What happened with the SACD format?

I never had even one SACD which sounded close to vinyl. None of them were able to create an illusion to be part of a live recording. Most of them are lifeless and boring....
The best CD's - by far - are theXRCD24 from JVC Japan. With an intelligent digital design, EMMLabs for example, you are indeed very close to the real thing. Anything else is still the same wot like the last 20 years ...

Thankfully, it is alive and well. Kudos to Japan for keeping the torch burning. Amazon, Ebay, and other outlets offer the SACD disc(s). The newer generation via SHM are also avail.

Wow, so many audio snobs, saddening to see/read.

There are great discs of all types, it all comes down to recording, mastering and production quality. I too am a huge XRCD fan of all types including as of late, the latest K2HD variants and all the XRCD24s out there. There are also outstanding RBCD examples out there from Stockfisch, Venus Records, etc...that like many of my SACDs are as close as I care to get to vinyl and very good to listen too....when you could get them, most DVDA's were also quite stunning.

As an aside, there are also lifeless, boring, poorly recorded, poorly manufactured discs of all types (and vinyl examples as well). I prefer to
stay out of the religious and other debates and chase music that I love and simply listen to it :-)

Syntax,

I can agree with you to some point as nothing beats my vinyl setup so far - Kuzma Stabi M + Kuzma 4Point + Dynavector XV-1s + my own phonostage.

However, I personally find many SACDs sounding much closer to it compared to XRCDs. The latter are sort of running hot, in my experience.

Of course, as many vinyl lovers would agree, it is very hard to match the high frequency extension of the vinyl, so may be this is the reason XRCDs sound more "lively" to you, but that is not all. :-)

Best wishes,
Alex Peychev
APL Hi-Fi