i'm kinda wondering what's the damn point...

[acroyear]

There's reasons SACD never caught on.

1 - the SACD player I just got at Best Buy looked great, but nothing in the "publicity" actually mentioned that the digital cable was only good for the 2-channel output, and useless for the 5.1 layer which only goes out on the 6 analog rca lines.

one reason for that is that the sacd player does its own internal balancing in the digital->analog conversion and its adjustable there, rather than relying on the receiver that may not have the capability.  On the other hand, wouldn't it have been easier (granted, requiring a patent license) to convert the SACD signal into Dolby 5.1 Surround and know that you're at least still on a digital standard?

Fortunately, I wasn't using them for my dvd player as I'd gotten that running through a coax rca cable (my cheap-ass dvd does digital out the rca, but doesn't have digital-optical - but hey, it's multi-region and pal->ntsc). 

2 - not every SACD bothers to actually be a 5.1 mix!  yeah, maybe it "sounds great" but its still only 2-channel and to a degree, defeats the damn point.  3 sacd's i just got (Peter Gabriel, Bernstein's Mahler 1, and Guaraldi's Charlie Brown) i'm taking back as I already have all 3 on normal cds and they're good enough for my system in that form.

So pay attention if you get into that market and look specifically for "SACD Surround" unless your ears are better than mine or you don't mind the 2-channel.

But on the bright side, this recording is just incredible.  Best sounding 9th I've heard yet (out of 5 that I have - Stokowski, Bernstein/Vienna, Von Dohnányi, some generic version, and Von Karajan's SACD).  Performance-wise I'm still leaning to the Von Dohnányi, but the mix here really works.

Comments

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

Well, the reason why it didn't catch on is that most people think CDs are good enough, and Sony never pushed it to be more than a niche format.

As for one, you can blame the paranoia of the music industry for that one. Sorry, no high res over digital without protection. Course, such protection is slow in comming. Denon did have their own proprietary DenonLink for DVD-A, but the standards are slow in coming.

Then, there is the fact that SACD is encoded in DSD, which would need to be converted to be able to be played on a receiver, since the DACs for that would never be located in the receiver.

As for two, SACD was always aimed as an audiophile product, so the large amounts of stereo SACDs can be blamed somewhat on that.

While I do own a few SACD only discs, I will only buy hybrids nowadays. Considering that I can only listen to SACDs in my player in the basement, I'd like to be able to hear the music elsewhere.

While it is only a Stereo non-hybrid, I can say that John Williams' "The Music Box" (The classical guitarist, not the film composer) is quite good, and definitely demonstrates how good SACD can sound. I also think the surround mix of Epica's "Consign To Oblivion" is quite good.

I don't recommend Mostly Autumn's "Passengers" SACD, tho. I don't know what they did to the stereo mix, but they screwed it up, and the surround mix isn't all that impressive.

I am still waiting for more Pink Floyd to come out on SACD, and I know that the Genesis albums will be released in SACD at some point (even if it is overseas.) The good thing is that SACD has caught on in Japan, so it will hang on for a while.

Speaking of the 9th, I'll have to look into that one. The only version I own is the Munch version, which was highly recommended on a forum I was on. It certainly a different version from what I'm used to hearing.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

already had Passengers but I haven't given the 5.1 treatment a try yet.

reviews of Dark Side have been mixed, so I'm not sure i'm going there yet.

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

I have it if you want to listen to it.