XRCD vs. SACD anyone?

I was going to get a SACD, but I agree with the above posts. 16 bit has plenty of kick in it, if done with love and respect for the music. Wait and see. Buy some DCC and MoFi cd's, you'll love them! Then you'll see what a difference mastering really makes. BTW, I used to laugh at these gold cd's. Guess the laugh was on me!

btw, AVOID last year's Capitol 'remastering 'of Pink Floyd and Rush. What a disappointment. Now, if the story of MoFi resurecting and releasing their catalog on SACD, that'd be another story.

KP

Can I throw another spanner in the works and ask where does HDCD fit in the scenario?
I've noticed a lot of Audiogoners mention HDCD discs as amongst their favourites................

Ben

HDCD can be SO much better than redbook, & for the same priced discs! Ben you've just got to try it, I have some of the same material on both redbook & HDCD; the latter is simply amazing. Pacific Microsonics is still very much in the fray, & I read that it has recently been adopted as a standard PC audio format.
I'd sure like to do a shootout of the same material on XRCD vs. HDCD - now *that* would really be interesting. From what I've read & heard about XRCD, I really need to get myself some of those discs - they sure sounded good at the show although there were no direct comparisons being demo'd. No wait, there was one shootout going on in a room comparing it to analog. I don't remember the specifics of the results but it's definitely a viable approach. SACD does sound good too, but the value for dollar just isn't there IMO.

bob: hdcd is just another flavor of redbook, not a seperate format. it is incompatible with upsampling dacs, that work on ALL cd's. moreover, hdcd was never adopted by a number of the big guns in the highend for a whole variety of reasons. -cfb

I think Pacific Microsonics (HDCD) was purchased by Bill Gates, so it will probably be part of Windows XP (Version 2) for doing your own multimedia on your computer.