SACD on its way out?

Hi Musicslug - a couple of corrections:

First of all, a high-resolution master is not "dithered" down to 16/44.1 Redbook, it is "decimated." Dither in the digital context is the process of deliberately adding noise to the digital signal. Decimation is the down-rez process used to make a RB-compatible dataset from a higher-resolution dataset.

Secondly - the actual DVD-A data, which is MLP-encoded PCM, is, contrary to your assertion, NOT playable on any DVD player. DVD-Audio data is only playable on a DVD-Audio player. Many pre-recorded DVD-Audio discs are backward compatible with standard DVD-V players, because the discs also include Dolby Digital data and/or lower-resolution LPCM in addition to the DVD-A data. The backward-compatibility is DVD-V, not DVD-A.

So, it would be rather pointless to record something in DVD-A format if you don't have a DVD-A player on which to play it back.

I wouldn't bet any money on your prediction of DVD-A momentum. Seems to me that DVD-A is essentially dead in the water at this point.

You can use recordable DVDs and lay down stereo LPCM tracks up to 24/96k, which is certainly "high-rez." One potential problem with this is that most consumer-grade DVD-V players won't process 24/96k, so the player does a down-rez to 24/48k. Still "high-rez," but...

The DVD-V spec does not allow for hi-rez lossless multichannel. For the recording industry, this does not seem to be a problem. The recording industry has discovered that many people think that 5.1 surround sound in Dolby Digital is better than CD-quality sound (especially since they've been led to believe that MP3 is "CD-quality").

As to the demise of SACD in favor of a copyable hi-rez format, again I would not bet on your prediction. One of the primary reasons the record companies adopted SACD and DVD-A and now Dualdisc is because all three formats offer copy protection of hi-rez data (and Dualdisc also allows the CD side to be copy-protected as well).