No wonder SACD hasn't caught on


I was looking on Circuit City's website and they have over 2000 SACDs for sale. So I took some notes and then went to a local store to check things out. I wandered around in the music section and couldn't find any SACDs or DVD-As either. I thought they might have just mixed them in with the CDs but didn't have any luck locating any. So I went up to a sales person and told him that although I had seen a lot of SACDs on the website, I couldn't seem to locate any.

His response....."What's an SACD?" He looked baffled even after I explained what they were and, of course, he hadn't heard of DVD-A either. Must be the best kept secret in the music industry.
willster
Had the same response in a Best Buy store in Vermont a few years ago. Can't find SACDs in any of these stores. Too bad, on the whole they sound great. The only ones I can find locally in record stores are classical music and the prices are quite high.
In my experience classical music in any format does not exist in record stores. In fact record stores have almost disappeared.

However, there are several internet dealers that I use who have a reasonable selection of SACD and DVDA. Some in Europe are excellent, and shipping cost and time is comparable to domestic dealers.
SACD....., well in a few years with compressed downloads and MP3 dominating, we may be saying the same thing about finding Redbook CDs.

We have a generation of Americans growing up on compressed music that has about as much to offer as the AM band....well yes a bit more an no noise, but they are not high fidelity.
I remember the sacd section getting smaller each time I went to look for music at best buy.

Vinyl is the answer.
They are probably hybrids and are mixed in with all the other CD's. I would not expect the salesperson at circuit city to know anything about SACD or even what a Hybrid disc is.

SACD(Hybrid) is a small cottage industry for us audiophols no different than that of vinyl.
"03-04-08: Maineiac
I remember the sacd section getting smaller each time I went to look for music at best buy.

Vinyl is the answer."

I haven't been to Best Buy in a year or so, are you saying they stock Vinyl now?.

Dave
Actually, the last time I went to "Best Buy" they had a separate section for SACD and DVD-A.

If you are interested in Classical, the Circuit City website had more of that than any other genre in SACD.

By the way, why is it that any store with a name like "Best Buy", "Pay 'N' Save". etc. is just the opposite. Well, ok, you CAN find good deals at Best Buy but there are a lot of things they stock that have very high prices.
My wife went to Walmart the other day, and I asked her to pick up the Cowboy Junkies "Trinity Sessions Revisited" CD/DVD for me while she was there...it was listed on their web site for under $15.00.

They did not have it, and the sales person had never heard of the Cowboy Junkies. Two more sales persons, also told her they had never heard of the Cowboy Junkies.

The internet is taking over music sales.

Dave
Dave,

No I'm not saying that BB is stocking vinyl now but I can drive to 6 or so stores, 2 of which have good selections of brand new vinyl, and find really great, high quality music at reasonable prices. I found 4 LPs just last night on my way home from dinner. This weekend I got a very nice LP that sounds better than any recording I have ever heard. That's why, to me at least, vinyl is a better option.
But wait, it gets even worse. The reason I'm looking to purchase music at Circuit City in the first place is so that I can use up the $50 gift card I got for participating in a work related study. I got to choose from a list of stores and chose Circuit City specifically because I knew they carried music.

So, since I couldn't find what I wanted at the store, I went back to the website. By this time I had spent quite a bit of time on this little project. When I finished making my music selections on the website, I had a total of just over $100 in merchandise to which I was planning to apply my gift card.

I started wading through the checkout procedure and came to a page whereon I am asked. Do you wish to apply a coupon or gift card to this purchase? When I selected "Yes" I was informed that I would not be allowed to use a gift card for music or video purchases.

Thinking I must have misunderstood something, I called the 800 number and was informed that, in fact, this was true.
Unfortunately for me, the very reason I had chosen Circuit City as opposed to some other store was to apply my money toward music. At the time of choosing a store I was not informed of any such restrictions. All I can say is that Circuit City just lost a potentially good customer for no good reason.

Let me put it this way. If I went to Circuit City and said that I wanted to buy a gift card but that I was placing specific restrictions on how Circuit City could spend the money I gave them for the purchase of the gift card, how many gift cards do you think they would be willing to sell me?

Why should I feel any different? I won't be giving them any of my business in the future.