Post by emaidel April 7, 2009 (1 of 16)
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I know I've posted something to this effect elsewhere on this forum, but I very much want to "spread the gospel" to anyone I can about how good I believe the SACD medium to be.
When I purchased my Marantz SA-8001 SACD player just over a year ago, based largely on the glowing review it received in Stereophile, I found its CD playback a huge improvement over my older Adcom player/DAC combo. I had little interest at all in SACD, but regarded it mostly as just a "frill." Then I started to purchase SACD's and listen. WOW!
Not all SACD's are the sonic blockbusters the medium promises, and some are genuine duds too, but a well mastered, recorded and engineered SACD is something to truly behold. I attemped to post this on several audio websites (audioreview.com, in particular) and was just about eviscerated. Most of the "experts" on audio websites feel that spending huge amounts of money on outboard DAC's for their CD players is the way to go, and that SACD is something simply to be ignored.
Recently, I posted a thread there called, "SACD is NOT Dead," and have received a number of surprisingly supportive comments to it. One of the site mods at AR also selected that thread as a feature blog you see immediately once you initially log onto the site. Now, I'm a "star!"
While I haven't converted the unbelievers, I've at least made a dent. Members here all but unanimously support the DSD/SACD mediums as "the best there is," as do many recording engineers I've spoken with, but trying to convince CD diehards is an absurdly difficult task.
It used to be that whenver a genuine "breakthrough," or significant improvements in recording techniques or playback media were developed, the audiophile community readily snapped them up. Not so with SACD, but things seem to be turning around, albeit verrrryyyyyy slooooooowwwllly.
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Post by krisjan April 7, 2009 (2 of 16)
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Unfortunately, I beleive it is now too late for SACD to be anything other than a specialist format (akin to LP). In order for this to be anything other than niche, all of the MAJOR sofware producers would have to get behind it and support it. Ain't gonna happen - that ship has sailed some years ago now. The best we can expect now is for the remaining SACD stalwarts (like BIS, Channel, etc) to continue to bless us with releases. This will happen as long as they can glean a reasonable profit. As for the big folks - R.I.P. SACD.
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I see it this way.. until a PC drive becomes available that can read sacd disks I really don't want to support it. I could care less about burning it but I at least want the ability to play the disks in high def on any system I choose. By supposedly preventing piracy by limiting the hardware they've also made the format much more obscure. Even if piracy ran rampant with sacd at least the format would receive the popularity it deserves. As an example I didn't even know sacd or any high def audio cds existed until less than a week ago.. I thought to myself "if movies can be in high def why can't they do the same for music?" and a few google searches later I found out that it already existed.. If a computer geek who has the world at his fingertips didn't know about it then how can anyone expect the rest of the world to be informed? When a PC drive becomes availble I'll be replacing my old CD collection with sacd hybrids. Piracy smiracy..
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Post by RWetmore April 7, 2009 (4 of 16)
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Reignfire said:
I see it this way.. until a PC drive becomes available that can read sacd disks I really don't want to support it. I could care less about burning it but I at least want the ability to play the disks in high def on any system I choose. By supposedly preventing piracy by limiting the hardware they've also made the format much more obscure. Even if piracy ran rampant with sacd at least the format would receive the popularity it deserves. As an example I didn't even know sacd or any high def audio cds existed until less than a week ago.. I thought to myself "if movies can be in high def why can't they do the same for music?" and a few google searches later I found out that it already existed.. If a computer geek who has the world at his fingertips didn't know about it then how can anyone expect the rest of the world to be informed? When a PC drive becomes availble I'll be replacing my old CD collection with sacd hybrids. Piracy smiracy..
Interesting perspective.
I think the biggest mistake they made was deviating away from PCM to DSD. Now I know many of our resident DSD enthusiasts don't like me saying this, but I believe had SACD been a simple 176.4khz/20bit PCM stereo and multichannel format, it would have fared much better, especially in the hi-end audiophile market - but the whole market in general. There are several reasons for this but the main ones are that PCM is easier to work with (recording and editing), and a standard much more easily adoptable by the industry because the infrastructure was and is still already in place. Also, PCM A/D and D/A converters are more easily perfectible and have less distortion.
Instead we have this mess of all these different formats and mediums (SACD, DVD, DVD Audio and now blu-ray). Don't get me wrong, DSD/SACD is great when it's done well. I just think it would have been equally great with 176.4khz/20bit, achieved wider industry adoption, and made everyone's lives a whole lot easier.
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Post by DSD April 7, 2009 (5 of 16)
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RWetmore said:
Interesting perspective.
I think the biggest mistake they made was deviating away from PCM to DSD. Now I know many of our resident DSD enthusiasts don't like me saying this, but I believe had SACD been a simple 176.4khz/20bit PCM stereo and multichannel format, it would have fared much better, especially in the hi-end audiophile market - but the whole market in general. There are several reasons for this but the main ones are that PCM is easier to work with (recording and editing), and a standard much more easily adoptable by the industry because the infrastructure was and is largely already in place. Also, PCM A/D and D/A converters are more easily perfectible and have less distortion.
