[Mallow005]

How do I know if my CD player can play SACDs? It's a Radioshack CDP-37... never mentions SACD and I doubt it does play them, but never hurts to ask

edit: nm, I now know what SACD players cost...

 

[Vertigo-1]

LOL, should I delete this thread then?

It's probably going to take another 3-4 years before we ever start seeing portable HDCD players even, much less SACD players, if ever. It's just when going portable, you'd probably never hear the sound quality difference, so it's not in the interest of the manufacturers to bother making a portable high fidelity player. Given portable players need antishock which means compression, you can just throw high fidelity out the window.

 

[Audio-Me]

Don't even bother, once DVD-Audio catches on, SACD will vanish, there are hardly any record companies distributing the format, besides, platform support isn't too bulk either.

 

[coolvij]

Audio&Me: I don't think that is true.....SACD seems to be gaining popularity - and DVD-A is the format that has been losing support as of late......

 

[Audio-Me]

It's like CD vs LP, I'm sure the SACD will be around for long time, but the higher resolution DVD-A will probably take the mass market. Unless Sony decides to come up with SACD2 that's better, who knows???

 

[edog]

Panasonic has some portable DVD-audio / DVD-video players:

http://www.prodcat.panasonic.com/sho...ategoryid=1933

They're first generation products, so as expected, battery life is pitiful and prices are high. However, they are a proof of concept. I would expect that decoding MPEG2 video and DTS/DD audio would be more challenging than decoding even high-quality SACD. Plus, the LCD screens suck up a ton of battery life, and would not be needed for an SACD portable.

However, I think that in the short term, DVD-Video/DVD-Audio portables are more likely than SACD portables. It's natural to piggyback DVD-Audio functionality on top of DVD-Video functionality, which seems to be pretty hot these days. In the general consumer market, DVD-Video and audio CDs are the focuses. DVD-Audio and SACD are just bonuses for most people, rather than a neccesity, in both the portable and home markets. As time goes on, DVD-Audio will just be another checkbox item for DVD player manufacturers to add to their players. Plus, these DVD portables also play music CDs, which satisfies the vast majority of people. It's really cool and convenient to be able to play movies and music on the same portable.

In short, I believe that DVD-Audio will be more prevalent in the portable space, because it'll be so easy and cheap to add the necessary hardware to the already existing portable DVD video players.

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

Originally posted by Audio&Me the higher resolution DVD-A will probably take the mass market.

"higher resolution"?

 

[gaineso]

Easy MacDEF,

I'm sure he meant higher than Redbook.

 

[jlo mein]

In japan SACD has caught on more than DVD-A since more big name bands have albums on SACD...

 

[Audio-Me]

What I meant by higher resolution is that DVD-Audio has higher data rate (DVDA 9.6Mbps vs SACD 2.8Mbps I think) thus has greater dynamic range. (Stereo) SACD is 20bit/96khz @ 122db vs DVD-A 24bit/192khz @ 144db. But, with DSD encoding that Sony uses for SACD, it resembles the analog sound more than PCM does, which I really like since I prefer analog recorded music better than digitally recorded, same goes to video but that's another subject. =P

Lol, Japans music market is entirely different than from here...

 

[Gluegun]

Uh, no real tests, uh, whatsoever, have shown SACD or DVD-A to either have innately higher audio quality, be it subjective or objective, right??

 

[Hirsch]

If portables ever hit with a choice between SACD or DVD-A, it may be over for DVD-A, for the reasons mentioned by edog, although he came to the opposite conclusion. Without the need for a video monitor, it's going to be much cheaper to put out a portable SACD player, simply because there is no need to add the video technology to the player. DVD-A cannot compete in the portable market, if the formats are both still around when that becomes an issue.

 

[Pop E Chu]

would'nt there have to be some special multi channel headphones for DVD-Audio? i could see & hope they do come out with portable SACD players cause the first SACD's to come out were 2 channel & the new multi-channel SACD i believe has 2 channels also, & not mentioning the hybrid SACD that has a layer to play in regular CD players. i also hope that they come out with direct stream digtal video!

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Quote:

Originally posted by Pop E Chu would'nt there have to be some special multi channel headphones for DVD-Audio?...

Uh...no. And that's not meant as a slam against you, you're just the first casualty of the over-zealous multi-channel/surround advertising campaign for DVD-A. All DVD-A's are required to either (a) have a two-channel mix, or (b) have the capability to be mixed down to two-channels.

 

[Gluegun]

You know what?

Dolby Headphone for DVD-A would be nice.... I mean, not adding dolby headphone to the STEREO output of DVD-A, but, instead, putting Dolby Headphone to work on the multichannel aspect of DVD-A like it works with DD5.1.... and it would be REALLY cool if there was a way to have that work for SACD-EX as well...

yea, that would be nice....