SACD WINS!

SACD sounds better than most CDs because the technology used to record in SACD is the same as CDs today. In fact most of the SACD converters that I have seen are based on the same Delta Sigma A/Ds as are used in most PCM converter boxes. They simply grab the stream before the DSP that converts to PCM. So the media on the CD is the same BUT there are more digital conversion steps, Each one of which has some loss. This means that CDs sound worse than SACDs if you use the same equipment to record them. However this is not a problem of the format. There are other ways to "fill the bits" than a Delta Sigma A/D converter but these all cost much more money ($500 a chip or more instead of $5 for a pretty good Delta Sigma A/D). Because these chips are cheap and most people can't hear the difference on their home stereos almost all CDs are mastered on these chips. In fact many CDs are mastered on consumer DAT machines simply using the analog inputs!! (None of which contain very good A/D stages) At least SACDs are mastered on dedicated equipment that is much better designed. I have heard some carefully mastered recordable CDs converted from master tape (just recorded on a laptop computer with a digital in) using a direct conversion A/D converter (these converters directly measure an input signal instead of generating a stream of pulses that are then digital filtered) capable of filling a CDs full resolution and played back on a Direct conversion DAC that sounded almost exactly like the tape. In contrast the commercial master of the same material made on a DAT machine sounded just like any other commercial CD.

P.S. the resolution of a system is easily calculated. For PCM represented with binary numbers you can figure the resolution by raising 2 to the number of bits in a single word. An 8 bit system has 256 possible levels, a 16 bit system has 65,536 possible levels, and a 24 bit system has 16,777,216 possible levels to describe. A 1 bit system like 1 bit Delta Sigma or SACD has only 2 possible levels therefor you must average some pulses to reproduce any given level. If I want a 1 bit system with a resolution the same as an 8 bit system I would need to average 256 pulses, a 16 bit system would need 65,536 pulses to be averaged. (For 8 bit resolution, If I want a "1" I would turn on 1 pulse and turn off the 255, if I wanted a "200" I would turn on 200 pulses and turn off 56, ect...) So to calculate the resolution of a 1 bit system at any frequency just calculate how many pulses it can produce at that frequency.

SACD still has roughly 5 bits of resolution at 100Khz while conventional PCM is limited to the niquist frequency of half its sampling rate, 22.05Khz for a CD. The Nyquist frequency for SACD is also half of its sampling rate, 1.4Mhz.

YAWN! All I know as a peon guy who loves music is SACD sounds great, better than anything to date to my non scientificly trained ears. Thanks for the info Dustin.

SACD has hit first, and that means it has hit twice. Never mind that the blow is pretty weak, as we all know industry trends are usually commercially driven and not quality driven. Almost all of the SACD material out there does not significantly improve on what's achievable with standard redbook CDs. The best sound in the market today comes from 24/96 recorded DVD-A. Unfortunately, if the very proponents of that format, such as Chesky, abandon it for the lure of bigger bucks with Sony's support, the result is, at best, compromise. Arguably, many redbook CDs sound better than most of the SACDs out there. Sony, or someone, is going to have to do better than this. For starters they need to build a decent SACD player in a reasonable price range. Then they need to dramatically improve the recording and mastering process.