SACD

SACD solves my two complaints with CD and most other digital formats: 1) it restores the flow to music, and rids that sense of the music sounding chopped up, and 2) it provides the sort of low-end foundation and solidity to the music missing in those other digital formats.  Yes, I have some poorly recorded SACDs, but they still do not commit the two aforementioned faults.

My biggest problem with SACD is the same thing as my biggest disappointment with SACD - the format flopped.  And because of that, very little SACD content exists.  Had the record companies stayed on board, I would have likely triplicated (already vinyl and CD) my library with SACDs.  And oftentimes, what content does exist costs a lot.  Content's enough of a reason not to worry about whether your player supports the format.  If the machine you buy plays SACDs, that's certainly not a negative.  But sadly, it's no longer one of my top priorities in a machine I'd buy

@krell_fan1 "I am in the camp that is in disbelief that anyone could NOT affirm that a well produced SACD doesn't sound sound SIGNIFICANTLY better than it's CD counterpart."

I share your opinion.

My best friend is a musician, does a lot of recording and production, and skirts with the idea of becoming an audiophile.  He often tells me about how the conversion down to 16/44 is like driving on a smooth as silk superhighway, and turning off onto a dirt road.  He considers it the most depressing part of his work.

Several years ago, he wanted to hear a piece he found in my collection.  I told him it was an SACD, and we talked for a few minutes about it.  Like so many outside this world, he asked a technical / spec question, as that's what they focus on, "How many bits?"  I answered, "1 bit."  The look of scorn on his face was something I wish I captured.  Anyway, I told him Philips and Sony introduced SACD to replace the CD, with the goal of better replicating the music's analog waveform.  The spec of a sampling rate 64X higher still didn't impress him.  Anyway, pop the disc in, begin playing, and within a second or three the look on his face became just as priceless as the previous one.  For the next year or so, he kept talking to me about the absurdity of this format never taking off, no one even hearing about it, and how massive a sonic improvement it represented as he heard it himself

It just popped into my head that SACD failing drove me back into vinyl with a real commitment. So where I put many thousands of dollars into both software and hardware over the past decade plus simply came down to this.

Although I’ve heard very good CD players and DACs, even as far as things have come today, they don’t satisfy me the way records do. SACD did