Vote

The reason is simple: Vinyl is king.

To the teeming masses they are redundant, more expensive, and elusive.

The correct answer is "all the above"! To which I would also add another reason or two: Lousy surround mixes that are either unnatural in their use of the surround channels, or that ignore the surrounds and center altogether. Also, just the poor quality of some of the recordings. Why release a bad recording on a high-res format? So the bad recording can be made even more unpleasant?

It's hard to spend $18-$30 on music that's usually available on LP for around $7 at a used record shop. Some SACDs are must-haves (DSOTM), but most are not worth the asking price.

Go to Wal-Mart and check out the promotion of HDTV. Why don't the retailers "scream" about SACD and DVD-Audio the way they do HDTV? People will never know how great music can sound if they are not exposed!

I'm not spending AUD$8K on a SACDVD-A player to play a disc that I have to ship in from the US, made from PCM 16-bit/44.1kHz master. Especially when I've had the LP(recorded from the analogue master) for the last 20 years. As for Joe Bloggs CD already is high Rez, so why buy into SACDVD-A?

People need clear choices when it comes to format. This war for dominance confuses anyone for what to invest in. I'm now disappointed to hear that my new sacd player may be obsolete before getting much software for it. I hope Sony does not abadon the format that I gambled would stay for at least music lovers . Like vinyl has been able to survive.

I'm pretty happy with SACD availability.

Choose One: I can't. I choose the first (top) nine. I have two SACD players, but the lack of new releases, or even a significant number of old releases re-released on SACD (or DVD-A) is damning! No, !!! The Sony Beta vs. VHS format war was before my time, but if Sony screws up again, they're toast in my book!!! If either Hi-Rez format fails due to the lack of software suport, then their hardware suporters (founders?) deserve to go down with the format!!!

I'd say most folks don't know they exist and even if they do, what they've been told probably looks like a high school physics question. And for the most part what I've seen available for SACD/DVD-A is OLD! Re-releases don't count!

All of the above!

The public was told for decades by the general press that all audio equipment is perfect. There is no difference in sound quality, the only difference is in the features. The focus on surround sound for the new formats (DVD-Audio & SACD) reinforces that belief. So, the only selling point of the new formats to most people is surround sound. The old Quadraphonic systems proved that the general public was not/is not interested in surround sound for music.

Some of us enjoy listening, both SACD and DVD-A do Very Well here :) Watching the bean-counter races is another activity, entirely.

Depends... If you're looking at SACD sales, you'd have to agree that they're doing fine. If you're looking at DVD sales, the problem is probably still poor selection. In the last 6 months or so, SACD manfacturers have added over 400 titles, and now offer over 1500 titles to choose from. But, DVD manufacturers have struggled to add what they have, far fewer than even 100 new title. Looking at a certain on-line music vendor's figures, SACD's are outselling even audiophile vinyl by a 2-1 margin, and outside DVD's by a 3-1 margin. SACD's are doing fine.

Consumer burnout with yet another sales avenue for content providers.

Honestly, after speaking with many music lover including many that own about 5000 CDs they could care less about higher resolution. The main reason people switched from LP to CD in the '80s was the instant lack of noise heard on the CD and the compactness of the CD format. The high resolution formats, SACD and DVD-A are great for audiophiles but bring little to no benifit in an economical setup typically found throughout the homes.

The primary stall for SACD and/or DVD-Audio is the lack of market. The people who care, the people viewing this WEB site, makeup too small of market to be profitable. The main part of the market, the kids buying Britney and Eminem don't know or care about these formats. I wonder how long 2-channel hifi has left period because of the trends going on.

Typical brick & mortar shops, primarily due to poor matching and setup of the components and the spaces they play in, are probably doing more to argue against high-rez audio than anything else. If people can't hear the difference, why buy?

Perfect Sound Forever is just fine, thank you.

Well, when you ask the kid "where are the SACD's?" they look puzzled. They ask another kid, who is a bit older and he says " Oh, we have some, not many, I have never heard one myself..." etc. Promotion...what promotion?

DVD movies, especially of concerts are great for surround. High-rez audio is a joke, sounding no different from decent CD playback. And when you get SACDs made from CD content, you've just got to know the whole thing is a scam.

I chose poor software selection, but it was a toss up between that and poor promotion. Most people i know have never heard of SACD or DVD-A, they've certainly been marketed much less aggressivly than DVD video. On the software side, I find there is very little new material available and often if a hi-rez version is released it's only available in Europe (Bjork's Medula & Mark Knopflers shang ri la for example)

The new listeners download to their iPods and mostly listen to compressed rock and roll anyway. The new buyers of good equipment are only concerned with home theater, and if they suddenly realize how good their new systems sound, there's not enough of them (or enough interest from them) to drive the better audio formats. Listen to the cars go by. It's all about pounding one-note bass, and getting lost in the music, not listening to it.

I can't believe that every new Sony and Phillips DVD and CD player does not incorporate SACD. What does that say about how parent companies feel about their format?The catalogs for SACD and DVD-A are a joke—a bad joke.

Public interest in hi-res audio is simply not there. I've shown it off to friends of mine and while they've said they're impressed, it's mostly to be polite. Many people are content to hook up a DVD player to their TV and leave it at that, with music from the table radio/cd player being sufficient to provide background noise to their quotidian activities. The notion of sitting down and just listening to music fills most of the people I know with dread. "Don't you get bored?" is the most common response I get whenever I tell someone I plan to relax by listening to a particular disc. "You mean you don't even read something while you listen?" When I retort "Do you bring a book to the symphony or a rock concert?" I get blank stares--no doubt because they don't go to the symphony and, good heavens, you go to watch a rock concert. Anyway, sorry about the rant.

Megabungle indeed, the companies who claim to be "proponents" of high-rez need to pick themselves up and shine their shoes which are all scuffed-up from tripping over their own two feet almost continuously for the past three to four years. Paranoid copy-protection scare-mongers, and the corporate idiocy which resulted in two formats to begin with are seriously threatening the existence of this potentially promising technology. I want to indulge, but am still concerned. If past performance is any indication of future returns, then the phrase to use regarding the so-called launch of high-resolution music is stillborn.

The format war has diluted marketing efforts and resulted in several of the other reasons mentioned in this query. Most people are still unaware of either format. Vinyl still rules!

It would appear that both the Music and Audio Equipment industries have mis-calculated the size and desires of the audiophile population. Although the audiophile ikes the concept of a hi-rez media, they feel they have had it is all along with vinyl. The other problem that I believe excists here is that the availability of software is really geared toward classical and jazz by the SACD group and rock/pop by the DVD-A group. Its a assumptionthat all true audiophiles listen only to classical and jazz. The DVD-A group seemed as though they came to the party only as an afterthought and have been behind the eightball since the beginning. If SACD would release a wider deeper range of genre they could easily become the dominate medium.

Looking at the SACD releases in pop-music, no real major (re-) releases have been broght to market in six months. The last big release, supported by decent press coverage were Bob Dylan and The Police. Since then, complete silence.

Not learning from the success of combining the formerly competing DVD-Video formats, corporate stupidity on a grand scale led to the general public ignoring both of the high-resolution audio technologies. The poor hardware sales, in turn, continue to strangle music releases, which, in a vicious circle, impedes hardware sales. This outcome was widely predicted prior to the introduction of the two audio formats and could have been avoided altogether if corporate common sense had prevailed.