SACD vs Vinyl (pros and cons?) - Page 2

It is already happening The first bluray only release was launched last month (might have been late June). This is the start. SACD and DVD-A failed miserably. As has been said, a fine mastered CD will sound nearly as good as a well mastered SACD. Classical on SACD is still alive, but otherwise it is clearly on its way out. With Bluray...this is likely the future. 50 GB of space, complete audio and video interaction etc etc. Everything DVD-A and SACD promised but better. With Bluray as the de facto new digital standard before everything gets streamed to us, it is logical that if companies are going to be selling discs, it will be in three formats:

CD, LP or Bluray. Otherwise...MP3/WMA/AAC/FLAC (if lucky). THese formats are likely the winners over all others.

Ooh! With Bluray arriving, you think people will chuck their SACDs out the door like their unwanted vinyl collections?!

Worse still is that I've yet to see a BluRay player that plays SACDs !


The Fisher Price is actually quite collectable and sounds pretty good for what it is

Some more tips on older players to look out for here.
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f7/low...source-228059/

I would buy into that if I thought that you would actually get 50GB of useful stuff and not 2GB of material and 48GB of padding. It would seem to me what you are likely to get is six or seven different multichannel and stereo versions of the same music but you would still only get one , maybe two hours of actual music content. When you consider the capacity of bluray this seems like a lost opportunity, for instance with 50GB you could comfortably fit all the Beethoven String Quartets on one bluray disc even in bloated High res format...

You should talk to Neil Young.

The Sony PS3 does.

Wow, I think you might have just convinced me to get out of hi-rez and dedicate myself completely to vinyl and RB. I've been very frustrated trying to find a reliable SACDP for below $2000 that competes with my 840C and my vinyl rig (a humble 1200 which delivers outstanding sonic performance, IMO, YMMV, IIRC, FBI, CIA, NSA, WTF, LOL, ARMY). It seems like they all have transport issues. Like all of them. Its a nightmare trying to research players like the Krell SACD Standard, which has been through three revisions now in an attempt to fix its crappy transport mechanism.

So maybe I'll just give up and sell off all my single layers.

Absolutely. The Oppo 970HD sucks for audio, and I've recently found the Denon 3910 (stock) has a digital harshness in the highs that I can't tolerate.

Agreed. There may be a handful of artists who attempt to try this new medium (trent, neil), but the market for a hi-rez digital audio format is dead. Audiophiles have turned to the growing vinyl market. There are so many new vinyl releases coming out every week I'd have to win the lottery to buy all the ones I want. Meanwhile, in SACD land we all go nuts when the DCD catalog is released on the format, or Acoustech does 25 Blue Note SACDs. Both good things, but probably the only two instances of exciting SACD releases for 2008.

So, to the OP: go for vinyl. I think the Technics 1200 is a fantastic starter (and for me, keeper) table at $400 new.

Let me better define what I mean, 'that there is no indication that the audio mkt is moving to BR". I consider a move to a format to be something that is embrace not by an artist or a small label or two but by several major labels who then begin to release significant catalog to the format. TimJo that is what I meant and while I like Neil Young as much as the next granola eating Norther Californian his move to BR is not yet indicative of a major market move, didn't he embrace HDCD as well? I love Neil for his dedication to release his music on the best sounding formats, heck he has a few releases on Classic records.
I would love to see a new potentially better format than redbook. The media companies would like nothing more than to resell you all the music you already own like they did in the 80s-90s when cd replaced lps as the default music format. I am just not sure this is it.
Having already jumped on DVD-a and SACD and being mostly disappointed with the results for now LP is the safe bet. Great hardware available much of can be inexpensive is shopped wisely and amazing back catalogs available as well.

jp11801: you are right, as a major force in the market, there is no indication. My point was rather adderssing the OP's "should I go with vinyl or sacd?" question.

Since SACD and DVD-A have been disappointing (I agree with you) and the fact that save for specialy audiophile labels and some classical labels, SACD is all but dead, if one is expecting a new hot format, one won't find it in SACD (or DVD-A). The format will be RBCD for a good amount of time with a transition towards completely online downloads or streams in conjunction with vinyl. If a new digital optical format is to replace RBCD, hoping it will be SACD is not a reasoned move at this point. One should look towards Bluray. Sure, the argument for Bluray stems from the ubiquity of the PS3 which also plays SACD, but labels already tested the waters of SACD and decided against it leaving Bluray as a hope, even if a remote one.

Yet, between the two...SACD or Vinyl, vinyl really is a better choice as an alternative to RBCD based on metrics alone.

Agreed. I guess my comment was more on the cynical side.

I love Neil and was disappointed that he chose a format for his archives that requires all new hardware, and has no guarantee that it will be adopted by the mainstream. The source material for the archives is in the analog domain to begin with, so I'd prefer if he had worked with someone (even if it was Rhino) to release the 'audiophile' version of the archives in an all analog production as a box set of vinyl. His choice lately of using Classic 200 gram releases are costly and the Classic 200 gram releases are of varying quality. Certainly not a format for the average Neil fan.

