Is the SACD Format Flawed?

Its execution not format. Quality of original recording engineering, whether the player directly decodes DSD or first converts to PCM (a lot do), whether the recording was really PCM just converted in DSD for SACD release or whether it was DSD direct, the list goes on.

The DSD encoding method is fundamentally different from staightforward PCM, so there is plenty of room for people to argue about whether SACDs are better or worse than CDs. The arguement about high frequency deficiencies of SACD are persuasive, but so is the argument that these high frequencies do not require the same fidelity as those below about 8000 Hz.

The DVDA encoding is like CDs, PCM, but with a higher sampling rate and greater bit resolution. Although the disc mastering can make either format sound good, or bad, it's a "no-brainer" that DVDA is a superior medium to CDs.
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C'mon..this guy is an eccentric wierdo. Have you read his "reviews" of Arcam stuff in Widescreen Review lately? Long, boring, repetitive, fawning crap. He runs out of superlatives, so repeats them Ad Nauseam over pages and pages and pages...in his totally unbelievable "best I have ever heard" claims. He OWNS Arcam now - wonder what HIS price was after that first review? Then he reviews a lower piece in the line and trips all over his drool raving about that one!!
Total loss of objectivity and impartiality...

If you want the best sound get a TT. If you want variety get redbook. Or get both.

SACD has been out for 6+ years or so and it's still taking up about a 1 foot section at most record stores. Its future is here and it's dismal at best.

Also, Moncrief went out and got a McCormack UDP-1 multi-player, which gives one pause...if SACD is so bad and DVD-Audio is pretty well dead - why bother? (Plus we went on & on & on again about how bad SACD is, regurgitating what he had spent half a lifetime writing about in the first TWO SACD articles...I guess we're all deaf and stupid here on the 'Gon)
He pronounces the UDP-1 as the best player on the planet, after comparing it to a four year old Audio Aero Capitole Mark One, which has been improved-on hugely since with the Mk.II. What kind of critical review is that?
Verbal diarrhea - no credibility at all!