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Coping in an Age of Uncertainty

there have been numerous threads here, i know, about sacd v. dvd-a, upsampling, oversampling, etc. a number of these threads have included discussions of which, if any, new digital format will replace what we now call “redbook” cd’s. i don’t wish to rehash these discussions. rather, i’d like to hear from others how they are coping with the “age of uncertainty” in the realm of digital audio. is it better to “roll the dice” and invest in sacd or dvd a? ignore the contenders for the new and get the best possible out of redbook cd’s? buy with upgradeability firmly in mind? follow another path? i don’t post this query out of mere curiosity. i really haven’t figured out what course i should follow. i’d appreciate your giving me a hand. -kelly
cornfedboy
kweifi
46 posts
 
I'm with Garfish. I have decided to keep my Mark Levinson 37 transport and upgrade the 36 DAC to a Dodson 217 MkIID DAC (there was no comparison between the two DACS and upgrading the M-L 36 to a 360S would have cost a lot). I am not worried about upgrading to SACD or DVDA at this time, and I have much of what I like on about 1000 redbook CDs and many of these will not come out in the new formats in the near future. In the meantime, I have returned to listening to records (which I prefer). One of the real benefits of the format war has been the renewed interest in analog. There is some wonderful analog equipment out there: it is nearly as quiet as CDs and sounds much better.
sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
If you saw the thread on my just arrived Stan Warren modified DVD player, my thinking was to give it at try. I am still breaking it in, but sounds good so far. I do not know if it will best my limited edition Rotel RCD-990, but it should be better than my old Cambridge Audio CD4 Player in my den/home office. I have a television in there as well, and now will have a second place to play DVD movies in that room if that is where it ends up if the Rotel 990 still sounds better. So at the very worst, this Stan Warren machine is a great sounding DVD player. Not much of a gamble for a little money.
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drubin
3,274 posts
 
No new format will succeed if everybody chooses to wait and see what happens. I recommend Art Dudley's editorial in the January/February 2001 Listener, in which he draws a comparison to the electric car. Yes, yes, I know, you don't want to spend your hard-earned money on something without a clear future. But as many here have told us, you can enjoy SACD for a pretty small investment (about what some of us might spend on one or a couple of pairs of interconnects). And you don't have to use it as your main CD playback.
sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
New formats won't succeed until they're in mass market players that sell to the general public. Remember the Macintosh operating system appeared 8 years before Windows, but lost out because Apple would not share it. The same thing happened to Betamax. Sony would not share it, so they ended up competing with the whole world.
1953
140 posts
 
I think this whole thread is why the Sony 9000ES is such a compelling product. The only thing it doesn't play is DVD-A (but it will play the 2 channel 24/96 disks which ARE part of the DVD-A spec)& SACD 6 channel (which I bet we will NEVER see). It plays everything else, is inexpensive by high end standards, has high end sound (especially after break-in) and build quality written all over it, plus it's a great DVD player. Damned good value and it's readily available. Why wait?
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