HYBRID SACD stereo or multichannel.

Eldartford, I don't have a multichannel system. I have a stereo system and want the hi-rez format I choose to honour my commitment. SACD does this. I want the mastering engineer to mix the stereo track, and I want them to do the best damn job they can, with the same commitment to quality as I have.

The concept of a fold-down offends my purist leanings.

Regards,

Metralla...Thanks for explaining your reasoning. As I understand it (and info is scarce) the mixdown coefficients used by a DVD-A player in creating the stereo program are selected by the recording engineer and encoded on the disc. So the recording engineer is still in the loop. Of course, almost all recordings, CD, SACD, and DVD-A, are mixed down from a dozzen or more tracks, so one more mixdown can't be all that bad.

Can Quadraphonic Recorded LP's be played on a 2 channel analogue rig?

Audiobugged...Sure they can. They have just two channels, with the sound intended for the rear out-of-phase between channels. When a quad record is played back through the intended decoder, out-of-phase signal is attenuated for the front speakers, and in-phase signal is attenuated for the rears. If you play the record without a decoder, the out-of-phase signal will come from the front speakers, but because it is out-of-phase it will not image, but will have a difuse and directionless quality. This is not bad.

Now all we need is MORE software.