what happened to SACD, DVD audio

Well for DVD-Audio it is All but Dead SACD is releasing mostly Classical stuff still but heard that sony wants to kill SACD off for good??

you can Find most of the titles online. Some of the OOP Good Luck and if you happen to find any OOP you will Pay a Premium

DVD-A is still being manufactured by some independents, like AIX Records.

http://aixrecords.com/

Excellent products.

Don't write Sony off they just released to new SACD players.

According to some King Crimson although not official one of their albums will
be re- released in march see KC thread below.

Indiscriminate consumers, the Ipod and a general Wal-Mart mentality killed SACD.

btw...Thanks for your service, it's appreciated.

It's still around. Over 600 new titles released last year. Unfortunately, it's now a niche format for audiophiles.

The "niche" part being very odd as most mid-range AVRs and some VERY reasonable DVD players (Pio DV48 $99) provide support for DSD (SACD) and LPCM (DVD-Audio) over HDMI - not exactly prime audiophile territory. Simply set up the player (transport, actually) for multichannel, plop in Dark Side of the Moon, crank the volume on the AVR, and you are in audio heaven!

It is ironic that hirez audio became a casualty in the war over digital video. Worst of all, hirez audio was so damaged by the time HDMI was deployed that it could not claim any real estate in the interface. Just a snippet or two could have been used to implement a bit-rate control mechanism putting "jitter" to rest for all time as a possible audiophile concern wrt to hirez. Oh well.

williak

'Indiscriminate consumers, the Ipod and a general Wal-Mart mentality killed SACD."

More like utter crap titles released is the true killer. There is 10 disk tops from either format I give two craps about, and the regular consumer there's probably half that on either as well.

Well, here's a cursory rejection of a nice body of good classical recordings!!!


That's another story, of course.

I had hoped, from the beginning, that SACD would hang on until mch HT systems had penetrated enough of the mass market to make it easily acceptable by many purchasers. Unfortunately, now that there's a decent and growing base of systems that can handle it, SACD is fading away. Sigh.

tell us how you really feel

i am missing the format and initially thought it would surviive but blu ray and the ipod as well as failure to put out a lot of mainstream stuff have made online purchase a necessity. I used to like to get packages from cc before they got murdered by bestbuy and the economy.

These are all relatively current non-classical albums that were multi-million sellers that are on SACD....and there are more

LOOK. Sony delieberately abandoned the SACD. they just toileted the whole thing.

Thanks for the cover shots. Also try here: http://www.musicdirect.com/category/2 I'll be picking up the John Legend piece, sadly one of the few current brightspots in a cookie-cutter dead genre. I always seek out the SACD versions if availble.

Which came first?...The chicken or the egg???....

Well of those 12 you listed I'd give two craps about hearing two of them maybe. And that's hearing them, I would buy one, and I did, it sucked quality wise(John Mayer). As far as others, ha what another 5 in how many years now. 5 or 6 years SACD has been out so 20 half ass attempts at current titles in half a decade....and you have to wonder or guess why it failed.

I actually like classical a little, jazz some, but come on is there really any wonder why it's a 100% niche market now. I mean christ it's crap my dad would listen to 98% of the time. No thanks.

I will say Genesis ones are great totally amazing as was Billy Joel The Stranger, Bjorks dvd-audio's are mind blowing. But come on that's the best they could do in half a decade of a format. Everything else is crap to fall asleep to....

You don't like the Who? Or Steely Dan?

Current? That Allison Krauss album is almost 15 years old. Celine and Sting albums are 10 years old. John Mayer album's 8 years old. Shania album's 7 years old. Beyonce, Michael McDonald, George Strait, Toby Keith - all 6 years old.

And if you like those artists, those probably aren't what you'd consider to be the best examples of their work either, which is something I've noticed about SACD releases in general. I like Steely Dan, but Gaucho would be somewhere down the list of their albums I really, really want in a new format.

The record companies blew it big time! Instead of investing in getting old guys like me to re-buy quality music from the past via SACD and DVD-A, they wasted their resources fighting with kids over copyright issues on overly compressed copies of crappy "music".

