Why No New SACD Along With New Vinyl

SACD for all intents and purposes is dead. Sony is not supporting it anymore. Also it seems, that vinyl is making a serious resurgents. I got friends that just a few years back were jumping on the SACD bandwagon, and just about all of them are now mostly into vinyl. Could it be that in someways that digital based discs are like Japanese motorcycles, while vinyl is more a Harley-Davidson? By this analogy, I mean from a technical sense while a good digital based disc system is probably more accurate, there just something about listening to music through a good vinyl system that really draws the listener into the music.

BTW, you would think that most of the interest in vinyl recordings would be from guys like myself who are in their mid-50s and grew up with vinyl and have/had large record collections. But one of the things that I'm finding interesting, is the interest in vinyl recordings from a younger crowd of music listeners, who by and large never grew up with vinyl. Who knows, maybe some of these I-pod wearing, MP-3 listening kids have gotten such a severe case of digalitis, that they're ready for a more analog approach to their music, then again it could be just a "retro" thing.

Is there such a thing as a stand alone SACD player? I would think it would be more accurate to say that there are 13 million CD players that can also play SACDs. And how may CD players are owned that do not play SACDs? SACD is dead or will die very soon if only because Sony don't support it any more, and Wal-Mart doesn't sell them. Eight tracks, MDs, DATs, SACD, DVD-A. We've moved on.

Blu-Ray is the future, seeing that there are 100 million plus PS3's out there and growing. I've tried the first Blu-Ray out, Divertiment by Trondheimsolistene, and it sounds great. Since the latter comes with a SACD version of the same music, you can compare. Sony has the largest library of master tapes from the SACD product. Now, if I can only get them to put out Miles/Blue that will be the test.

"According to the RIAA, vinyl outsells SACD and DVD-audio combined by a 4-to-1 margin. Business is business, sad to say."

If that were the case, then someone is making very poor business decisions as there were only 1 million new LP's sold last year. Compared to CD sales, LP sales aren't even a drop in the bucket. You also have to consider the fact that the RIAA counts most SACD's as CD's in their stats. A fact that would boost SACD sales above that of LP's.

"I'd also have to disagree with the statement--->"There must be as many SACD players out there as turntables. There's just no way."

I just read that there are over 13 million SACD players in public hands. Quite a lot, when you think about it. Any idea of how many working TT's are out there?

I think that's a really good question - I'm in the opposite boat, recently getting a nice TT and buying lots of the reissues - loving the vast majority. In any case, I find myself if I'd be just as happy if they produced SACDs of the titles I'm buying, with the notion that the (re)mastering job is far more important than the format, especially if the SACD is cheaper.

I believe Acoustic Sounds announced they'd be releasing all of their Fantasy Jazz series on SACD. The albums are just incredible, in music and master quality. I'll have to buy a couple SACDs of titles I have and test my question.

The mastering procedure for vinyl and SACD differ greatly so it is more than just pressing up SACD's using the results of the vinyl mastering job.
I'd also have to disagree with the statement--->"There must be as many SACD players out there as turntables". There's just no way.

It's the way the market is today. According to the RIAA, vinyl outsells SACD and DVD-audio combined by a 4-to-1 margin. Business is business, sad to say.

I think that when people didn't repurchase their entire record collections in SACD the way they did when cd came out the big record companies lost interest.

High-res digital is going to be downloads stored on servers. I would guess that you'll be able to burn them onto cd-rs or dvd-rs.

The current issue of TAS has an article about the QSonics Q110 music server, which is available with storage drive capacities from 250 gigabytes to 1.5 terrabytes. The latter will store over 4,000 cds in WMA format (Windows Media Audio Lossless). Cost is around $6,000 for the 250GB with 15 inch touchscreen to $9,000 for the 1.5 TB with 17 inch touchscreen. I expect the storage, sound quality and features will improve steadily while the cost goes down.

QSonics is teaming up with website MusicGiants to deliver cd quality (HD) and high-res (Super HD) downloads. MusicGiants says they'll have thousands of titles available in Super HD soon. We'll see.

You can thank Sony's lack of support along with the greed of musicians/agents in that for releases in the USA, they wanted 3 times the royalties due to the 3 layers on hybrid SACD's. That alone killed it here.

Hi-rez Blu-Ray? Yeah, I'm not buying that one. At least, not hi-rez like SACD.

I can't comment on whether the cost is marginal or not on the production side. However, it would be difficult to get stores to allot shelf space and incur extra inventory costs. Stores don't like to carry double inventory. This was also a problem when LPs and cassette tapes coexisted. The problem is exacerbated by the small market for SACDs which are probably on their way out anyway, perhaps in favour of high-rez music on Blu-Ray discs, or something else. SACD's time has passed before it ever really got off the ground.