Vote

SACD and DVD is only surround sound. Just imagine that you have a band playing around you in the middle.

I recently upgraded my DAC to a battery powered, non-oversampling type. No need for high-rez media anymore. Red Book can sound very close to analog, it just took me 20 years to figure out how.

don't want to buy same music all over again. don't think there is enough of a difference in sound quality. price way to high.

Not with music industry pinheads who don't give a hoot about the quality of recordings, and more importantly they

I choose "Maybe" referring to the "general population" because they'll "generally" accept garbage, now high quality garbage (which is questionable it appears) "Maybe" another thing. For myself i say "Not likely" because any person with an "actual musical excellent taste" know that (at least the ones that haven't made the digital realm their god), there's a good chance that its a waste of their time amongst other things. Same song n' dance over n' over.

I choose "Maybe" referring to the "general population" because they'll "generally" accept garbage, now high quality garbage (which is questionable it appears) "Maybe" another thing. For myself i say "Not likely" because any person with an "actual musical excellent taste" know that (at least the ones that haven't made the digital realm their god), there's a good chance that its a waste of their time amongst other things. Same song n' dance over n' over.

Hopefully the smaller players continue releasing DVD-As & SA-CDs.

I sure hope so, although it may get relegated to the same niche market that laserdisc did in the nineties. I love SACD's sound quality, but I only own a handful of discs. Most of what's available isn't music I actually listen to-it's music I demo. The biggest benefit to buying my SACD player so far is how much it improved the sound of Red Book CDs over my old player.

The bad news: Most people think MP3 sounds just fine, and they wield the the bulk ot the purchasing power. The good news: Even Red Book CD can sound great if done right. The reality: as usual, we audio nuts will be in the tiny minority, disregarded by the major music producers, playing the same few "demo" discs on our megabuck rigs, waiting for everyone else to wake up (they won't).

SACD hybrids with a Red Book CD layer would have to become the standard. If sold at the standard CD price, they can survive. I think the emphasis on multichannel material was a big mistake. Audiophiles have typically maxed out their budgets on two channel systems. Going multichannel would involve either a huge additional investment in hardware or a big step down in quality of components. Neither of these alternatives appeals to me.

High-rez music will at least survive as a niche market. Classical SACDs are doing reasonably well, considering that classical music as a whole is facing hard times, except Naxos. In fact, the saving grace is that most recordings are becoming more and more of a niche market, with the proliferation of formats and sub-sub-sub genres.

Only audiophiles have complained about the sound of compact discs. And there's not enough of us to make a significant impact on the rest. We are stuck with "CD-quality sound" for a long time.

There is still a widow for widespread adoption, if more titles become available soon. The saviour, if they are to be saved, is the increasing number of quality, cheap, universal players.

The industry has never really believed in high-rez, which matters only to us, and not at all to the people who think boom boxes sound fine. So we don't get much software. Good enough is always the enenmy of great

Yes but they should have set the digital out no day one.If they had it would be more out there.

If anything, it is just a matter of time.

the storage media is unlimited, the methods how it could be conveyed is the real issue!

There is probably little future because digital audio is viewed as 'good enough'. Anything with a higher resolution than CD won't ever have a mass takeup -- unless a breakthrough in some other characteristic happens to carry a high-rez medium along with it. Plainly, mass-market playback systems would have to improve first. The sound potential from CD is still largely unrealised; that would be the first step along the line. However, improvements in technology seem to now be employed to reduce physical size (MP3 players, and integrated micro-systems with tiny speakers) rather than enhance sound. So I misdoubt that high-rez music media will ever reach critical mass on its own.

Normal consumers are obviously not interested in high rez audio formats. How long will it take that every disc format is antiquated and we have just microchips for saving music?

To find hi-rez in the future we need to rediscover the past...VINYL!

There already exists a widely accepted infrastructure for high-rez music -- DVD-Video.

How about higher resolution analog media as a goal? Is there a better vinyl, for example? Until I get B-format Ambisonics on a digital disc, I'd rather stick with plain old affordable HDCDs and a player without pre-echo (e.g. Wadia or T+A) -- or better vinyl.

the difference in sound quality is not that much better. can't make copies of discs like regular cd. cd sound can be excellent when recorded properly.

CD is very well established, with the high-end companies servicing this medium diligently. There is no clear winner in the CD/SACD/DVD-A sound-quality stakes. Recently, there have been reviews in Stereophile and other publications saying that sound quality from the latest CD players rivals that of the new formats, so what hope have they? I for one am not happy with CD playback quality within my price limits and get better high frequency detail and imaging from my old turntable, which cost one-third the price of my much vaunted CD player, so at the moment vinyl is the path for me. The question I'd like to ask is: how much do I have to pay for reasonable digital playback? If SACD or DVD-A can provide this at a reasonable price and the software companies release relevant recordings in these formats, maybe I'll give them a go.

but only for audiophiles. No one else will spend enough for their system to notice the difference.

Sure. A great many recordings these days (for any end format) usually start life as 24-bit (or greater) and 96kHz (or greater) LPCM. Moreover, "Wintel" PCs and Macs will increasingly incorporate sound CODECs of similar standards. Both new "blue-laser" type high-density audio-visual media will also use multichannel LPCM as their core audio system, with greater total bandwith capability than today's DVD carrier. I therefore believe that the transition to high-resolution audio and video combined will be a question of 'when', not 'if'. Meanwhile I see that standalone DVD-Audio and SACD releases will continue in their respective niches, while high-resolution DVD-Audio content will be seen increasingly either on DualDisc, or on standalone DVDs included in the same box as mainstream CD music albums (or on both).

High-rez most certainly has a future. Equally certain is that the audiophile community does not have enough market power to determine which format becomes dominant. CD is more than 20 years old, and sooner or later entrepreneurs in the record industry will realize that it is unrealistic for consumers to pay top dollar for a product that is obsolete. A good start would be if Sony released its entire catalog on both DVDA and SACD. SACD clearly isn't driving their corporate profits much ... what do they have to lose?

First for those who bought few years ago a perfect sound forever cdp, it would be foolish to upgrade to anything better than perfect. Why do we need another hd format when we already have lps. Dan Varennes, Qu

need computer compatability for SACD

If computer audio acquires the ability to do high-rez sound, it's game over.