XRCD vs. SACD anyone?

bob: hdcd is just another flavor of redbook, not a seperate format. it is incompatible with upsampling dacs, that work on ALL cd's. moreover, hdcd was never adopted by a number of the big guns in the highend for a whole variety of reasons. -cfb

avguy: xrcd is not a "format." the discs are still redbook, using superior recording/mastering/manufacturing processes. as to my take on cd vs. sacd, see the following, which was posted on 1/18/02 in a thread titled "sacd and dvd-a; why so negative":

as i noted on another thread, i spent the week during which i'd ordinarily be at ces doing comparative listening of my boulder 1012 pre/dac and an accuphase dp-85 (one-box cd/sacd player). among other things, i listened to sacd's and redbook versions of the same recording played through the boulder dac and linestage (for cd playback, i used, alternately, the analog out of the dp-85 and the digital out on my accuphase dp-90 transport). the sonic differences between these recordings are, to my ears, nearly undetectable. sacd's originally recorded in 24/96 or higher sampling rates are sonically superior to redbook cd's, tho the sound does NOT approach that of high quality analog. unless and until a significant number, say a thousand, high sampling-rate discs in the sacd format become available, i'll stick with cd's and my tried-and-true lp's. IMO, there aren't enough dvd-a titles yet available to consider that format even nascently viable. -cfb