Fly in the SACD Ointment?

You are correct, Mvwine...it will still boil down to the artists' and/or labels' commitment to the whole process, from recording to manufacture...regardless of the format. Very few labels have even taken advantage of the HDCD possibilities, so I wonder when/if any serious commitment will be made to SACD and/or DVD-A.

Tommart, you propose an interesting experiment...xrcd vs. SACD vs. well-recorded/mastered digital (Telarc). Sam McClain is available in all 3 "formats". Since you have a SACD player, how about you conduct the experiment and let us know the results. Check out Ernie Watts' "Classic Moods" on xrcd!

Hedgehog,
I own the Audioquest Sam McClain SACD, not the Telarc. I also hate duplication. I own more LPs than CDs and have only about 3 CDs that I also own the LP. I own about 30 SACDs, and none are duplicates with my CD or LP collection. However, I'm thinking about buying the Abraxas SACD, and I own both the LP and CD. I still have about 10 more SACDs on my "to buy" list, before I buy Abraxas.

Therefore I would not be interested in buying a $20+ xrcd and $20+ SACD of the same recording--just to see. I've already made my choice--high resolution, extended frequency SACD. I'll buy CDs when the price is right (under $6) and 96/24. Someday, I plan to have a Universal SACD/DVD-A player, and will buy some DVD-a's. I own 3 DVD-As already to test two DVD-A players. I returned both players. I think DVD-A can be good, but not on some of the mid-fi DVD players that it's now on.

Tommart, was the Denon DVD-3300 one of the units you tried? I was thinking of getting one just for DVD-A in the short term. Also, have you heard of any universal DVD-A,SACD,and CD machines in development or on the market?

I borrowed the Sony 777es and a stack of SACD's and found that the SACD's varied from barely better than the original cd to absolutely extraordinary. The Red Rose demo cd and Telarc demo cd demonstrate the potential for the medium when combined with DSD recording techniques and the liquidity, continuousness, detail, life were all staggering. But as I have discovered painfully upon returning from a great day of purchasing old used LP's, some old stereo LP's are recorded wonderfully and some are real stinkers too.

For me the biggest format question is no longer whether SACD will take off, nor whether it has the potential to be a huge improvement, but whether the recording engineers will bother to optimize the sound quality.

I have an LP frontend, which manages very well to separate the music from the noise. Much of my LP playback, inspite of excellent highs, is practically silent. That said, you can perhaps understand that I was never really taken in, even by the better recorded CD's, though I utilised a rather ambitious playback gear. I borrowed a well broken in Sony 777 this weekend and used the special high frequency output setting with good effect on my stators. For ic, I used a MIT Spectral 350. I was amazed at the resolving powers of the Sony and SACD. Even with bad recordings, it resolved the inner melodious and rythmic web of music down to fairly tiny details, in a way I had never heard from CD's, but was accustomed to from the better vinyl recordings. Also depth and with of the soundstage, the delineation of individual instruments was excellent, though here my CD playback isn't a slouch either. And yes, as Rcprince has pointed out, finally I could enjoy the Bruno Walter recordings, where SACD definitely betters the old LP's, which partially were plain awful. So from my very first experience, I would spontaneously say, that SACD is better then the rb cd, but hardly better than vinyl. I shall have to do direct comparisons to find out more. What I somehow did not like in many SACD recordings was the hiss, which more often than not in LP playback is just not there, also the blackness between notes, though obviously much liked by some, though not as bad as with CD's, is something which I find unnatural and disturbing. So I suppose, I will remain a LP freak, but I'm thinking of buying the 777. Cheers,