SACD VS DVD-AUDIO

It's amazing to me so much confusion about these formats still exist. DSD,aka SACD,returns to multibit when dithered. Therefore only new recordings offer the advantages of true DSD. How many new discs are there? Granted just remastering anything into multichannel is more of a gimick than an Audiophile solution. Enter AIX records. Native resolution recordings all of new performances. Not recorded as gimick but as natural means of recovering lost ques from live recordings. Again at CES AIX will share with Meridian and Piega showing the true potential of multichannel DVD-A in it's purest form. Panasonic will also be displaying it's latest DVD-A car system. All this in room 1401 at Alexis Park .
To quote from Scott Wilkinson of Stereophile Guide to Home Theater, October 2003 from the HE2003 report. "A Meridian 800 DVD-A player pumped data into an 861 processor, which was connected to a Butler 5150 5-channel power amp feeding five Piega P-8 speakers; the processor was also connected to a Piega subwoofer. The results were magnificant,dispelling any doubt that DVD-A can sound every bit as good as SACD. "He also called it "one of the best sounds at the show." The only error in his writing is the speakers were C-8 ltd.
We would like to invite all show attendees to visit and gather your impressions of this format on a true Audiophile System. Makes for some good Forum after the show.

My 2 cents...

Best isn't always what the "market" selects for survival. Remember the era of the beta vs. vhs wars... beta was technically superior but the limited supply of titles and poor marketing doomed it to extinction. I fear that DVD-a although superior may suffer the same fate at the hands of skilled marketers. They are more interested in cranking out a product with "mass appeal" than catering to those of us that can really tell the difference.

As in the vhs vs. beta war, I think that the number of software titles will certainly dictate the winner. Until a victor is chosen, I'm going to sit this one out until the dust settles.

The problem with those sales figures, is that SACD isn't the reason they are selling. In fact, hard to even find SACD label on any of them. I would handily bet 90% plus sold aren't being used on sacd players.

Tireguy,

I'll admit that you've caught me on a point that can be argued a number of ways. As we all know, audio equipment with the best technical specifications isn't always the gear that sounds the best. I was stating that DVDa was better based on a technical stanpoint and may not legitimately be the best sounding format in many personal situations. I'll agree that comparing formats can be ambiguous when left to the imperfect science of determining "listening pleasure" and just give you a rundown of the technical specs that I found during some of my own searches.

Check out http://www.techtronics.com/uk/shop/600-dvd-audio-vs-sacd.html for some technical information. The posts below the tech-specs also seem to show that listening pleasure doesn't necesarily equate to specs. There seems to be quite a war starting about these formats. May be the newest VHS - Beta war!

I'll just chart the data here as well.
Bits: CD = 16 (typically), SACD = 20? DVDa = 16-24; basically a wash here.

Playback Frequency range (kHz): CD = 20, SACD = 100, DVDa = 48 in 6 channel, 96 in 2; again a wash... after 20kHz, who cares (except maybe our dogs). I doubt I can hear well above 12kHz as an ex-rock musician.

Now it gets interesting:
S/N (dB): CD = 96, SACD = 120, DVDa = 144.

Data Rate (Mb/s): CD = 1.41, SACD = 2.8, DVDa = 9.6

Storage Capacity (Gb): CD = 0.65, SACD = 4.7 (single layer), DVDa = 4.7 (single), 8.5 (Dual)

I hope this helps... I STRONGLY recommend auditioning both formats if you are torn rather than going with specs. Of course the number of available titles will probably dictate the winner, as I said in an earlier post.