Rec, I agree that vinyl done right is superior to SACD.
That being said, SACD offers the convenience of silver disc, with improved sonics over CD. You are also right that SACD is not the night and day improvement over CD, that you and I were perhaps expecting. However, after getting my bearings, I sort of came to the conclusion that my expectations for the level of improvement possible were unrealistic.
As has been said, for those listening on a boombox or clock radio, SACD is irrelevant. I cannot go along with the manufacturer's assertions that people can hear the benefit in these low resolution systems.
What SACD has proven to me, and the reason I am hoping the format takes root, is beyond the convenience, the "incremental improvements" are not only real, but important to me. Perhaps a bit difficult to detect at first, but they become more apparent in the confines of my own system at home. Two of my main complaints with most of the non - exotic CD players are the failure to deliver convincing response below the midrange and the chopping up of the music(digititis), destroying the flow of the music. SACD seems to correct these two complaints, in my mind.
Again, I have yet to hear a serious vinyl front end be approached.