SHMCD : Second thought on buying SACD player

currently there are more SACD's than 24/96 albums and 24/96 doesn't sound better than DSD, actually DSD sounds more musical to my ears and I like it more than PCM. There are almost 6000 SACD titles to chose from and about 50 24/96 titles do download, and prices of downloaded files are the same as SACD discs :( I prefer real SACD disc with cover and 30 pages booklet than a file for the same price...

PS when do you think that 24/96 PCM downloads will be more available than SACD? in 5 years, in 10 years? I wouldn't wait for that...

I'd say 2-3 years if there's decent demand for it. Agree with you about the 30 page booklet. A PDF version isn't as useful. Then again, CD packaging doesn't compare to LPs.

My estimate of timing above assumes that it's relatively easy and cheap for a publisher to put up files of different resolutions. If that's not true, then I'm probably optimistic. But the iTunes Store populated pretty quickly if I recall. Seems to me that if there are people willing to pay a premium for higher rez versions and all it takes is disk space and bandwidth, why wouldn't they offer it? Would love to hear comments from industry insiders about this.

I doubt there will be demand for hi-rez, in SACD you have mostly jazz and classical releases

hi-rez downloads of pop music don't make any sense, people won't hear any difference between normal and hi-rez Britney Spears and will soon go back to mp3s

I have a Pat Metheny "Offramp" SHM-CD ordered from Japan and found no difference in sound quality compared to the ECM CD.