SACD or DVD Audio, which one is winning the race?

Never heard of hi def audio.....are you sure about that?
I have heard that eventually there could be dsd encoded 5.1 soundtracks, but until someone actually trys this, its just a pipedream.

As far as Sacd/dvd-a goes, i currently support Sacd, but neither of these formats will be around long, if they don't start producing more popular music and soon.

Going by the nex't generation of mp3 lovers who listen to boomboxes and table top all in one units that cost 179.00, I am not so sure even redbook is gauranteed to be around in 10 years.

Good advice on the Pioneer universal machine. Only costs around $400 and is a pretty good video player if the audio formats don't pan out. I can't see a format being driven by the audiophile market so the future of SACD & DVD-A (although both have alot of potential) is questionable. Buy hybrid SACD's and DVD-A's (all have DVD-V layers) now if you are worried about obsolesance. CD and DVD-V are popular formats that aren't going away anytime soon. Just another opinion FWIW.

In my earlier comment I said "low cost equipment" instead of "Pioneer DV-45A". (I, and others familiar with this unit, were starting to sound like a broken record).

Is there any other $400 player that does it all?

At the moment there do seem to be more SACDs than DVD-A, but the best discs I have obtained happen to be DVD-A. Both can be good or bad depending on mastering. You need both.

I have heard that all SACD relaeases will contain a remasterd 2- channel SACD layer regardless of whether they are multichannel recofdings or not. Does anyone know if this is true and if DVD-A will do the same thing?

Thanks,

The stereo program on SACDs is an AREA of the disc, not a layer. The layer idea (Hybrid SACD only) relates to a media that can be read by regular CD players.

At present a DVD-A disc does not have a stereo program although
(1) the player can do a realtime mixdown
(2) I heard a rumor that the DVD-A spec was being revised to provide for a stereo program.