Is SACD a dead format?

The catalogs of the audiophile centric record/disc sellers I get seem to point in the direction that SACD is gaining some traction with the smaller audiophile labels. A good thing, I think, as a grassroots movement that turns out music that is looked to by audiophiles will keep at least a trickle of things coming for us.

Whatever happened to Sony and some others I have heard converting their CD stamping facilities to hybrid CD/SACD processing?

On the sad note, I noticed in Stereophile that Sony Music went to a conference with the intention of throwing their support behind DVD-A. Someone at Sony intervened at the last moment, and the music divsion backed off. If I were the head of Sony, my head honcho at Sony Music would be called into the office and read the riot act (including the proviso that a bloodletting would result the next time I heard even an inkling of such a thing).

I think SACD might remain a niche supported by the small labels that put out good jazz and classical music recordings. As a popular format it will not likely last.

After owning the Exemplar 2900 I questioned whether SACD was necessary given how good redbook CD sound was on the Exemplar 2900.

I think that someone will manufacture SACDs instead of Sony just 4 U audiophools:-)

The bottom line is the vast majority of people don't really care enough about sound quality to embrace something like SACD. Think about it. Where do most people listen to music? In their cars! SACD is superior to conventional CD, but I suspect less than 5% of the population has equipment good enough to appreciate the difference.

Sony should also be blamed for the way they marketed SACD. In the early days of the format most of what they did was reissue titles that already existed on CD, in many cases LP as well. SACD has the capacity where Sony could have combined two titles one on disc, for a one disc price. Instead they release Walter's Brahms Symphony #4 all by itself and charged $20 for it. Why didn't they put the third symphony on the disc as well? Why didn't they offer bargin pricing to get the format going? They sure weren't having to pay big licensing fees! The Mercury classical CD issues got it right. They added more music, in most cases, and didn't limit themselves to the exact same form as the original records. Why should they, CD has about thirty minutes more capacity. Mercury used it to their advantage and charged a low price. Sony could have filled up the entire disc with music and charge $12.99. Instead they chose to gouge the early converters.

An alleged dead format as in vinyl, last year sold more than SACD and DVD-A combined. We as Audiophiles kill our own formats. When CD first came out they sounded like crap and most of the Audiophiles were dumping turntables for pennies on the dollar. Twenty years later, some of them are re-purchasing analogue front ends. With todays technology state of the art will last months not years. Wait the Sonys of this world out, and don't jump on their ever changing format flavor of the month bandwagon and maybe some loyalty to the Audiophile community will be generated. Those of you that have invested in SACD or DVD-A, very shortly you will be able to purchase top of the line used SACD hardware for pennies.