What after the old CD player? CDP, SACD or DVD-a?

If you don't have money to burn right now, I'd hold off for another year or three and wait for universal players to become standard (and improved by the audiophile manufacturers, not the large corporate manufacturers). They exist now, but there aren't many and I don't think any of them are all that great in their stock form. DVD-A and SACD seem to be split down the middle. There are different companies releasing albums for both formats, but it doesn't seem like many companies release both...they choose one or the other. Why buy a player now and limit yourself to half of the hi-res releases when you can wait a few year and buy a good player that can play CD, DVD, DVD-A, and SACD. I really believe universal players need to become the norm if any of those formats expect to survive and prosper in the long term, and yeah...hybrid discs would also be a very smart move on the part of the labels too.

I got a Sony DVP 9000ES (DVD, CD, SACD) player. In my system redbook CD's can sound very good. However, SACD's can add another 15% giggle and grin factor (IMHO). For both CD and SACD I am at the mercy of the recording. Good recordings sound good, lesser recordings are a waste of time and money.

You can get a "good" SACD/CD/DVD player starting around $600 street. Go for it.

Well mono vinyl lasted perhaps 40 years (1920's to 1960's), stereo vinyl 30 years (1960's to 1990's, say), stereo CDs 20 years (late 80's - now), multi-channel audio CDs ? years. But isn't there a trend here (somewhat forced by me and ignoring reel-to-reel,8 track, and cassettes) ? It seems that the velocity of turnover of formats has accelerated as the manufacturers 'improve' their product cycles. Problem is that the consumer is getting confused. 'Cause now we have to decide Audio vs. Audio visual (home theater). I'd suggest there's more value-add to the consumer with adding visuals than adding additional channels. But with the home theater you get both, with somewhat reduced audio quality (remember home theater has had it's format problems what with VHS, Beta, Laser Disk, DVD).

But any way you look at it have moving parts in a player to pick up digital signals is dumb. DUMB. There will be a day when you either can download content or purchase it on a static memory card. Main problems will be identifying the content in your library, and fixing a format so we can 'invest' in audiophile players. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Oh well. I needed to rant about this 'cause I just went red book 'cause I would have to 'upgrade' my Pre-amp/processor to do multi-channel pass through, and it's only 3 months old. Why can't the manufactures of players do a digital signal so we can software upgrade our processors to use the new format ? B*st*rds !

My money is on neither SACD or DVD-A making it. By making it, I mean getting to the point where all new releases appear in that format (at which point a substantial chunk of the back catalog will be remastered for the format as well). The best music (not the same as the best sound) is on CD today, and will be until it is replaced by a format-flexible universal download system.

An analogy ?

Vinyl transitioned from 78s to 33s. Perhaps that's all that's going on with CDs. Transitioning from low density, 2 channel, red book to multi-channel higher density something. So if we look back we find that the players quickly responded to play both formats (as well as 45s)until 78s were fully superceded. Strikes me that this will happen with digital disk players too. There appears to be a convergence on the physical format, now the engineers need to get the information off the disk and into the system.

Meanwhile we, as consumers, can be bleeding edge and respond to every format change or wait. But someone has to buy into a given format, otherwise it will be killed rapidly. And there's nothing compelling for mass consumers to adopt DVD-A or SACD vs red book CD. The content is more expensive, rare, and duplicated on regular CD. The stuff will sound about the same on a 'normal' audio system. So it's only engineers and audiophiles who care about the nuances of improvements of one format over another. So we wait for a more compelling format. One with a higher value-add for mass consumers. Unless DVD is it. For now.