SACD VS DVD-AUDIO

The best sounding format to these ears is sacd whith good sonics from DSOTM, better sonics from Steve Earle's Guitar Town and the best sonics I have ever heard from Joe Satriani's Strange Beautiful Music and Allison Krauss Live or her new release.

I find dvd-a superior to redbook on both REM titles I own, but find the Eagles Hotel California to sound rolled off in the highs and to have certain frequencys sucked right out of the recording.

There are only a handfull of songs from either of these formats that sound good in multi channel whith the exception of the entire DSOTM and Aliison Krauss Live where mostly the applause and ambience is done in the rears.

Overall, there both an improvement, but I believe that sacd has more potential and that multi channel has a ways to go.

It's amazing to me so much confusion about these formats still exist. DSD,aka SACD,returns to multibit when dithered. Therefore only new recordings offer the advantages of true DSD. How many new discs are there? Granted just remastering anything into multichannel is more of a gimick than an Audiophile solution. Enter AIX records. Native resolution recordings all of new performances. Not recorded as gimick but as natural means of recovering lost ques from live recordings. Again at CES AIX will share with Meridian and Piega showing the true potential of multichannel DVD-A in it's purest form. Panasonic will also be displaying it's latest DVD-A car system. All this in room 1401 at Alexis Park .
To quote from Scott Wilkinson of Stereophile Guide to Home Theater, October 2003 from the HE2003 report. "A Meridian 800 DVD-A player pumped data into an 861 processor, which was connected to a Butler 5150 5-channel power amp feeding five Piega P-8 speakers; the processor was also connected to a Piega subwoofer. The results were magnificant,dispelling any doubt that DVD-A can sound every bit as good as SACD. "He also called it "one of the best sounds at the show." The only error in his writing is the speakers were C-8 ltd.
We would like to invite all show attendees to visit and gather your impressions of this format on a true Audiophile System. Makes for some good Forum after the show.

My 2 cents...

Best isn't always what the "market" selects for survival. Remember the era of the beta vs. vhs wars... beta was technically superior but the limited supply of titles and poor marketing doomed it to extinction. I fear that DVD-a although superior may suffer the same fate at the hands of skilled marketers. They are more interested in cranking out a product with "mass appeal" than catering to those of us that can really tell the difference.

As in the vhs vs. beta war, I think that the number of software titles will certainly dictate the winner. Until a victor is chosen, I'm going to sit this one out until the dust settles.

Mn_glacier- I agree with most of what your saying, however could you clarify.

I fear that DVD-a although superior

It seems misleading to say the least.

The problem with those sales figures, is that SACD isn't the reason they are selling. In fact, hard to even find SACD label on any of them. I would handily bet 90% plus sold aren't being used on sacd players.