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

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.

Sorry about that, I meant "high definition" in a general sense; a better term would have been "the more detailed, the better." What I was driving at was like comparing the level of detail between an MP3's and the ordinary CD's: we all know the level of detail is different simply because there are larger number of bits in the latter and so isn't it reasonable to say that since there are more capacity on the DVD, it can be made to have a higher level of detail (or bits) on it than on the CD for the same lenght of music? Or am I too naive (I'll have to admit I'm ignorant on technical matters)?

Emafaith: I think you're confusing "detail" and "resolution." The latter is the technical term, and is directly a function of the number of bits. The former is a much more subjective term, used by reviewers and audiophiles to describe how well a system allows a listener to pick out particular, subtle aspects of the music, e.g., individual instruments, etc. (Others may well have different--and quite possibly better--definitions of the term.)

You can have great detail without great resolution. LPs, for example, have much lower resolution than CDs, for example, but a many a vinylphile can tell you about the detail of his rig.