The ignorance of SACD & DVD-A marketing idiots....

We all know that fads are cyclic.

Remember Beta VS VHS?

Beta was clearly better, but Sony limited availability to only two other, (maybe 3) manufacturers - Sanyo and Toshiba.

JVC, on the other hand, sold licenses to pretty much every other manufacturers. The result? All the video rental stores became filled with VHS movies while Beta's wall and selection came to extermination.

Now matter how good the technology is, poor marketing will eventually sink the product line unless a manufacturer is willing to live with small sales and small niche markets.

DVD-A and SACD are just that, great technologies that never went mainstream,just like Beta, which was the better format at the time.

Ncarv, your player is converting DSD to PCM before sending it out the digital output. Only a very few, very expensive players (e.g., the top of the line Accuphase drive and DAC) output native DSD digitally - the rest covert to PCM before outputting digitally. Sony insisted on this to make copying difficult.

I think macdadtexas hit the nail on the head with "Convenience sells."

If you can't copy it and listen to it wherever you want, it's worthless in the mass-market IMO. Why did cassette beat out vinyl? Recordabity and convenience. People could make "mixed tapes" and play them at home, in the car, and on a Walkman. Even non-audiophiles knew vinyl sounded better.

Cassette stuck around for a while after CD became mainstream. When CD writers became pretty much standard issue in computers, cassette was gone almost overnight.

The disc based high-res titles can't be copied. Then again, I'm sure there's a way. Regardless of that, it can't be played anywhere but a dedicated home player. Why spend money for a new format that you can't take along with you? Why replace what you have with something that'll only see any benefit in one player at home?

Then there's the catalog of high-res music. Little if any mainstream stuff. One or two albums from the most popular bands wasn't enough to make a difference IMO. Especially when you couldn't take it with you.

Convenience sells. If it's convenient and sounds better, it'll do well. Then again, a full on home stereo is becoming a thing of the past. Computer speakers or a home theater in a box like an LG system is good enough for most people. They can't get through their heads that 2 quality channels, even connected to a TV system, sound far better than 7 garbage channels.

High-res will be an audiophile thing. Most people won't know it exists or any of the dead formats even existed. Ask a random co-worker if he/she ever heard of SACD or HDCD.

Until they get mainstream titles, the mainstream artists and producers stop clipping the hell out of the music, it becomes portable with an actual benefit (not compressed to death so it'll fit on an iPod), and hifi companies get off their rear ends and advertise so that people know Bose really isn't what Bose claims to be, high-res will be what it currently is.

Just my cynical views. It doesn't take much to make a product enticing to the masses. Practicality and marketing is all it'll really take IMO.

I really enjoyed reading this thread. I wonder how many of you listen to classical music, which I do exclusively. SACD is alive and well there, with thousands of available titles. Almost all discs have dual CD and SACD layers, so they are portable and can be copied.