08-06-09: Uru975
It was not so much the public deciding against the hi-rez sound as their makers wanting to make a killing and in doing so almost killed the format.
Price was certainly a factor. PS...have you noticed how the prices of out-of-print SACDs is skyrocketing?
When I wrote the public rejected high resolution formats, I didn't mean the public said, "Hey, we don't like the sound of high resolution audio". What I meant, and which goes to your point, is that the public simply didn't buy the products in sufficient numbers to make business sense for the music companies and hardware manufacturers to continue with the formats on a large scale.
Portability is the focus of the present mass market music business (the only market the music companies and hardware companies really care about). Only when portable playback devices have the inexpensive, large capacity drives to store high resolution music files will better quality recordings perhaps receive attention from the mass market music business in downloadable formats.
Wishing for better quality recordings is noble. It doesn't take a great deal of listening experience or music ownership to know what's possible even in the redbook CD format.
We'll see in a year from now if any real progress has been made by the music companies and hardware manufacturers toward higher quality, mass-marketed music.