SACD finally taking-off? non-classical listeners

Welcome to the FLAT EARTH SOCIETY web page. Please come in and believe the state of audio has reached it's peak!

SACD is the first advancement in digitial in 20 years, why do so many want to hold on to the past?

Danielkl41, ditto!

Twl you make some excellent points as do most who have written here.

I have no complaints for those who enjoy vinyl as I too believe with a great set-up the sound is the best available. I do have a problem with people who out-right disregard a new technology with little to no experience with it. To compare SACD to Beta and laser disk is silly, to say because Sony developed it that it must be dismissed without testing is close minded, and to not see the benefit available to us by advancing the audio industry is sad. Most SACD players will perform better than a similarly priced cd player on your existing library. Isn't that what we are all looking for, better sound?

Now for my system I would need to begin approaching Albert's vinyl playback equipment ($70,000) in order to justify what I'm hearing and not hear the flaws inherent in vinyl playback. (I've had $15,000 worth of front end in my system and felt I was listening to the flaws more than the music)Even with $1 software, I'm not interested in spending in excess of $50,000 to get the benefits of vinyl when for $5000 I have 95% of the enjoyment with my modified SCD-1. My library has grown for future advancements in the technology and I've been able to upgrade the playback of my existing cd library by almost 100%. Now can someone please explain what is wrong with my thinking? Vinyl's great, but not for everyone and not everyone enjoys the time it takes to keep the playback at 100%. CD is flawed but not all that bad on red-book cd through my modified SCD-1. The new technology introduced in the digital filters is as good as I've heard for cd playback, and SACD is as close to a top notch vinyl set-up at 1/10th the cost. I'm extremely happy and hope more people open there eyes to what's available.

One last thought, I hear people talk about SACD and the players available. I hear comparisons of $300-$1000 players to there existing players and there vinyl set-up. If your using a $300-$1000 cd player or a $300-$1000 vinyl set-up please don't expect too much from any format, your simply missing the point. If you fit this category, your system will not display too much of the advantages of SACD or vinyl.

I was thinking during dinner tonight (something I try to avoid at all cost) and it occurred to me that one of the great banters of the "down with SACD" group is that there is no software and it costs too much. If this is being stated by a pro digital person than they are missing the boat on getting great playback from there existing library through a SACD player. If the comment is coming from the pro vinyl than I find myself a bit confused. I was paging through a couple of catalogs, Music Direct and Acoustic Sound and found that the new vinyl re-mastered is approx.. $30-45. The new re-mastered cd is about $15.00 and the SACD is $17-25. So the argument must not be price in that vinyl is more and SACD is only 15-50% more. It comes down to available titles right? Well it seems as though a lot of the new released "re-mastered" older jazz is coming out in both SACD and vinyl so that must not be the issue. Of course there are titles coming out in SACD that have not yet made it to vinyl and as there are the other way. So as far as I can see it's just plain stubbornness and as Bishopwill states a blind love for one or the other. Do you think in 5 years the price of SACD or the price of vinyl will drop? Let's see, .01% of the population for vinyl and a potential 50% for SACD, hard to say where the new releases might come out. Oh and in response to all of you who pride yourself on finding the $1.00 album from 1972, I'm thrilled for you, I'll stick with the re-mastered version even if it is in digital.

I think we could all agree that some will insist on vinyl until the day they die, no matter how much new material becomes available. I believe some will stay with there 300b SET tube amps even when the NOS becomes $1000 per tube. That's what the Audiophile industry relies on, our stubbornness and willingness to buy the obscure.

Albert your comments are correct and well stated. Of course anyone who has an extensive library in one format will continue to invest in hearing it at it's best. You have also built extensive cd and SACD libraries if I'm not mistaken, meaning that you have opened your thinking to all formats. This is good, it's those who simply discount SACD as the latest "beta" or "marketing" scam that I get tired of. If I had a library of 6000+ albums I too would be heavily invested in vinyl playback, but I'm not going to go out and buy every $1.00 album just so IO have such a collection.
I hope we can see all formats are viable, and that it's reasons other than price and availability of software that we chose our format. Sound quality is one, but at the levels we are speaking of the quality is there in all three, cd, vinyl and SACD.