I'm sure this undying question has been asked before, but which is better? SACD or DVD-A? I've heard more people say that DVD-A will win the war, yet it looks like SACD has a better chance. First of all, most releases are hybrids which have CD and SACD layers. Secondly, SACD seems to have more titles that people are interested in (Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon). Thirdly, Mobile Fidelity is backing the SACD with their releases. I've seen hybrid SACD/DVD-A players, yet those tend to command a higher price tag. So, in your opinion, which is a better investment for high-res audio? SACD or DVD-A?

p.s. Is it even worth it to look into HDCD?

Both formats are dead.

As already said neither format is ever going to replace CD so if you really want them just get a universal player that will do both, Pioneer do some cheap ones now.

From a purely technological standpoint, SACD is clearly a mistake. It is, in fact, a very inefficient format for encoding audio data.

not really dead, but both will never become mainstream.

Did this post travel through time from 2002?


HDCD and DVD-A are dead, SACD is dead in the USA and on life support elsewhere (I hear it's big in Japan). They're all good 'investments' in that if you own such discs you can often charge outrageous prices for them to 'audiophiles' on the used market.

If you want to explore all of them, just get an Oppo DVD player. They're relatively inexpensive and they play all three of those formats.

Well, even if the SACD is less efficient, it seems to have more labels backing it up. I too don't think it will become mainstream over CDs. Yet, one of the two formats will likely become the mainstream for audiophile releases.

I can't see the situation ever becoming "better" than it is now. You'll see more concerts on BluRay with decent soundtracks than you'll see new SACDs in the future (just my guess).

Cheers,
David.

Audiophile label Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs seems to have dropped SACD in favour of CD.

There has been almost no SACD or DVD-A releases the past two years.

Could this be to do with the fact that SACD is more difficult to copy?

Hmm... That is a good point.

This alone makes SACD a very bad investment unless your budget is big enough to include an advanced digital audio extraction upgrade.

Wow people have really written these formats off.

Neither format was designed to be mainstream in the first place. They're audiophile formats - digital vinyl in essence. They can only be appreciated on decent equipment, so why would they ever become mainstream? Likewise goes for ripping/portability. You just don't rip these formats - it's pointless.

However, in my opinion, SACD is the better option. There are several labels making new releases in SACD, in Europe at any rate, but they're not mainstream. SACD's have found a niche in the jazz and classical markets, and this is where the new releases are coming from. Saying that, there are a few remastered rock releases, and the Genesis box-sets are being released on SACD in Europe.

The advantage of SACD, in my opinion, is the ripping capability. All the SACD's I've bought are hybrids, and usually the high-fidelity DSD stereo mix is converted to PCM for the CD layer, so you still get a well mastered record but it can be ripped. For a while I wondered about ripping the DSD (or the PCM from DVD-Audio), but is there really any point? What would you play it on?

So basically, if you're interested in well-mastered classical and jazz albums, go with SACD. If not, don't bother at all - DVD-Audio is dead, and there are very limited releases on these formats for other genres.

Here we go again.

I'm happy with that argument and it makes sense to me. If someone wants to flame me, fine, but I won't respond. I'm just trying to help the OP.

Not sure i believe that, weren't Sony supposed to be trying to release all their catalogue on hybrid CD/SACDs?

Both formats are dead, with zero advantage over a decent Blu-Ray setup. This isn't helped by being strangled to death by ridiculous copy protection.

You aren't helping anyone by making subjective claims about sound quality without providing proof.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....974#entry149481

I suppose that line was subjective, and is certainly hard to prove. That raises an interesting point though - has SACD/DVD-Audio ever been subjected to ABX testing?

The majority of my post was factual/provable, regarding releases in these formats and ease of ripping, and I thought this was probably of more use to the OP. Is it not fair to assume that they already have their own opinion of these formats' capabilities and thus advise around them? I certainly made no remarks about which format may be better sonically.

Also, I would define 'decent equipment' as that which is capable of reproducing the extended frequencies these formats claim to record. This would be provable by lab testing, assuming such equipment exists.

So the advantage is that you can get a CD version of the disk? Why even have a new format if CD is good enough?

It's well known that sometimes the CD layer doesn't even remotely match the SACD layer in terms of quality. So that argument also falls flat.

But if SACDs cost the same amount as a standard CD, then why not have all music be released as a hybrid SACD?

Indeed. Waiter! my check!

That would be a lovely solution from a consumer's standpoint, although from the label side it involves a much heavier investment of time to prepare a DSD master. In a few occasions when the label tried to take a shortcut - such as on the SACD of Norah Jones' first album, when they mastered the DSD layer directly from the SACD layer! - it only served to undermine the perceived quality of the format.

DVD-A is still an interesting format, especially if you happen to do needle-drops from high-quality vinyl sources. There is free software available for authoring DVD-A discs, and these days it isn't too difficult to find a player that supports DVD-Audio.

- M.

Arguably, SACD from the beginning was aimed more at the audiophile market than DVD-A. Then again, at the VERY beginning, DSD wasn't meant as a consumer format at all -- it was meant as an archiving format that could be easily and transparently downcoverted to 44.1/16-bit for CD release. Somewhere along the line...maybe as it became clear how easy it would be to 'rip' CDs....a consumer DSD format was born (SACD).

