I have to disagree with Pabelson. Not all DVD-As can be played in 2ch. Many do not have 2ch tracks; they only have multichannel tracks. Some can be "downmixed" by the DVD-A player from MC to 2ch, but many have a software flag set that disallows downmixing. Downmixing usually sounds awful anyway. DVD-A is a music format that was developed to appeal to the Home Theater crowd, not the 2ch music-only crowd. There are cross-overs, but they are the exception rather than the rule.
As to the formats being dead - the original incarnation of DVD-Audio is dead. It was mostly a product of the major labels, and when they stopped supporting it, it pretty much disappeared. DVD-Audio tracks may occasionally surface on DualDisc, but DualDisc is a seriously compromised format.
SACD is somewhat of a different story at this point. If your taste in music is Britney Spears, 50cent, Garth Brooks, or yet-another-reissue-of-Baby-Boomer-rock back catalog stuff, then SACD is dead. For people who favor those genres, SACD was never really alive to begin with. The short story is that if your musical tastes are served solely by the major record companies, SACD probably won't appeal to you.
If your musical tastes tend toward classical, jazz, and high-quality material put out by smaller labels, then SACD is very much alive.
Yes, pretty much anything that is available on SACD is available on CD, but if you buy the CD version instead of the SACD version (when there is one), you will often miss out on a much more musically-rewarding experience.
As to the formats being dead - the original incarnation of DVD-Audio is dead. It was mostly a product of the major labels, and when they stopped supporting it, it pretty much disappeared. DVD-Audio tracks may occasionally surface on DualDisc, but DualDisc is a seriously compromised format.
SACD is somewhat of a different story at this point. If your taste in music is Britney Spears, 50cent, Garth Brooks, or yet-another-reissue-of-Baby-Boomer-rock back catalog stuff, then SACD is dead. For people who favor those genres, SACD was never really alive to begin with. The short story is that if your musical tastes are served solely by the major record companies, SACD probably won't appeal to you.
If your musical tastes tend toward classical, jazz, and high-quality material put out by smaller labels, then SACD is very much alive.
Yes, pretty much anything that is available on SACD is available on CD, but if you buy the CD version instead of the SACD version (when there is one), you will often miss out on a much more musically-rewarding experience.