Coping in an Age of Uncertainty


there have been numerous threads here, i know, about sacd v. dvd-a, upsampling, oversampling, etc. a number of these threads have included discussions of which, if any, new digital format will replace what we now call “redbook” cd’s. i don’t wish to rehash these discussions. rather, i’d like to hear from others how they are coping with the “age of uncertainty” in the realm of digital audio. is it better to “roll the dice” and invest in sacd or dvd a? ignore the contenders for the new and get the best possible out of redbook cd’s? buy with upgradeability firmly in mind? follow another path? i don’t post this query out of mere curiosity. i really haven’t figured out what course i should follow. i’d appreciate your giving me a hand. -kelly
cornfedboy

Showing 4 responses by sugarbrie

If you saw the thread on my just arrived Stan Warren modified DVD player, my thinking was to give it at try. I am still breaking it in, but sounds good so far. I do not know if it will best my limited edition Rotel RCD-990, but it should be better than my old Cambridge Audio CD4 Player in my den/home office. I have a television in there as well, and now will have a second place to play DVD movies in that room if that is where it ends up if the Rotel 990 still sounds better. So at the very worst, this Stan Warren machine is a great sounding DVD player. Not much of a gamble for a little money.
New formats won't succeed until they're in mass market players that sell to the general public. Remember the Macintosh operating system appeared 8 years before Windows, but lost out because Apple would not share it. The same thing happened to Betamax. Sony would not share it, so they ended up competing with the whole world.
Since the general public is buying DVD players by the millions, DVD-A has a large potential market which gives it an edge. This is why Windows won. IBM chose Microsoft DOS as its operating system. No company purchasing manager was ever fired for buying IBM. All the other computer companies either switched or died.
I listen to the best possible sound all the time. Better than SACD, DVD-A, you name it. It is call live music.