SACD vs DVD audio vs 24/96..??

None will survive... these formats are only for audiophiles, and no one else can afford it. All the record companies wont produce discs for them if no one has players. Everything will go mp3, but thats about it. Why not just get the ebst CD players and not worry about SCD or DVDA etc.. they arent going to get the support. I guess depending on your music tastes it will though, but its what id buy. 10,000,000 CD tracks.. 50 SCD.. go figure

DAT machines are still in use, years after they supposedly "died". It's the recording industry's standard format. Sadly, I agree that SACD is probably doomed, sooner or later. I heard the SCD-1, and loved it. I'm also suspicious of DVD-A's chances of making it. The way I see it, it boils down to what the record companies are willing to support. The gains that DVD produced over VHS were easy to see. It didnt take long for everyone to get behind it. The gains that SACD offers over CD is noticeable only to a few.(US) Most recording companies, I imagine, would be unlikely to produce this format.(similar in that respect to pre-recorded minidisc or dat. Hopefully, the new buzz over upsampling will lead to something that will be on par, at least with DVD-A, if not SACD. I fear that in another 5 years, we'll be having this same conversation.

I would be very happy if SACD survived only as a nitch market. Heck, High End audio is a nitch market. The anaylagy to DAT is apropriate. It was never meant to be mass market. I don't expect there to be a SACD or DVDA player in every home unless it's thrown in for free with every $299 DVD player. I'm sure it could happen. You don't have to ask what they would sound like....

I can already see SACD's DVDA discs adding to the same nitch as we have seen for Audiophile labels. People are bitching that the discs are expensive. Yes, they do cost more than CD's, but they are about the same price as Mo-Fi, XRCD's etc that we audiophiles have been happily shelling out for for years. Heck, I have stacks of Direct to disc LP's. And they still sound great! So now we have the oportunity to buy a virtual copy of the master tape instead of overpriced gold plated sixteen bit crap that often sounds only marginaly better than the standard issue. It seems we should all be rejoicing. How many copies of Kind of Blue do you own? I have 4 or 5. I expect the SACD copy to be the final word. Case closed. This is why I hope that the Specialty labels jump on SACD. I think that if enough people have one of the players then the audiophile comunity will demand that all of their issues be in one of the high bit rate formats. It is really tragic that Mo Fi went under. With their connections to the various labels they could have perhaps eventually released their entire catalog on SACD. Perhaps DCC or some other company will pick up the ball. I doubt JVC since they are heavily invested in DVD. If there is the demand someone will fill it unless legal restrictions or cost prohibits it. Telarc, Audioquest, Chesky and others are starting to put out SACD's. NOTE: I'm not interested in replacing my entire CD collection. Frankly, most of it is not well enough recorded to be worth it. But there are great recordings that demand and deserve the highest quality.

RE: my post about "throwing in" DVDA and SACD capability on mass market machines. This seems to finally be happening to HDCD. I just bought a Toshiba DVD player which includes it. It seems to be a marketing strategy to paste as many logos as possible on the front of these machines. If it says Dolby, DTS, Spacializer, HDCD, SACD, DBX and a few others consumers assume that the product is flexible, sophisticated i.e. the latest and greatest. Most will never seek out HDCD or DTS software and they might not hear any improvement on a low end machine if they did. Could SACD and DVDA get that kind of a free ride? Once production is cranked up it probably wouldn't cost that much.