And the idea that the CD layer of an SACD hybrid is merely a straight transcode, is not always true in practice. Sometimes, the CD layer is just the 'loudness wars' alter ego of the 'audiophile' DSD mastering. Famous case in point: Dark Side of the Moon.

What do you mean by DSD layer?

Do you really mean CD layer, and if so, wouldn't that be the preferred method for the customer? It would certainly be the most honest one when making claims about the superiority of the SACD layer.


I'd say it's an interesting format to provide raw recordings for alternative editing. For high-quality vinyl sources I think previous discussions have substantially demonstrated that 16/44.1 is more than adequate as a delivery format.

As previously stated, both formats are niche formats and you won't find much support for them in either the hardware or software realms. More and more studios are now starting to focus on Blu-ray audio releases thanks in part to Trent Reznor and him releasing Ghosts I-IV in that format. Not only that but Blu-ray is a relatively new format and we all know that record companies like to support these newer formats for a little while and then abandon them (remember DualDisc?) in favor of the already established format: CD.

Either way, I wouldn't waste my money on any SACD/DVD-A player. From my own experience I was not able to readily tell the difference between a DVD-A disc and a CD of the same release on a decent setup.

I suppose I should've expected this, especially with mainstream discs (like my Goldfrapp hybrid disc), though I'd hope that the niche labels (e.g. Telarc) would have the same mix on both. It really depends on what music you're after.

Personally, I noticed an improvement in SACD over CD. My favourite disc is the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed, which has lots of orchestral parts. They definitely sounded better, switching between the two layers on my Sony SACD player. However, I've since decided that it's inferior as a CD player and swapped it for a dedicated CD player. I don't have that many SACDs, they're all hybrids, and they all have decent mixes on the CD layer (except DSOTM apparently).

I suppose I'm an example of why you shouldn't bother investing. I still think hybrid SACDs are likely to have better CD mixes though, so I'll continue to buy them even if it's a naïve pursuit.

Oops! Typo. I meant to say, with the Norah Jones disc, they mastered the DSD (that is, the SACD layer) directly from the Redbook CD audio source... which is definitely not the preferred method for the customer.

- M.

Especially if the 16/44.1 version was given the hard-limiting treatment!

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=312746

EDIT: Trying to make better sense out of my response.

I guess you could also look at this discussion in terms of the collector's value of the two formats, which I guess is going to matter more in the coming years.

Certainly DVD-Audio will the more easily read format, because it requires no changes in the physical transport in order to read it, and the encryption is more or less broken. SACD player costs are going to appreciate as player support is reduced. That, combined with the general weirdness of the format and the magical powers audiophiles have tended to ascribe to DSD, means I'd suspect SACD will hold its value better.

Interesting, I hadn't thought of that. Well, would a MFSL Ultradisc II release sound better than a SACD release of that same album (not by MFSL)?

p.s. For example Eat a Peach has been released by MFSL and as a deluxe edition SACD

There's no way of knowing that a priori.

OP there are plenty of titles to find on both DVD-A and SACD and if you like surround music, it's hardly a waste of time given the pricing on some standalone players right now.
The Oppo 980H for example, with DSD over HDMI, is only $169.




That's peculiar, because I just picked up "Doolittle" by The Pixies on Ultradisc UHR SACD from MFSL and it was released last month - http://www.mofi.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd...p;idproduct=128

Bossanova is next - http://www.mofi.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd...p;idproduct=144

I can't see any of these formats reaching a critical mass ever. I think the Compact Disc will be the last mainstream physical consumer format for music.

What is the point of releasing these audiophile "niche" productions on a physical medium anyway? With broadband being universally available in the west and audiophiles being a minority, digital distribution of hi-resolution audio releases would seem like a more viable option.

I share your point of view fully.

Man! Do you have any idea how much cleaning and conditioning the dirty signal from the internet has to undergo until it is ready to be feeded into my $65k amp! It's bad enough I have to condition the AC with my custom aligned USP! Besides there aren't any audiophile broadband modems and LAN cables yet! (edit: or are there?!?)

I have some SACD and DVD-A titles and they sound great for the surround sound capabilities.

If Sony was a smart company they could have pushed for a replacement of CDs by SACDs hybrid, But…




Unfortunately there are:

http://www.digitalhomethoughts.com/news/sh...oat-hangar.html

I don't think SACD and DVD-A were meant to be niche products. They were meant to be mainstream to replace the CD to recover expiring patent revenue at Sony and Philips while adding DRM to protect the content for the studios. I am impressed at how they have both failed at almost everything they tried to do - mastering compromising any technical sound quality advantage, encryption making them incompatible with a shift in consumer preference to iPod and PC based listening, hardware incompatability making them useless in cars, goofy premium pricing on HW and SW at launch, format war confusing consumers....I don't think it could have been screwed up worse if they tried.

At any rate, they both stink as consumer formats for the reasons above and more, as proven by their market failure, so to the OP, "investment" depends on whether you mean as collector's items or as a next generation format. On the prior, I guess SACD has audiophile "floofie dust" approval, on the latter they are poor investments.

May SACD and DVD-A rest in peace.

Oh, and don't forget DVD-A watermarking.

For the watermarking to have a serious effect they have to persuade all sound card manufacturers to search for it. Is this happening?

Oh my... what a scam!