SACD on its way out?

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.

hi Rex,
thanks for the info.
first of all, I actually own a SACD player - and like it...
my post reflected conversations I've had with people in the recording biz, not my personal experience, so I think I should explain what I think I'm hearing from them:
with a minimal investment, a person can now record in high-rez format and make discs that a DVD player can play back. my guess then is that these aren't technically DVD-A's at all, but something else entirely. so, to amend my prediction, I'm still predicting the demise of SACD, but it's not in favor of DVD-A, but copy-able, high-rez (using DVD copying technology...), DVD-player-playable discs.

You can use recordable DVDs and lay down stereo LPCM tracks up to 24/96k, which is certainly "high-rez." One potential problem with this is that most consumer-grade DVD-V players won't process 24/96k, so the player does a down-rez to 24/48k. Still "high-rez," but...

The DVD-V spec does not allow for hi-rez lossless multichannel. For the recording industry, this does not seem to be a problem. The recording industry has discovered that many people think that 5.1 surround sound in Dolby Digital is better than CD-quality sound (especially since they've been led to believe that MP3 is "CD-quality").

As to the demise of SACD in favor of a copyable hi-rez format, again I would not bet on your prediction. One of the primary reasons the record companies adopted SACD and DVD-A and now Dualdisc is because all three formats offer copy protection of hi-rez data (and Dualdisc also allows the CD side to be copy-protected as well).