SACD & other Formats


I'm a vinyl guy and have invested lots of money in my TT rig and listen primarily to vinyl because it can sound so much better than digital.

I want to buy a CDP that will satisfy and understand a well mastered CD can sound good as well. I abandoned red book play back 10 yrs back because it was very frustrating finding satisfaction. Too many poorly mastered CDs that could not communicate the music. Have things improved? I know you can get better digital sound for less $$, but has the quality of mastering improved?

Looking through stores online I see SACDs are getting a lot of new mastering attention, gold CDs are available, XRCDs, etc. Is SACD the direction to look? are the current SACD issues of titles living up to the marketing hype/price? sonically? the key is in the software, availability and mastering.
musichead
I've read interview with Roger Sanders. He believes that red book CD format is perfect and vinyl is inherently flawed. He quotes Nyquist etc. He forgets that Nyquist theorem applies only to continuous waves and fails short with short samples especially of high frequency (like cymbals). SACD contains 4x more information and is collected with weak or no antialias filters making for better pulse response. It is difficult to compare two, since SACD players are often not the best redbook players.
CD is limited. Vinyl is inherently flawed.

There is a difference.

Not to say that CD is better sounding than vinyl necessarily. Just a lot easier to get to perform well up to its inherent format limits which perform pretty darn well, hence its longevity. Vinyl has no equivalent limits to the sky is the limit in theory but much harder for a layman end user to pull off correctly at any high level.
Musichead, heed ZD. SACD was/(is) just a blip on the radar.
It will imminently be out of date as hi-des downloads are going to provide stunning audio quality -- it's happening now. That's where you should be investigating. Don't waste money. People are buying and praising the OPPO 105D for many reasons, and it may help you with SACD's as well. I haven't used one but people I've come to know on this site are using it; and some pf them are used to listening to $25,000 CD players through excellent systems. P.S. They are already streaming SACD's at double speed- I think that says it all.
More of the classical labels have become committed to Hybrid SACD, so they will be here for a while. As for rock/pop, we all know the cd is dying a slow death.