SACD.. huh? (1 Viewer)

[Jerry Klawiter]

Mark,
A good place to start reading
I'm sure others will supply you with more links about the current news on SACD

 

[John Royster]

Based upon the the pathetic mixes of most current albums, you probably wouldn't want to hear too many of them on SACD, anyway

exactly

 

[Sean Moon]

Dont like whats on SACD? Many Rolling Stones albums just came out on them this past week!

 

[Greg*go]

Your average consumer would have to buy a SACD player to play SACD's, whereas most people already own a dvd player (for dvd-a).

Does this mean you are for DVD-A? Although a lot of audio DVDs have a DD or DTS soundtrack on them, you should really purchase a DVD player capable of DVD-A to experience everything there is to offer.

Also, most of the current Sony HTiBs with DVD players are also SACD capable. And the average consumer does purchase these quite often. The really odd/sad thing is, most people that buy these HTiBs don't even know/care about this feature.

 

[JackS]

My thought is DVD-A and SACD are virtually forever. There may be a limited number of titles as compared to standard CD's, but there are many thousands of some of the more popular titles now in the hands of audiophiles. If the medium disappeared tomorrow, a secondary market would be created in which these disks would be bought and sold at premium prices. If the well heeled can spend ridiculus amounts on audio equipment, a couple of c-notes may not be asking to much for that rare and hard to get disk. This is all conjecture of course, there is no indication at present that either of these formats will crash.

 

[Emil Stoica]

I think the main thing that turns me off to SACD's is the fact that the type of music i enjoy will not be offered in SACD format at all, second being the insane price of "good" SACD players, and third being how often titles are actually released

Well I can not speak to your listening habits since music today is beyond intolerable to me. The world really needs some more rappers and boy bands.
The "insane" price is not so insane when you realize that most high-line SACD players are also excellent CD players. And you never defined what "insane" is? There are some great SACD players for $200. Please say that is not insane.
Considering there are always weeks something gets released (can not say the same for DVD-A), I think you need to do some more research.

 

[KeithH]

Emil said:

Well I can not speak to your listening habits since music today is beyond intolerable to me. The world really needs some more rappers and boy bands.

"Beyond intolerable." Absolutely! My sentiment exactly. And don't forget hip-hop.

 

[Mark R. Ososkie]

Just out of curiousity Mark, what genre of music do you typically listen to?

Heavy and light industrial/electronica (KMFDM, pain station, nin, suicide commando, wumpscut), most of which you've probably never heard. Industrial is an odd type of music, something that can only be heard correctly from higher end equipment. I also enjoy some older heavy metal (metallica, anything before black, slayer) and some fairly newer metal also (white zombie, rammstein), and some scandanavian melodic death and black metal such as dimmu borgir, at the gates, in flames, and emperor. I also *really* enjoy pink floyd, some zeppelin, and some early 90s grunge such as nirvana, pearl jam, and stone temple pilots to name a few
That "alternative" crap being played on the radio is, imho, the red headded step child of good grunge , and no, i dont listen to rap.
I pretty much cleared up most of my feelings about SACD, so, for those of you ripping on my listening habbits, please see above. Do not stereotype my listening habbits or opinions because of my age, please.

 

[Luis C]

I wasn't trying to stereotype your listening habits. I too listen to industrial but the majority of my listening is directed at acoustic work...

Industrial is an odd type of music, something that can only be heard correctly from higher end equipment.

Actually, this is where you may find the rub... your statement is not correct at all. Higher-end equipment is specifically designed to be as "transaparent" as possible in order to capture the "nuances" of the sounds you are listening to. Industrial, by virtue of the fact that the recordings do not attempt in any way to capture instrument detail (primarily because there are very FEW real instruments, much of the sound is created thru synthesis) or hall ambiance, higher-end equipment is more a waste of money than anything. You are better off getting as much power as possible to limit overloading the amplifier. This way higher order distortion will not creep in.

SACD/DVD-A is best when used by the recording engineer/mixer to capture instrument detail and ambience thus you will see very little of the music you enjoy ever come out on these medium. Additionally, you will see very few small recording studios/record labels (ala the kind your bands prefer) switching to the PCM/DSD recording equipment necessary for DVD-A/SACD. Its just too big an investment, thus you will be stuc with the recording artists that are contracted to the bigger studios.

All this said, I can tell you flatly that SACD is a huge leap forward in recording technology and I hope that eventually it becomes the "standard" for recording use.

 

[Mark R. Ososkie]

SACD/DVD-A is best when used by the recording engineer/mixer to capture instrument detail and ambience thus you will see very little of the music you enjoy ever come out on these medium. Additionally, you will see very few small recording studios/record labels (ala the kind your bands prefer) switching to the PCM/DSD recording equipment necessary for DVD-A/SACD. Its just too big an investment, thus you will be stuc with the recording artists that are contracted to the bigger studios.

exactly why someone who doesnt listen to billboard albums will have no use at all for a sacd player.. :frowning:
also, listen to suicide command on a crappy stereo, you'll see exactly what i mean.

 

[Luis C]

also, listen to suicide command on a crappy stereo, you'll see exactly what i mean.

I have a couple of friends who have this bands recordings. We've played them on their systems (moderate systems) and on mine (more elaborate) and the advantages that my system normally has over theirs (resolving power, inner detail, depth, staging) disappear. They are irrelevant when none of these things is present. We have experimented with this issue as the point and have found that a lot of the "emotion" you create with industrial music is best captured with having mega-power at your disposal. We tested my amps (400 watts mono) on their systems and then replaced mine with some QSC pro amps (1200 watts mono) and the difference was startling. More power in this case was the key. Then we put the QSC on my system and all of the "life" in the better recordings disappeared. Granted, there was more headroom but all the "life", the detail was lost.

So as I said, I would recommend you getting either one of two things... a set of horn speakers (ala Klipsch) which project a soundfield very easily or get really big power (ala pro amps: QSC, Crown, etc). You will like that much more, believe me.