SHMCD : Second thought on buying SACD player

SACD is the same "Tittle Dependent" and questionable "premium" expense, so takem your pick!

Just think, if you could download the CD-quality (16/44.1) file and play it from your server, the quality of the disc material would be, um, immaterial.

And what if you could download and play a 24/96 version? I suspect that, a few years out, these new types of discs will look like overpriced, best-ever buggy whips.

Drubin - Absolutely right. CDs will disappear. Current attempts to introduce new formats (CODE on DVD 20bit/96kHz) are going nowhere. Article in Stereophile suggested that SACD is dead as well - many new BlueRay players don't even support it. Everything will be as servers/downloads but not in 24bit/192kHz quality (sane people wouldn't release master).

New formats like HDCD or SACD have strong copy protection (SACD cannot be copied at all - pit modulation) and it probably turned off a lot of people who did not want to spend over $30 without option of backup.

Kijanki,

I don't think that 24/96 downloads will ever become popular, people are happy with mp3s and hi-res files are 1,5GB, it will be a niche just like SA-CD and since the price of a hi-rez download is equal to physical SACD, I prefer physical SACD ...

PS SMH-CD is still low resolution CD

True that 24/96 downloads will not become mainstream. But they will be more available (more titles) than SACD and, in all likelihood, will sound better, at least on the more modest playback systems most of us have.