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Kal Rubinson said:
...the multiple marketing failures of the big companies doomed these from the start but I am grateful that there was SACD and still is enough to keep my interest.
I wrote about SACD's lack of market penetration in March 2005 - http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/305awsi/ - following the release of the RIAA statistics for 2004 that indicated that US LP sales in that year had overtaken the combined sales of DVD-A and SACD.
I also wrote about the difficulty of marketing SACD and DVD-A outside of a narrow niche in October 2002: see http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/681/ . From the conclusion to that essay: "If DVD-A and/or SACD are to supplant CD, not only do their features have to be transformed into benefits, but the benefits consumers currently enjoy with CD need to be preserved. That means no watermarking to damage the benefit of improved sound quality, hi-rez digital outputs, and all the first-sale and fair-use freedoms owners expect. If the record industry doesn't allow SACD and DVD-A to offer people what they want, there is no law that compels them to become customers, no matter how much the record industry appreciates the new formats' benefits."
Sadly, my gloomy prediction was proved correct. That doesn't mean I have been conspiring against SACD, as some of the more hysterical posters to this forum have claimed, merely that I haven't let my admiration for the often superb quality offered by SACD get in the way of reality.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
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Post by Perigo May 16, 2009 (62 of 107)
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emaidel said:
One sad fact that I've observed in my many years in the business is that audiophiles, as a rule, simply do not listen to classical music. As the overwhelming majority of SACD's are classical in nature (something all of us on this site find praiseworthy, and not to be derided), audiophiles have dismissed the medium as relatively unimportant. As I recall, Stereophile themselves are not calling SACD "dead," but reporting that it is audiophiles who have declared the medium dead.
It is true that SACDs issues are concentrated mainly on classical music.
I don't know where you live, but it is important to consider that 'musicophiles' (people that love to listen to the music at home in the best way possible) have the same relevance of 'audiophiles' in buying hi-fi gear. The sad thing is that many of so called 'audiophiles' listen to three or four tracks at all, on their hi-fi systems. Generally they knew those tracks at some hi-fi show or at some hi-fi shop.
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Stereo_Editor said:
I wrote about SACD's lack of market penetration in March 2005 - http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/305awsi/ - following the release of the RIAA statistics for 2004 that indicated that US LP sales in that year had overtaken the combined sales of DVD-A and SACD.
RIAA statistics are seriously skewed since they exclude Hybrid SACDs - We shouldn't take any serious conclusions about market penetration based on this data.
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canonical said:
1. I don't think SACD has to, or 'wants to', or has, or should have ... any aspiration etc of OVERCOMING the convenience of portable media. They are completely different models. If you want to carry 5 kids around and carry bricks home, you just don't buy a sports car. If you only listen to your music on the bus, you don't buy a SACD player (or you buy it for your home use, and then rip your SACDs (from the CD layer) and listen to them on the bus). Chalk and cheese.
2. More importantly, the reference point for this thread is not about listening to music on the bus ... in the train ... or even in the car. The reference point is Stereophile magazine ... a magazine that purports to be concerned with audiophile matters. And the comments made by the editors of that magazine ... both in their own online article, and in this forum ... about the dominant hi-rez audiophile format ... appear frankly embarrassing, unprofessional and out of touch.
I agree, listening to high resolution SACD on a portable player wouldn't make more sense than watching Blu-Ray movie on ipod touch screen!
Super Audio CD is for Hi-Fi setups, Blu-Ray for Home Theater systems, and mp3/CD for portable players (ipods, boomboxes etc).
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Stereo_Editor said:
I wrote about SACD's lack of market penetration in March 2005 - http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/305awsi/ - following the release of the RIAA statistics for 2004 that indicated that US LP sales in that year had overtaken the combined sales of DVD-A and SACD.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Well that explains how you came to an invalid conclusion. It is common knowledge in the industry that the RIAA count ALL hybrid SACDs as CD sales ... not as SACDs. An editor of a hi-fi magazine really should know such things before fallaciously quoting same.
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Stereo_Editor said:
"If DVD-A and/or SACD are to supplant CD, ..."
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
I think this statement epitomises rather nicely the logical imperfections that pervade your postings.
SACD does not HAVE to supplant CD. The world does not HAVE to have binary outcomes. It is not CD *or* SACD. It is not Mac *or* PC. This is the type of vitriolic garbage one got from PC Magazine for 25 years - decrying the Mac because it wasn't going to supplant the PC ... and that Apple was therefore dead. And they were so wrong.
Multiple ways of doing things can co-exist, just as multiple forms of transport exist (plane, car, train, or multiple types of fuel trains --> petrol, electric, diesel, hydrogen etc). Some are more suitable for various functions than others. It is not diesel OR petrol.