When I first got into SACD/DVD-A, I had high hopes, but I've come to accept it is a niche format. I still have a rather large list of "wish list" titles at SA-CD.net but I'm cognizant of the fact my tastes happen to coincide with a significant cross section of what's available on SACD. One conclusion I've reached, after nearly six years of trying to "prove" otherwise (to myself--I'm not making any claims for anyone else) that well mastered 2 channel recordings were noticeably superior in SACD (DVD-A has so few 2 channel only releases it's not worth mentioning them in detail) vs redbook (same mix/mastering) is that the difference (if there) is not worth a price premium. I don't have "audiophile" gear--I have what I consider respectable gear, but nothing esoteric or uber-expensive--and while my hearing is in excellent shape, for my age, I am in my forties now and my hearing will not improve over time. Given these factors, I no longer seek out non-MCH SACDs unless A) they are the only available re-release of a title I want (rarely the case), B) I feel reasonably sure (owing to the comments and reviews of people whose opinion I respect) that, for one reason or another, the SACD will sound better (RCA Living Stereo SACDs would be the best example of something like that as these appear to be the best version of these releases available)--and even here there can't be too much of a premium over the redbook version or C) the SACD release is priced equally or less than the redbook equivalent (I have a few in my collection where that was the case). I have a number of 2 channel only SACDs, but they were almost all purchased in my early days of being on the SACD/DVD-A bandwagon. I don't foresee buying anymore of those unless they meet one of my three criteria above.

However, I will always seek out the SACD/DVD-A of any title I want if there is a MCH mix available. I am firmly in the camp of discrete MCH mixes and those mixes are what keep me buying SACD/DVD-A (and, in future, if it becomes the norm, Blu-ray audio discs).

Well, they still exist. All the expressed pessimism is for the future. Go to www.sa-cd.net and browse.

Kal,

Looks like you and I had similar (unrealistic) expectations. I am still peeved at Denon since I believe their DenonLink in its various iterations was a check to competition in audio equipment that hirez audio was simply unable to overcome. Everyone knew a copy-protected digital interface was needed to open up digital hirez in the immediate aftermath of Napster and others.

Had Denon adopted Sony's iLink early on as Pioneer did much too late, I believe Pio would have come out earlier to compete and critical mass for iLink would have brought most major manufacturers into digital hirez. With the CP'd link nailed down, the demand for software would have increased (probably modestly - but that would have been OK) as well as exposure to mch audio in forums like these and in the audio review press. From that point, who knows what could have been? As you say, the coming ubiquity of 5.1 and HDMI spells a future for mch audio, but the early forms like SACD/DVD-A look to be relics.

Do you have any clues what Denon was up to? Why did it fight so hard against iLink? There was NEVER any chance any other manufacturer would have licensed DenonLink and my understanding was Sony was very reasonable from the get-go on providing iLink support. I have never understood Denon's position and have never gotten a response that meets the smell test from anyone in the corporation. Curious...

williak

For the time being at least, Telarc is still releasing SACD (and not all classical).

I would...half the time Sony doesn't know what the right hand is doing verses the left hand!

Yes! Someone that can see through the smoke!

In general it was too little too late.

If there was DSD support from the start, HDMI for multichannel instead of 6 channel RCAs, and if more rock, pop and country were released it may have caught on quicker. If new releases were released in the format it may have sold quicker. If they had demos setup like they did when CD was released to show how much better it is I think it would have caught on.

Another reason is the horrible marketing. The only reason I knew about either was from forums. I never saw any ads except for 1 or 2 in Rolling Stone for SACD when the format was nearly dead. Marketing/advertising does drive sales. Without marketing people don't hear about a product and therefore don't go out looking for them.

Finally, MP3 and iPod. Consumers now seem to care more about convenience than quality. I'll admit it I have an iPod that I use for when I am not at home and in my car, but I also have a collection of SACD, DVD-A and XRCD.

"You don't like the Who? Or Steely Dan?"

Nope, that's my dad's music...and I'm 39. No interest in that stuff. Fleetwood Mac Rumours dvd-audio as old as I'm willing to go, Eagles hotel California, Queen old as I'm willing to go. I mean I LOVE the sound quality on the ones I do have for most part, really think all the ones I've got on either format is great, cept maybe the John Mayer one I just got. It's ok but mix seems screwed up.

Hardware issues didn't help either format, but the real killer for anything is software. If you're 45 or older or into classical or jazz. Sure maybe you have MANY more choices to pick from on both formats.

But for the most part 90% of it is crap, that no one wants to listen to, let alone go through all the trouble of hardware issues and what not.

But I wouldn't trade the handfull I do have for anything. But you can see pretty easily what the formats are dead.

EricM407 and jayna_95's post also pound the nail even further into the coffin. They're dead on.