I submitted a clarification of my earlier remarks, but it doesn't appear to have made it past the moderation gauntlet. I am at a loss to understand why. Perhaps this one will make it through.
Anyway - I certainly agree that if you put a DVD-Audio disc in the player and push "play," you'll get sound. The problem is, it may not be the content you want. Depending on the disc and your setup, the tracks that play by default aren't necessarily the ones you'll want to listen to. The issue is not so important for multichannel listeners, but most people (especially in the audiophile community) are not multichannel listeners, they are 2ch listeners. DVD-Audio is, for the most part, optimized for multichannel, and can require 2ch users to jump through an amazing amount of hoops to get something other than a digital downmix.
It's a bit easier if you have a TV hooked up to your audio system, but again, many 2ch users in the audiophile community do not have and do not want TVs in their 2ch systems. DVD-Audio is currently the only "music" format that almost mandates the use of a television.
Then we have the discs themselves, which are authored in a seemingly random fashion. Some discs have multichannel only, some have stereo only, some have stereo and multichannel, some have multichannel only but advertise stereo, some have MLP multichannel but LPCM stereo. Sampling rates and bit depth are all over the map, from 24/192k all the way down to 16/44.1k, and everything in between. Some discs with 2ch content are authored such that 2ch content is in Group 1, some are authored such that 2ch is in Group 2, some are authored such that 2ch is in Group 1 but must be selected with the Audio button, some are authored such that 2ch content is in the DVD-V section, and the player must be reconfigured to access it, and on and on and on....
I have gotten around the problem with my 50+ DVD-Audio discs by developing a "cheat sheet" to indicate which buttons to press to get the program I want on each disc, but it's a real pain to have to develop this (and requires a player and TV setup to do it). Plus, one of the many problems with DVD-Audio is poor labelling. I have purchased a number of DVD-Audios that claimed to have 2ch tracks, and turned out not to have them at all. The only choice for a 2ch user is to listen to a suboptimal downmix.
If the bulk of serious music listener were truly ready for multichannel and video-oriented audio, and if DVD-Audio's creators had more tightly adhered to a set of user interface standards, then DVD-Audio might have been more of a success.
By comparison, SACD does not have any of these problems. If you are a 2ch-only user, put the disc in and press play, and you'll get dedicated 2ch tracks. If you are a multichannel user and have a multichannel disc, put the disc in and press play, and you'll get dedicated multichannel tracks. No TV needed, no "cheat sheets" required, a user interface as simple and intuitive as Redbook CD, and (for the most part) consistency of disc authoring across the entire range of offerings.
Just from that standpoint alone, it's easy to see why SACD was more of a success in the audiophile community than was DVD-Audio.