Instead we have this mess of all these different formats and mediums (SACD, DVD, DVD Audio and now blu-ray). Don't get me wrong, DSD/SACD is great when it's done well. I just think it would be equally great with 176.4khz/20bit, achieved wider industry adoption, and would have made everyone's lives a whole lot easier.
DVD-Audio offers high resolution PCM at 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz and 192kHz at 16, 20 or 24 Bit rates depending on how the master tape was recorded.
Sounds like you might have more success in resurrecting DVD-Audio than changing SACD to PCM?
I happen to prefer DSD recordings direct to SACD and would not want to give that up.
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Post by RWetmore April 7, 2009 (6 of 16)
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DSD said:
DVD-Audio offers high resolution PCM at 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz and 192kHz at 16, 20 or 24 Bit rates depending on how the master tape was recorded.
Sounds like you might have more success in resurrecting DVD-Audio than changing SACD to PCM?
I know, but DVD-Audio's design and operation is a disaster because there is no standardization. The discs aren't required to have separate stereo and multichannel tracks. The discs don't play like SACDs where you can program the player to default to stereo or multi-channel. Even if they have a separate stereo track, you have to use a video menu to select it most of the time. Most recordings use 24 bits, which is waste because no equipment can do more than 20. 192khz is stereo only. There are no standalone players. Should I keep going?
DVD-Audio was and is an absolute disaster - the epitome of how not to design a format. I refuse to invest in it, and I also will not invest in blu-ray unless they make it as user friendly as SACD.
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Post by RWetmore April 7, 2009 (7 of 16)
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DSD said:
I happen to prefer DSD recordings direct to SACD and would not want to give that up.
I'm talking about what I feel they should have done from the start - not changing SACD from DSD to PCM now. That's not ever going to happen.
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Post by DSD April 7, 2009 (8 of 16)
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RWetmore said:
I know, but DVD-Audio's design and operation is a disaster because there is no standardization. The discs aren't required to have separate stereo and multichannel tracks. The discs don't play like SACDs where you can program the player to default to stereo or multi-channel. Even if they have a separate stereo track, you have to use a video menu to select it most of the time. Most recordings use 24 bits, which is waste because no equipment can do more than 20. 192khz is stereo only. There are no standalone players. Should I keep going?
DVD-Audio was and is an absolute disaster - the epitome of how not to design a format. I refuse to invest in it, and I also will not invest in blu-ray unless they make it as user friendly as SACD.
I agree DVD-Audio can be a pain to play especially if one listens in 2 channel stereo, like I do. On most releases I have to turn on the TV and go to the menu to select the 2 channel program. On some newer DVD-Audios which have auto-play, the auto-play is multi-channel so I have push STOP and then go to the menu to select the 2 channel program.
If DVD-Audio had the ergonomics of SACD perhaps it would still be a viable format?
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Post by RWetmore April 7, 2009 (9 of 16)
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DSD said:
I agree DVD-Audio can be a pain to play especially if one listens in 2 channel stereo, like I do. On most releases I have to turn on the TV and go to the menu to select the 2 channel program. On some newer DVD-Audios which have auto-play, the auto-play is multi-channel so I have push STOP and then go to the menu to select the 2 channel program.
If DVD-Audio had the ergonomics of SACD perhaps it would still be a viable format?
Maybe.
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Post by wolf359 April 8, 2009 (10 of 16)
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Several intresting takes on this thread. When a new format is announced the publicity machine cranks up and the orginators think that they have done enough to hopefully ensure its success. At the time of SACD's introduction even though I was into music and technology in a big way I was only vaguely aware of SACD as another niche format. As the discs appeared to be only stereo and could'nt be played on a standard CD player I wasn'nt intrested in this fancy new format.(Sony single layer prevailed at the time).10 years on virtually no one has heard of SACD. Compare that to the launch of CD which was radically different, a very different product to vinyl the public bought into it and 10 years after launch CD was everywhere. There was of course the DVD-A SACD debacle. Companies have the arrogance to belive that they are right and damn the public. They never learn and blindly belive that history teaches them nothing. VHS/Beta ,DCC/Minidisc, cassette/8 track etc etc. Most recently of course Blu ray vs HD-DVD. The one lesson that is constant is that where there is doubt caused by conflicting formats the public has learned and generally will stay away from them until the dominant one takes over. At this point the publics perception may be tarnished or at best apathetic towards the surviving format . Sales stay low and it develops into a niche and then the next new best thing starts up is developed in several different ways and hey presto a new format war starts up. Such a waste of time energy and money reinventing the wheel. As far as giving SACD its due it never will be big unless the majors come on board and as they are money driven and SACD is expensive to produce and sell forget it. Back in the early 80's EMI were one of the last big companies to produce and issue CD only after the surviving Beatles members complained did they adopt CD. Perhaps messers Starr and McCartney could insist on the remasters being in SACD. Sony's attitude to licensing did not do the format any favours either.
The other side is I would love my windows media centre PC to play the SACD layers of SACD discs. The ability to compile favourite artists and tracks and play them in the order I like is certanly seductive but in 5.1 that would be something else that won't happen. I have a number of DVD-A but the menu system is so bad and varies from disc to disc that playing them is a real pain so they don't get played very often
Downloads not for me prefer the physical item anytime
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