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After 5 years, format war? What format war?

After all the hoopla about the DVD-Audio and SACD format wars for the past 5 years, it seems to me that the format war may have existed perhaps only as a figment of a few corporations' imagination. (Kinda' like THX certification by LucasFilm)

I've never listened to a dvd-audio disc, but I do have a handful of SACD discs. Nor have I ever listened to DVD-A or SACD via a multi-channel system nor do I have a hankering to do so.

I thoroughly enjoy a few of the SACD's for their warmth, resolution, and anolog-like presentation, but still cannot see myself rushing out to buy more. Except for perhaps the Red Rose Sampler SACD which contains a few tracks providing a wonderful illustration of what SACD can do.

Don't get me wrong about the benefits of SACD. But I've experienced far greater enjoyment listening to my much older and even newer 'Redbook' cd recordings through component upgrades and through acoustical, electrical, rack designs, and vibration-transferring tweaks than with any SACD formatted enhancements.

Just curious where others stand.

-IMO
stehno

Showing 2 responses by rsbeck

rsbeck
887 posts
 
My SACD collection is at 100+ and I eagerly await new releases. I've put CD buying in a holding pattern because I'd much rather have an SACD than CD
and new releases are just around the corner. To my ears, there's no way CD can compete with SACD. When I listen to SACD for an extended period and then switch to CD, the air goes out of the sonic balloon, the cream turns back into milk. To me, it isn't logical to spend so much money on the rest of the system in an effort to improve resolution only to doom the entire enterprise to lower resolution with my choice of music format -- especially when a higher resolution format is available. To buy $12,000 amplifiers, for example, and then balk at paying a few extra bucks for SACD or at replacing a CD with an SACD version? That just doesn't make sense to me in the scheme of things. I'd rather feed my high resolution system with high resolution SACD's.
rsbeck
887 posts
 
The answer is yes -- a top SACD player will take you much further. I started with a Yamaha s2300 Universal Player that I bough new for $1,000. Sounded
pretty good on SACD, but then I moved up to a Sony SCD XA777ES which I bought used for $1,600 and it was another world. You will see a huge difference if you move up the SACD player food chain. I'm sure the SCD XA777ES would blow your current SACD player away.
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