction a "gimmick" or "trick" anyways?
Save Our...Stereo!
http://www.tnt-audio.com/topics/sos_e.html
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Post by Jay-dub June 11, 2007 (13 of 16)
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I think there are a number of good reasons that shops have become shy of SACD.
Foremost among them was Sony's botched product launch. They should have waited until they had manufacturing facilities for hybrid disks before launching the format. Record shops that got into the format early got burned with having to write off a lot of product returns, largely due to the format's unfortunate name. You put an HDCD in a CD player, you get music. You put an XRCD in a CD player, you get music. You put a DVD-A in a DVD player, you get music (from the Dolby Digital or DTS program). You put an SACD in a CD player, you get nothing. A shop would have to pay its clerks more to get them to discuss stereo equipment with every customer buying single-layer SACD, in an informed way, without seeming rude. The format has not recovered from the ill-will generated by its launch.
For stereo shops there is the lingering format war problem. Hardware manufacturers and retailers that evaluated the two formats at their launch by their objective merits mostly went to the DVD-A camp. The DVD-A format has more features, more flexibility; it allows bit-perfect encoding of nearly every studio master out there; high-res PCM has an unequivocal interpretation as an analogue signal (unlike DSD, which depends on a non-standardized low-pass filter) and doesn't have an issue with high-frequency quantization noise. And what advantages does SACD have? A first-rate user interface, and several small classical-music companies that got behind it at the beginning and produced stellar recordings from the get-go, that's all.
From here, there's really no way for SACD to endure, except as an internet-sustained niche format. If hi-fi shops promote HDCD-compatible CD players over SACD, that's because most of their customers have more use for HDCD decoding than for SACD. If record shops don't feature SACD, it's because most of the consumers who are informed and equipped for SACD are buying their disks over the Web. If Amazon.com doesn't have an SACD store, that's because -- well, they used to have one, but it was so badly designed as to be useless, and excluded hybrid disks, for instance.
Sites like this are not part of the problem, they are the format's only hope for survival.
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Jay-dub said:
I think there are a number of good reasons that shops have become shy of SACD.
Foremost among them was Sony's botched product launch. They should have waited until they had manufacturing facilities for hybrid disks before launching the format. Record shops that got into the format early got burned with having to write off a lot of product returns, largely due to the format's unfortunate name. You put an HDCD in a CD player, you get music. You put an XRCD in a CD player, you get music. You put a DVD-A in a DVD player, you get music (from the Dolby Digital or DTS program). You put an SACD in a CD player, you get nothing. A shop would have to pay its clerks more to get them to discuss stereo equipment with every customer buying single-layer SACD, in an informed way, without seeming rude. The format has not recovered from the ill-will generated by its launch.
For stereo shops there is the lingering format war problem. Hardware manufacturers and retailers that evaluated the two formats at their launch by their objective merits mostly went to the DVD-A camp. The DVD-A format has more features, more flexibility; it allows bit-perfect encoding of nearly every studio master out there; high-res PCM has an unequivocal interpretation as an analogue signal (unlike DSD, which depends on a non-standardized low-pass filter) and doesn't have an issue with high-frequency quantization noise. And what advantages does SACD have? A first-rate user interface, and several small classical-music companies that got behind it at the beginning and produced stellar recordings from the get-go, that's all.
From here, there's really no way for SACD to endure, except as an internet-sustained niche format. If hi-fi shops promote HDCD-compatible CD players over SACD, that's because most of their customers have more use for HDCD decoding than for SACD. If record shops don't feature SACD, it's because most of the consumers who are informed and equipped for SACD are buying their disks over the Web. If Amazon.com doesn't have an SACD store, that's because -- well, they used to have one, but it was so badly designed as to be useless, and excluded hybrid disks, for instance.
Sites like this are not part of the problem, they are the format's only hope for survival.
Thanks Jay-dub...
All very thoughtful and insightful. Many strong points I didn't even know about. Unfortunately, we still seem to have no satisfactory way of pushing the format forward in North America. Is it likely that SACD will ever grow in North America, even a little bit? Is the situation really that grim?
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Post by Jay-dub June 11, 2007 (15 of 16)
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I don't think the situation is grim at all. There may be nothing we can do now to promote the format (except buy SACD's and demonstrate them to our friends) but it isn't about to get Betamaxed either. Universal players are getting more and more common, as is the PS3, so a large and growing number of people have SACD capability without having sought it out. The advent of HDMI means that people don't have to wire up their system especially for SACD surround. In a few years a lot of people will have universal players or PS3's hooked up to HDMI-equipped home theater receivers that they be using for surround-sound movies and gaming. These people will be set up for high-resolution SACD surround. As a result, there will be no barrier to promoting SACD as a music format. In the mean time, nothing's about to take its place. For the first time in its history, the format will be able to sink or float based on its merits, and I think it has a good chance of succeeding.
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Post by SnaggS June 14, 2007 (16 of 16)
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Well, I dont know about everyone else here.. but in the last month I just bought about 50 SACD's (after a bit of a lull). There is just way too much coming out to keep up with. SACD is so well supported by independents, and they are IMHO the future for music and definately for classical.
I couldn't give a hoot about whether *insert R&B group here* album comes out on SACD. That kind of music doesn't even warrant CD let alone SACD. SACD will remain forever as the fine wine of music.
Yeh I wish some more of the quality rock, electronic, krautrock stuff came out on SACD, and maybe it will one day. But between Vinyl and SACD I have a happy existence.
Daniel.
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