SACD - Dying already?

In my local shop, Hybrid SACD's are still thriving. There are new titles in almost every week. However, single layer SACD's sat in the bins untouched for months. The same can be said for DVD-A's. You can find used copies of the last 2 formats at around $5.99-$7.99 easily.
Even NAXOS label is now replicating their DVD-A titles in SACD format.

However, this trend doesn't seem to be shared by ARCAM chairman as excerpted below:

"DVD-A vs SACD"
"An Arcam Technical Paper by John Dawson, Arcam's Chairman"
""We believe that the most important property of any player should be that it is optimised for the major uses to which it is to be put. In the case of DVD players this means outstanding picture quality, including interlaced video as well as progressive, matched by excellent sonic abilities for DVDs and CDs.The overall picture quality is determined by many factors, including the player's MPEG decoder, its de-interlacer (for progressive video) and its video DACs, filters and output stages. That these are not created equal was shown in the "blind" viewing tests recently conducted by Paul Miller in AV Tech magazine*. Here the picture quality of the Arcam DV88 Plus (powered by Zoran's Vaddis 5 DVD decoder) was found to be clearly superior to comparably priced offerings from Pioneer, Sony and Onkyo. As to sonic abilities - these demand a top quality low jitter digital output and, in the case of CDs - and in my experience most people have lots of CDs - outstanding two channel audio replay through the player's analogue outputs. Many special techniques are incorporated into Arcam's DVD players, including phase locked power supplies, low jitter master clocks and audiophile DACs and output stages, to ensure that the quality of CD sound reproduction is similar to a high performance dedicated CD player. To summarise - we believe the DV88 Plus's overall performance in both video and audio is better than any other player on the market, right up to the price of our own DV27A. The new lower cost DV78 has similar video quality and makes only small compromises to the audio performance.For the future, Arcam is fully committed to DVD-Audio. We believe strongly that this format will be the most popular and thus most successful of the two high resolution audio formats long term for a number of reasons: 1. DVD-A is already supported by four of the world's five biggest record companies - Warners, BMG, EMI and, most recently, Universal Music. We believe that by the middle of next year, it will have support from all five of the major record companies. 2. The installed base of home DVD-Audio players is much higher than SACD, and is growing much faster. Additionally DVD-Audio is already supported in-car and on the PC, whereas this is currently simply not possible for SACD. 3. Every DVD-A disc carries a DVD-V part that will replay on all 90 million DVD-V players out there in both stereo and, where applicable, multi-channel. So no-one buying such a disc is unable to play it. 4. For stereo music buffs, the 2 channel performance of DVD-A is remarkable. Nearly all DVD-A discs include dedicated stereo mixes. At 176.4 and 192 KHz sampling rates the overall noise and high frequency performance is vastly superior to SACD.5. DVD-A discs can and do carry still video content, such as slide shows, lyrics etc - which can be pretty compelling - as well as dedicated DVD-V content such as interviews with the band, "making of" documentaries and so on. This adds value and desirability over a plain audio disc. 6. New hybrid dual sided DVD-A discs, which include a red book layer on them on one side for complete backwards compatibility, are soon coming to market. This in principle can mean single inventory stocking for music retailers and compatibility with both CD and DVD players. Arcam's new DV89 and DV27A players support high resolution stereo and multi-channel DVD Audio. They also include a comprehensive bass manager to allow for non-ideal speaker setups, including speaker time delays, level management and variable crossover frequencies. This all runs on the Vaddis 5's 32 bit audio DSP. For multi-channel audio (including Dolby Digital and DTS decoding) we added a board with the necessary extra DACs and audio output circuitry to the DV88 Plus platform, which has thoughtfully been designed to accommodate this, even as a retrofit. Unfortunately we are not able to add SACD so simply - in fact this would require a new and different DVD transport (because SACD watermarking is verified on the transport), and a whole side chain of chippery to decode SACD. Also the navigation would have to be integrated into the main operating system and currently this would mean a new (and in several respects inferior) MPEG decoder/audio decoder chipset from another vendor. So it is not something we can currently offer nor, to be frank, do we really want to, as it would to some degree compromise the ultimate quality of the main purposes of the player as described above. The description "Jack of all trades, master of none" often comes to my mind when considering the present crop of universal offerings. Having said that, you can still buy SACDs if you want to! All Arcam DVD players recognise the CD layer of hybrid SACD discs (which most are these days) and replay these with exceptional fidelity. In my opinion, you can favourably compare the CD replay quality of an Arcam DVD player with the replay quality of 2-channel SACD obtained from many of today's universal players.The recent activities of the DVD-Audio Group, including seminars and conferences to the music industry, has greatly heightened the awareness of the DVD-Audio format. There are now over 600 music titles available and over 50 DVD-Audio/Video players from leading manufacturers.* AV Tech magazine, November 2003, published alongside November's Hi-Fi News. "Without doubt, the very natural, fluid and cinematic quality of its (DV88 Plus's) progressive images proved the high point of our group viewing session. With no multi-channel decoder on board, every ounce of its engineering is focused on MPEG video quality… and it shows.""…it was Arcam's DV88 Plus that really stole the show by combining both a high resolution of fine detail with smooth, free flowing, natural-looking images. Do not make the mistake of judging this particularly dour looking piece of machinery by its cover, because its storytelling is about as thrilling as it gets."Other models in the test included Pioneer DV-757Ai, Sony DVP-NS999ES, Onkyo DV-SP800""

