DVD-A WIZ-Bang-Boom

Plato: As you know, I have both SACD and DVD-Video set-ups in my home system, and while I love SACD, based on my listening with the Classic and Chesky DADs and SACDs, I could be happy with either of those formats over CD. What I do not like about DVD-A is that due to the copycode concerns the software won't let you pass a true 24/96 digital signal from the player's digital output (like you can with DVD-V), so you can't use a high-quality 24/96 DAC. Hence, you're stuck with the cost-compromised transport, dac and analog stage of that $229 player from the WIZ (by the way, love the title of the thread!), and I don't think that's going to give anyone a true taste of the medium's potential, and certainly won't entice me to back the medium if I'm going to be stuck with a mediocre low-fi player. And a high quality universal transport won't help here either, for the same reasons. At least Sony put out some very good initial players to whet the high-end crowd's appetite for SACD, and now they've got a good deal of less expensive players out there to go for the mass market. And if you think there are not enough SACD titles out there, the number of SACD titles dwarfs the DVD-A titles. So I'm not so sure that DVD-A is going to overtake SACD, even though my understanding is that the recording engineers have backed the pcm format over DSD; however, I'm still not sure either format is going to catch on ultimately in a market that cares more about convenience and sees very little improvement, if any, over redbook CD. Perhaps enough of a market can develop from the multichannel aspects of the new formats, but I'm skeptical. Mind you, though, if enough good, high quality labels make SACDs or DVD-As that will pass a 24/96 digital signal, I won't mind these formats being restricted to niche markets...

Plato, having heard your two-channel rig (particularly the vinyl playback), I don't see why you'd spend any time listening to the HT setup! I will note that there is quite a bit of new classical and jazz coming out on SACD these days (and not just from specialty labels--Sony has new Midori and Joshua Bell releases on SACD, for example), and a number of new pop releases as well are appearing. Add to that Virgin's and Universal's support of SACD and plans to make SACD releases and there may be some hope for SACD. Now if only Sony would wise up and release hybrid discs for all its new releases, they may yet get the public interested in the format. I do think that the "hook" they need for this format (and DVD-A as well) is the multi-channel aspect of the discs, much as I don't care about that. That's the one thing that the mass market might see as a big improvement over CD, and could be the key to acceptance in the marketplace. Just my two cents, of course.