I think the Dead have done a very good job of releasing affordable archives on HDCD, and I for one would rather settle for that than BluRay.

I think there is a great irony in the fact that some of them (Capitol and WEA for example) are now releasing titles in their back catalog on vinyl. Sad part is that the quality of these 'new' releases is often worse than a clean copy of the same title in the used vinyl bins. I think the marketing guys are scrambling to come up with something to sell now that downloading music has become the mainstream choice of the masses.

To get back to the OP's original question, I agree with Zanth's assessment that vinyl is a better choice. It is also very satisfying to dig through the used bins and find interesting albums that expand your collection at an affordable cost. SACD or BluRay or good old fashioned CD's will never have the back catalog that vinyl has if your willing to dig through the crates. Nowadays I listen to vinyl probably 95% of the time (when I am at home anyways) and the quality of sound is always more satisfying to me than HDCD on my Linn Genki. Zanth made a great point when he said "there is a reason SACD was marketted as "more vinyl-like." No one advertises new vinyl albums as sounding more "cd-like" or more "sacd-like." This should give you a clue to how good vinyl can sound." I think listening to vinyl on headphones is one of the best kept audio secrets.

I'm in the SACD camp. Although I don't have an SACD player, I have plenty of classical SACD hybrid discs.

Here are my reasons:

1. Compatibility - hybrid SACDs can be played on most CD players and computers
2. Portability - a smaller form factor makes portable SACD playback a possibility
3. Redbook - you can rip a copy to your choice of digital file format without extra EQ or noise filtering, at high speed
4. Multi-channel - surround-sound SACD playback is an advantage to everybody except diehard stereophiles
5. Convenience - the optical disc doesn't have vinyl's cleaning or longevity issues
6. Playback - you can skip, shuffle, etc. between tracks or even albums (in a changer) without lifting a needle

Of course, it would be cool if the vinyl releases included a hybrid SACD - then you'd have the best of both worlds.

It all depends upon your personal needs, issues and abilities.
Do you lead a rather stationary life and have enough space at your disposal, maybe even the will to maintain specialized storage and to take up the endless fight against dust? Embrace vinyl. It is a wonderful, very involving medium. It will demand some dedication though, and you will have to be above trivial problems like "loss due to wear". If you manage to buy LPs a dime a dozen, that might become negligible anyway.
If you are a road warrior, "live at the airport", or just move every once and so often, vinyl becomes a pain. It takes up loads of space, you need to take good care when moving records and record players about the world, and if you're constantly "on the run" most you will get out of it is likely going to be fuzzy warm memories while staring at boxes you did not manage to unpack—again. You're best served with a big harddisc full of lossless files ripped from the stack of CDs you keep somewhere, or maybe even just online storage.
SACD is a very nice addition if you maintain a decent stationary rig anyway. Great sounding discs are much, much more frequent than on redbook, and it comes with none of the hassles of vinyl attached, plus you can rip the redbook layer and take it with you. You can even go multichannel if you wish, yet—despite what some here say—I personally think it is well worth it for "just" stereo too. There is some mesmerizingly good content out there on SACD. The problem is the rather limited catalog and that is not going to change. Nevertheless, there is piles of classic, a lot of jazz, and quite a number of classic rock favourites. If there is something in there for you, and you can afford a halfway decent player without pains, go for it. Otherwise—as with all formats—why bother?
Like all those formats increasingly voided of haptic and visual experience, SACD will never provide the same involvement as vinyl. If handling big discs with fancy artwork is your thing, you will never get that from flimsy 12cm digital media. It is part of why I keep my Laserdiscs around although most of them could be replaced with technically superior DVDs on the cheap by now. In a world where media grows more virtual by the minute, the physical experience of something "real" for many, including myself, becomes a quality in itself. As much as I enjoy to have 220GB of music right at my fingertips, clicking "play that audio/video file" on a computer or popping in a small disc is and will never be the same as carefully taking the dust off a piece of vinyl and then dropping a needle onto it, or to noisily spin 30cm of analog optical video disc up to 1600rpm, or to keep your reel-to-reel in good working order, or to set up your film projector...

All this was said about SACD and DVD-A when it first came out.

SACD has been dying for over 10 years now. It has an established library already. Who wants to wait 10 years for blu-ray to establish that? It's more about video anyway as far as using the large capacity of the disk.

Audio is already being streamed to us, so little disks are on their way out period. I don't have a lot of faith in any plastic disk formats for the long run.

Great post (Oliver). I've been forced to start recording my LPs onto hard disk for just the reasons you elaborated. Gosh, ripping LPs is a special kind of purgatory.

Isn't it odd then that their full sized machines like the Sony BDP-S1 support a Matsu****a format like DVD but won't play legacy Sony formats like SACD or even redbook...