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Much better than CD, compared to vinyl there still needs work to be done.
Its future as a format may be debatable, but does SACD have the sonic goods? Have you been able to spend much time with SACD? If so, what do you think about the way it sounds?
I think if the recording is done well enough to take advantage of SACD's positives the outcome is fantastic. The musical presentation is more at ease with better flow and dynamic resolve. I currently own about 60 titles across many generas (sp?). But if the recording is not up to the task, well you know what they say, you can not polish a turd!.
I have thoroughly listened to many direct-to-DSD recordings and find all of them to be vastly superior to Red Book PCM recordings. Having done many comparisons between the DSD and PCM layers of hybrid discs, I can say with absolute, and purely objective, certainty that DSD is a great improvement over 44.1/16 PCM. One of the most prominent advancements that DSD offers is an extremely low noise floor. Resultant from the high signal-to-noise ratio, which is maintained at ALL AMPLITUDES, is spectacular low level resolution. All sorts of detail that would otherwise go unnoticed become readily apparent. Furthermore, the detail is always very natural, never etched or analytical. Another extraordinary benefit that DSD brings to the table is its ability to truly preserve the "ebb and flow" of music. That is, it maintains the coherency of the temporal continuum in which the music was originally played. In essence, DSD allows the music to be reproduced as a single continuous temporal event rather than an agglomeration of many separate ones. In the end, the improvements that DSD offers over Red Book PCM are many in number and profound in nature. However, this really isn
SACD is not a night-and-day difference from Red Book CD on high-end equipment. The noticeable differences are a little more detail, better imaging, and much less fatigue after listening for extended periods. Perhaps the most noticeable difference is that SACD players often sound equivalent to a Red Book CD player that costs much more.
I bought a SACD player a while back and it sat on the shelf for about 6 months. When I finally got around to sitting down to take a good listen to it, I realized that the music actually moved emotionally. Never before was I nearly brought to tears while listening to music on my home stereo. Some peices give me goosebumps, the chill of feelings and emotions taking over. SACD has brought me one step closer to audio nirvana....
It's wonderful, provided it's well recorded. There seem to be many remastered CDs, the originals of which are only ok. Consequently, SACD is only okay to pretty good. In fact, I have well recorded CDs that sound better than some of my SACDs.