[BenG]

A list of all titles from all lables is at sony.com/sacd

Upcoming players will all have surround capability, so headphone folks will have to deal w/ some unused rca jacks. The (SA) CD format, however, will allow for a dedicated stereo mix on all of its discs.

In contrast, with the DVD-A format, you may only get a computerized fold-down of a multi-channel mix ( a dis to head-fi folks

IMO )


Oh yeah, there are portable (Sa) CD players in the works, due to come out this year

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[Matt]

No, there's no dis there: there is a dedicated stereo mix on every DVD-A as part of the standard. Always has been. The whole 5.1 thing was always basically a secondary "option" with DVD-A, even though now they are promoting it as probably the major feature of the format (reasoning that the enhanced resolution will not matter to Bobby Teenager with his K-Mart VOX boombox). The advanced resolution, surround or not, is the real deal.

With regard to the earlier post asserting that SACD will win "the war," the truth is that an audiophile might like to think so, considering the technology is slightly better, but there must exist a certain number of factors holistically in "the market" for a format to "win" one of these wars. Obviously we can draw conclusions from VHS vs. Beta, but also we can draw fundamental conclusions from Microsoft vs. Apple, namely that, regardless of if a product is technically superior, if it is nearly as good and a lot cheaper, it will win. That's how U.S. consumers work in textbook examples.

Frankly, "DVD" is a more comfortable term. Ability to play DVD-A discs is conceivably a firmware upgrade, and not an entire drive upgrade, away. This is especially relevant to those with DVD drives. Recording studios, which now are heavily PCM-based, will have to completely change everything. New standards will be set, hassles will have to be worked through, pro/audiophile recording soundcards will have to be fundamentally changed to ultimately produce SACD for the masses.

Also there is the Sony/Phillips ownership bit, and just like MP3, people are going to say "funk that" and develop alternate competative formats for which they needn't pay royalties (such as the whole Ogg Vorbis thing and Microsoft's compressed music format).



Obviously SACD posesses a superior, more truly "analog" system (technically) and is pretty much *the* final word in sound quality from a scientific view, barring additional samples-per-second in the future. However, I feel this technology will be relegated (if you can call it that) to it's original purpose, audio archiving for entertainment studios. It's certainly suited for that. I can definitely see the big dog companies using the SACD technology to make masters, then switching that to PCM for distribution on the more "compatible" DVD-A units.

- Matt

 

[Tides]

Holy Zoo~

COngrads on the new player~!

and check your private msg

back to the SACD and DVD-A, I agree with Matt that DVD-A will be the winner down the road. SACD just does not have that nice ring to the mass consumers( here in USA) as DVD-A .

To the regular/casual music listening people, SACD is prob a foreign word. The mass consumers will likely to be more open to DVD-A just because the dvd ring to it. SACD reminds me of Mini Disc when back many years ago, sony was asking for 700 dollars or so for it. Anyone remember that commercial for SONY MD player with Aerosmith ( I think) in an automechanic shop.

It is a shame that MD never went mainstream here in USA.

Tides