Not saying which format is better, if I were a betting man, I would place my money on DVD-A for the simple reason that it fits closely with the natural progression of Red Book technology. As I understand it, DVD-A is basically 24bit/192Mhz. These DAC chips like everything else will be cheaper in the future and will soon replace the 24/96 chips in the typical mass market $199.00 DVD player. Even in non-DVD, the budget Cambridge Audio D500SE CD Player already has a 24/192 DAC. I see 24/192 DVD-A no different than CD players progressing from 16 bit, to 18, 20, and now 24 bit; and SACD while better in the opinion of many (I have never heard it) could go the way of HDCD by the time 24/192 is replace someday by something like Red Book 26/384 or whatever is next.
New formats, same old story?
OK, we continue to be inundated by advice to upgrade to a new digital format. Most say SACD, the rest tell us that DVD-A will be the ticket. My thing is that I would be ready to buy if things were sorted out. They are not yet. It doesn't look any clearer to me than it did a year ago today. Am I blind? Neither has taken precedence. More importantly, neither has had the major influx of software we have been waiting for. A major determinant as to which one wins out in the end. Yes, SOFTWARE. Where is it? Sure, there are some titles out there(how many currently???), but new albums are still more often than not released CD only. The people at the record stores still have not heard of either of the new formats. Yes, I know Sony keeps dangling the influx of new players(even cheap ones) at us, but I am still in the same mindset I was last year. That I don't want to invest in a new player that won't be a REAL step up in terms of CD playback(which would make it worth it) until one of the formats emerges as the future path. And, once the players come, will they be obsoleted by a new twist a couple of years later? As in multichannel - which I am not interested in, or by offering a digital output of the new format's signal. Are my feelings correct, or do I need the way I see things corrected? Thank you.