wadia making mistake?

There is no reason to think that by implementing SACD there would be any less emphasis on redbook. I would guess that many things that make SACD better would also apply to Redbook.

sacd's developement is winding down with all music companies with the exception of a few fring audiophile companies. Wadias entrance is more about having a toe-in to fight the competition of existing players than the future. sacd's sales numbers are dwindling fast. At this point, only cd's and vinyl will share the future with the ipod.

I agree w/ Jaybo. The tragedy of SACD is that it could have been the digital playback standard from the beginning, but nobody at Sony-Phillips wanted to rock the boat, even back when the "boat" was just an innertube! So we're stuck with Redbook.

The good news is that:

A. DACs (and even transports) are improving, and frankly, I don't believe Wadia's proprietary Digimaster algorhithm software has been updated since the original company was taken over by the investors 10 years ago (the brains were not included in the takeover!) That's why GNSC (Steve Huntley was one of those brains) is able do do "miracle mods" on the new Wadia stuff. But there's some really great digital source equipment out there now that can equal even modified Wadia gear.

B. The reproduction available from HDCDs and XRCDs through the best Redbook DACs (even without HDCD chips) rivals that of SACD, and both of those formats are being improved further.

C. The discoveries made recently by the Reality Check re-recording folks, along with the increasing popularity of HDD (server-based) sources will continue add fidelity and convenience to the current digital (Redbook) standard.

And I'm an analog guy! Too bad about the collapse of SACD though. The DSD (Direct Stream Digital) technique should have been the way digital was done from the outset.

.

Jaybo nailed it...

Cheers,

Chris

I recently read that SACD is extremly simple to "piggyback" onto a redbook circuit.
Seems DVD-A is not.

I just shipped my Sony DVP-9000ES for repairs.
The clerk at the UPS store remaked how heavy a DVD player it was. I explained that it was the first SACD player and very well built.
She said: "What is SACD?" (she seemd truly interested).

I think the reason SACD failed among the masses is that Sony did not spend the $$$ to get the word out.
Did anyone see the Superbowl commercials touting SACD?
Score another for the bean counters...