SACD on its way out?

I believe dual disc has actually been the final death-knell for DVDA; I've cringed over and over again as DVDA cheerleaders on another web-site have discovered that the sprinkling of dual disc new releases, (when not delayed), has chosen to use the real estate on the CDs for purposes other than DVDA. SACD, though targeting a specific listener, will always have the hi-rez that this crowd wants. Ironically, I would have wondered if SACD was dying two years ago, but now 60+ labels have taken the ball and run with it. It's never going to be adopted by the teenie boppers, and it does very little to help masters with PCM origins, (still and improvement), but if you like acoustic music of whatever type, you are in for a treat.

Hi Musicslug - a couple of corrections:

First of all, a high-resolution master is not "dithered" down to 16/44.1 Redbook, it is "decimated." Dither in the digital context is the process of deliberately adding noise to the digital signal. Decimation is the down-rez process used to make a RB-compatible dataset from a higher-resolution dataset.

Secondly - the actual DVD-A data, which is MLP-encoded PCM, is, contrary to your assertion, NOT playable on any DVD player. DVD-Audio data is only playable on a DVD-Audio player. Many pre-recorded DVD-Audio discs are backward compatible with standard DVD-V players, because the discs also include Dolby Digital data and/or lower-resolution LPCM in addition to the DVD-A data. The backward-compatibility is DVD-V, not DVD-A.

So, it would be rather pointless to record something in DVD-A format if you don't have a DVD-A player on which to play it back.

I wouldn't bet any money on your prediction of DVD-A momentum. Seems to me that DVD-A is essentially dead in the water at this point.

You got it Rex

I believe dual disc has actually been the final death-knell for DVDA

Boy, I would think DVD-A already has enough confused format offerings. Hopefully they will get their act together and make sure everything is clearly marked on the front covers.

I got my hands on one of those dual discs a few weeks ago. First of all, they are expensive; about $30.00. The disc would not play in the truck, on my Xindak SACD2, in any of my 4 computers or a philips 963SA. However, it did play on an old sony DVD player that I use for whole house background music. Go figure.