How much SACD do I need?

CD must be more than "low-rez" if reviewers are putting it on equal grounds with (true) hi-rez !! This would include John Atkinson's (recent) review of Meridian's 808.2 CD player.

Let's not forget that (audiophile) recording labels record at *20 bits* along with higher-than-44 kHz sampling rates since the early 1990's. This helped overcome the production losses which occured when recording right at 16. By this, I mean the "headroom" needed for signal processing. Engineers also use dither to remove the low-level quantization noise, if present, for the consumer copy.

I don't know which of these two techniques is more effective - but 16 bits by itself captures 25db more dynamic range than a symphony orchestra produces. Most audiophiles don't know this...or for that matter, how dither works......

Audioholik: These higher rates don't mean much if they don't sound better. Most reviewers these days are struggling to put SACD ahead of CD. That's a fact. But it doesn't mean that a lower-priced unit ($500-1500) can't outperform CD. At these price points, SACD usually does. It's over $1500 where CD shines...and this is where some folks put CD *ahead* of SACD - myself included. Red Book playback is improving rapidly.

And JA states that Meridian's CD is virtually as good as 24-bit/88kHz audio. All this means that higher-bit and sample rates were a farce - as far as playback is concerned. High-bit capture, as I've stated above, was certainly helpful in production.....