Well, my final word, (which will be a relief to many of you who don't want to believe there's a prettier woman on the block than the one you have in your Redbook CD player and collection), and this is what I've been saying all along. It doesn't matter what Sony, EMI, or Universal does. It doesn't matter what the lowest common denominator of the mass-market wants. At one time it did, but as I said in my first posting, it doesn't anymore. If it did, no one would be able to buy vinyl, would they. Just as the internet has kept vinyl alive for those who want it, the internet will keep SACD alive for those who want it. I understand your frustration with regards to the majors sitting on such vast catalogs of music, but surely with 2055 SACD titles available today and an average of 100 new releases a month, (not 3, I goofed again), there is *something* good enough for you? And players from $250 to $8000? (The Absolute Sound found that the $250 Sony Universal had astonishingly good sound that appoached vinyl in its ease of presentation; I know--that would make one eye dart sideways in my head too if I still believed in redbook. Oh well. What angers me is all the armchair prediction here may cause many to deny themselves a very special listening experience, (yeah yeah, I goof with regards to EMI; I listened to redbook for an hour as punishment).
I leave you with the harshest question of all: Years down the road, let's say SACD finds it niche, DVD-A finds it's niche, (doubtful), and of course vinyl already has it's niche...tell me with a straight face that sure, there'll be a niche called "Redbook-lover's Corner," where people pay more to have their favorite artists remastered down to 16bit...

jd I think you are looking at things in a very simplistic fashion.

Both CD replay and the quality of remastered Redbook discs have increased beyond recognition.

The SACD debate is a very complicated one,with many different levels and considerations,it is not black and white.
Any reasonable Audiophile would be foolish not to consider SACD replay at their level and some of us have experimented with it.
As I state there are various reasons why it hasn't appealed to some of us.

To me it is not a matter of self justifaction nor smugness or whatever you wan't to call it,it is a logical considered opinion to walk away from the format at this stage and I find it disappointing that this has happened.

I stand by my statement the format has been botched to the very people it should have appealed to and more worryingly I see no real push to make up on lost ground.

However it would also be folly not to consider that the format may survive and progress and indeed make some of us invest in it or indeed return to it.

It's my opinion the defensive,nah nah na nah nah arguments add little to the debate.

People take sides and frankly these debates seldom throw up anything new of any worth to anybody.

>> Both CD replay and the quality of remastered Redbook discs have increased beyond recognition.

The reason they have is because recording studios are using hi-rez recording methods, like DSD, 192/24 PCM.

Whether SACD, DVD-A survives or not there will be high-rez music available for the masses, especially as digital technology accelerates, hard drive capacity goes up, flash ram prices come down.

At some point in the not-too-distant future you'll probably be able to download a full album's worth of hi-rez audio to your credit-card sized iPod with a terrabyte of flash RAM on your Walmart GigE connection to the internet ;-)

"I socialize where the action is..." Sorry, but I don't visit www.hotdormbabes.com so maybe I am missing the real action. Hey, is Amazon making any moeny yet? I mean on music? Last I heard (a couple years ago) they had closed a number of warehouses and 1/2 the customer service department. That's when I noticed a real deterioration in service from them and I only now use them or any other internet store as a last chance provider. That is, except for Red Trumpet, Music Direct, etc. but then I can actually call them and talk to a fellow human.

By the way, my wife loved using garden.com, toys.com, mothernature.com but somehow or another they went belly up when the internet nearly collapsed. Maybe I should catch up on economist Lou Dobbs' space.com, but hey!! They're gone, too! Another $85,000,000.00 up in internet smoke.

I do have to admit that SACD and DVD-A will end up being niche markets with possibly every limited releases. I'm still waiting for The Beatles, Hendrix, etc. etc. etc. to be released on real quality editions. Although, Red Trumpet has the Japanese Beatles CDs which sound damn good, but then, my old, stupid, slow moving "local store" (whose owner is a 30 yr friend) can order them for me and will do so over the phone. Then I get to drive my sports car (which I enjoy immensely), pick them up, eat at a good restaurant or grab some take-out, maybe even relate to another human being in a normal physical why (you know, eye to eye contact, etc.). May even check out the latest vodka or a new tequila addition in my favorite liquor store. Might see my neighbor and her beautiful 3 yr old daughter or her husband's new bicycle, might be inspired driving up to my house to enjoy the flowers, help my wife pull a few weeds, make a quick summer dinner, sit on the rear patio and see if the raccoons will come get our leftovers. Not "where the action is" but a damn good life nonetheless.

Oh yeah, my DAC and CD transport sound pretty damn good, as good as the $800.00 Sony SACD player I borrowed for 4 days a year ago. Maybe I'm missing something but if so, it ain't bothering me.