John's testament above echoes my own experience.
Sadly the failure of the format to capture some Audiophiles imagination is also a testament to how badly SACD has been marketed.
Even today here in the UK I doubt you could find more than 3 hi-fi dealers who could sell you a serious SACD machine.
Simply put you couldn't demo a machine probably to save your life I know I couldn't.
Tough some say and I stay in the 2nd biggest city in the UK for hi-fi.
Even more so of the approx.300-500 CD's I've bought in the time since SACD became available I would say less than a handful of good new releases have been released on SACD.
As an avid fan of new releases this is no use to me.
The SACD hybrids have been remastered on the CD layer so I'm still winning.
Of course those with serious dollars to spend are in a win win situation-the likes of Emms Labs probably gives world class performance in both formats but most of us do not have that cash to spend.
The war has been lost in my eyes because many audiophiles have already walked away from SACD so there is no chance now imho it can or will catch on in a wider sense.
It will survive in all likelihood as I have always said as a niche Audiophille format which will be great for those who enjoy but even they will arguably come across great music that again imho will never be released on SACD.
Sadly the failure of the format to capture some Audiophiles imagination is also a testament to how badly SACD has been marketed.
Even today here in the UK I doubt you could find more than 3 hi-fi dealers who could sell you a serious SACD machine.
Simply put you couldn't demo a machine probably to save your life I know I couldn't.
Tough some say and I stay in the 2nd biggest city in the UK for hi-fi.
Even more so of the approx.300-500 CD's I've bought in the time since SACD became available I would say less than a handful of good new releases have been released on SACD.
As an avid fan of new releases this is no use to me.
The SACD hybrids have been remastered on the CD layer so I'm still winning.
Of course those with serious dollars to spend are in a win win situation-the likes of Emms Labs probably gives world class performance in both formats but most of us do not have that cash to spend.
The war has been lost in my eyes because many audiophiles have already walked away from SACD so there is no chance now imho it can or will catch on in a wider sense.
It will survive in all likelihood as I have always said as a niche Audiophille format which will be great for those who enjoy but even they will arguably come across great music that again imho will never be released on SACD.