SACD on its way out?

I was the one that said that. I haven't heard that SACD is "on the way out" though. What I opined is that SACD is an attempt on the part of the music industry to stop copying and downloading (no digital out on SACD, right?). In the meantime, if you look into home studio and regular studio recording technology, the clear trend is towards "high-rez" (higher sampling rates, longer word lenths). For now, people are mostly using the high rez for the master and then "dithering" it down to "redbook" (regular CD), but, if they want to, they can burn a DVD-A at the higher resolution - AND THESE CAN BE PLAYED ON ANY DVD PLAYER! So, my point is really my own prediction, but it seems to me that with DVD players everywhere, and high-rez recordings doable by anyone, there's going to be a lot of momentum towards DVD-A. Just a prediction, folks!

Based on everything I've seen and heard the chances of SACD outlasting DVD-A is pretty good. DVD-A seems to be floundering while there are serious efforts on the part of companies like Harmon International to incorporate SACD into integrated automobile systems.

The titles available in both formats are limited, but SACD far outnumbers those available (in the store anyway) on DVD-A.

What is the source for this rumor? It might have come from that guy who bought the DVD-A player, there was one, wasn't there?

I believe dual disc has actually been the final death-knell for DVDA; I've cringed over and over again as DVDA cheerleaders on another web-site have discovered that the sprinkling of dual disc new releases, (when not delayed), has chosen to use the real estate on the CDs for purposes other than DVDA. SACD, though targeting a specific listener, will always have the hi-rez that this crowd wants. Ironically, I would have wondered if SACD was dying two years ago, but now 60+ labels have taken the ball and run with it. It's never going to be adopted by the teenie boppers, and it does very little to help masters with PCM origins, (still and improvement), but if you like acoustic music of whatever type, you are in for a treat.

Hi Musicslug - a couple of corrections:

First of all, a high-resolution master is not "dithered" down to 16/44.1 Redbook, it is "decimated." Dither in the digital context is the process of deliberately adding noise to the digital signal. Decimation is the down-rez process used to make a RB-compatible dataset from a higher-resolution dataset.

Secondly - the actual DVD-A data, which is MLP-encoded PCM, is, contrary to your assertion, NOT playable on any DVD player. DVD-Audio data is only playable on a DVD-Audio player. Many pre-recorded DVD-Audio discs are backward compatible with standard DVD-V players, because the discs also include Dolby Digital data and/or lower-resolution LPCM in addition to the DVD-A data. The backward-compatibility is DVD-V, not DVD-A.

So, it would be rather pointless to record something in DVD-A format if you don't have a DVD-A player on which to play it back.

I wouldn't bet any money on your prediction of DVD-A momentum. Seems to me that DVD-A is essentially dead in the water at this point.

You got it Rex