Coping in an Age of Uncertainty

Hi Kelly; I suspect you already know my position on this interesting topic. IMO, CD is going to be the dominent music format for at least several more years, and I already have about 1000 CDs. Also, I am nearly 58 years old with a history of early hearing loss in my ancestry. To that end, last summer I seriously upgraded my CD transport to Levinson 37 and DAC to Levinson 360S-- I want the "good sound" NOW. However, as a sort of hedge against future formats, the 360S DAC is fully upgradable and already decodes 24/96 discs-- haven't seen any though! Generally speaking, I think CD quality has improved (matured) significantly in the last 5 years, and quite frankly my system is sounding great, so I have little interest in SACD or DVD. As some have observed above, I've seen absolutely no evidence that either of the "new formats" is going to catch on with the general population anytime soon. Cheers. Craig.

We live in a relativly high tech world and there is always something new around the corner. Recently we have had all the new cd formats and video formats as well. DVD and high definition television. I have come to the conclusiion that I rather be using these technologies then waiting for what one will be dominant. It may not be the smartest money wise but I justify it by saying that there wouldnt be new products if people like us didnt buy them. Im sure in the long run I may end up with the equvalent of a couple of beta machines but I will end up getting more enjoyment out of my system.

One reason I decided to get the 9000es is that I was buying a handfull of cds the other day and and was wondering how long it will be before the same titles are available on sacd. Like everyone on this site I own a lot of music on cd that I will use for a long time, but should I still be buying cds with this clearly better format emerging?

Nice thread Kelly, I know you don't need my ideas on the topic of wich format, but let me tell you why I chose SACD. I watched for three years as the talk of a "new" format bounced around in Stereophile. I held off upgrading my digitial front end in anticapation of the new digital! Last year my cd player being five years old was in my opinion dated in it's advancement so I decided it was time to move. I chose to go with SACD for the sole reason that I could continue to use and grow my "redbook" cd collection, but I could also get the benifits of the latest technology (digitial filters) and start a collection of SACD. My choice became fairly obviouse to me, for $3000 I could buy the SCD-1 wich I understood to be within the same ballpark as an upsampled $15,000 system with standard cds. With SACD the sound was reported to be better and DVD-A had another stumble getting out of the blocks. To me DVD-A was dead when it's codes were broken, and deader still when the watermark issue came to light. Upsampling is very exciting and I believe will remain a viable option. But with a system one fifth the cost achieving about the same level of proformance what was my choice? I think you face a different possition than alot of us Kelly. Your base point is a system most of us will only read about, so moving to SACD may not have the same impact as it did on my system.
The one thing I wouldn't do is sit and wait, listening to the old playback technology for the next two, three, four ... years and not getting the best proformance possible during that time! (for me, being told I had a 1% chance of still being alive today, two or three years is too long to wait. Fact is we only have today, enjoy!)Your options I would think are a digitial to digitial upsampler to at least get the best from your existing library and wait, or wait through the summer when some of the big boys come out with there machines that may provide for upgrading.
For the rest of the lower price adiophiles, I just don't see how waiting is helping you. For the price of a good standard cd player, you could have an SACD that improves over standard "redbook cd" playback, allows for the choice of SACD and improved the DVD playback (9000es). By the time something actually happens, the system you'll be listening to will be 5,8,12 ... years old based on a technology pushing 30 years.
That was my thinking, no debates or defence from me, I promise. I'm just sharing how I aproached it, it worked for me. J.D.

I'm with Garfish. I have decided to keep my Mark Levinson 37 transport and upgrade the 36 DAC to a Dodson 217 MkIID DAC (there was no comparison between the two DACS and upgrading the M-L 36 to a 360S would have cost a lot). I am not worried about upgrading to SACD or DVDA at this time, and I have much of what I like on about 1000 redbook CDs and many of these will not come out in the new formats in the near future. In the meantime, I have returned to listening to records (which I prefer). One of the real benefits of the format war has been the renewed interest in analog. There is some wonderful analog equipment out there: it is nearly as quiet as CDs and sounds much better.