And when it comes to the audiophile market, SACD is, essentially by definition, audiophile. CD is not. It is low-rez. So, at least in the audiophile market, the days of the CD player are over. It doesn't even meet the definition of audiophile. It is dated. An anachronism. Low-rez. The SACD player can play everything the CD player can play - and all the new hi-rez goodies. That's why the most respected US audiophile companies like Mark Levinson and Krell have stopped making CD players, and sell SACD now.
CD players will, of course, continue to be used in cars, in boomboxes, in clock radios, and by millions of mostly older people in homes that have not converted to (lower-rez) downloads. But in the **audiophile market**, the CD is now irrelevant. Simply because it is not audiophile.
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Post by Peter May 16, 2009 (67 of 107)
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Stereo_Editor said:
... merely that I haven't let my admiration for the often superb quality offered by SACD get in the way of reality.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
It was even difficult to get a compliment to SACD, but I thanks that even late.
Sony is so stagnant on SACD, that she was unable to launch a Car SACD player or a portable SACD player (Discman) to stop CD and MP3 sales..
This is great incompetence for full ten years or Sony do not want spend some money with SACD format, only with the BluRay project where the money run over the millions to buy HD-DVD clients...
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Post by DSD May 16, 2009 (69 of 107)
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raffells said:
So if everybody was forced to choose only sacd and play it on their boom boxes they would be happier ? ehm NO. They could not hear any difference.Hell I asked the question on this site about how many people could hear the difference in stereo and MOST of the people who listen to surround could hardly tell the difference.The results were interpreted by an unbiased hearing expert and he just shrugged is shoulders and said...typical and predictable..
This could of course mean that they have poorer or different hearing..Then again we all do,So why adopt the dictatorial atitude that they must have sacd?.Even funnier coming from Reno in the free West?..
In the UK we have members of parliament claiming for virtually everything as a tax benefit,laughinly within this higher echoleon of quality persons.None have claimed for an sacd player..YET?..mind you we are only a few hundred claims down the list.
I wont comment on the obvious about the original recordings being 16 bit 44.1 sampled or the poor quality in mastering and dither rates.This just makes your argument look really silly.The objective of some of the music listeners is to have the bass so loud whilst driving down the street so that THEY get noticed..Sod all to do with quality.It was like that in Reno and San Diego when I visited.
People are mostly interested in the muscic,I know I am.
The point I made than millions will listen to the latest rubbish in a song contest in various low quality or similair seemes to have sailed past you.
The main gripe with sacd and hirez is its difficult to copy the hirez layer.Plus Its less convienient to download larger files.Even some of the 24/96 download files are pretty poor.1960s stuff with tape hiss/compression dropouts wow and flutter on the tapes.
Nobody would be forced to play the SACD layer, if they "for some whacked out reason" actually like the CD layer better they can switch the priority on their equipment to "CD" instead of "SACD" and their equipment would read the "CD" layer.
SACD/CD hybrids offer not only flexibility but complete freedom as listeners can choose to listen in low resolution CD if that is what they want. BTW I used to sell stereo equipment of all kinds and I can tell you the cassette boomboxes sound sweeter and smoother than CD boomboxes. And since SACDs not only have MORE resolution but all the sweetness and smoothness of real music and analog, that SACDs on a boombox would have all the umph and blasting loudness that CD on a boombox have but with more enjoyable, sweeter and smoother tone.
BTW I have never read a post from any 2 channel listener on SA-CD.net that had trouble ever hearing the difference between low resolution CD and high resolution SACD. Perhaps you might be talking about some of the Pro-CD trolls on the Hi-Rez Highway? If so they are not to be taken seriously much less believed.
I have not found a single poor 24 Bit 96kHz download from a legitimate website. If you are talking illegal torrent downloads those are not from the original masters and it is possible to get bad sounding ones. Stay with the real sites that offer 24/96 FLAC, 24/96 WAV and other one way downloads.
It is the interest in music than requires one to seek at better sound to do the music justice.
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Post by DSD May 16, 2009 (70 of 107)
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FullRangeMan said:
It was even difficult to get a compliment to SACD, but I thanks that even late.
Sony is so stagnant on SACD, that she was unable to launch a Car SACD player or a portable SACD player (Discman) to stop CD and MP3 sales..
This is great incompetence for full ten years or Sony do not want spend some money with SACD format, only with the BluRay project where the money run over the millions to buy HD-DVD clients...
Sony actually has car SACD players, but no portables or boomboxes yet. To it's credit there are a couple of Sony Theater-in-a-box that play SACD.
Sony Announces Three Super Audio CD Car Stereo Players
http://www.highfidelityreview.com/news/news.asp?newsnumber=10972765
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