On a sidenote, the Who's Tommy sounds amazing on SACD (they cleaned up and brought Keith's drumming out moreso than any previous release)

This is waaaaay too simplified. One must also take into account how BITS each of those samples uses:

CD == 44,000*16 == 704 kbit/s per channel
DVDA== 192,000*24 == 4600 kbit/s per channel
SACD==2,000,000*1 == 2000 kbit/s per channel

Thus in terms of raw data captured, the DVD-Audio has more than the SACD. I don’t know if that means DVD-A sounds better? I only know that there are more bits captured than the SACD.

>>>”It was obvious from the start that DCC would go
>>>nowhere, and it indeed died shortly afterwards.
>>>Minidisc got a bit further, but never got much success.”<<<

Why is it it obvious that Digital Compact Cassette would fail? To me it seems like an obvious upgrade….. you can continue using your 1000+ library of analog cassettes, rather than throw them away, and enjoy better sound with digital upgrades.

I like backwards-compatibility.

DAT came before these and was the first possibility to digital record sound in a CD quality (actually just above).

Remember in those days the recordable CD had not yet been invented by Philips and a single CD was 3-5 times larger than harddisk capacity. Therefore DAT had a chance. But the chance was blown by very expensive DAT tape decks and 1-time copy DRM.

A normal CD uses 16 bit sound levels – the sound wave can be any of 65536 levels, and that level is measured at 40-something kilohertz. If you use one bit, but a much higher sampling frequency, you can get the same effect, and SACD goes higher again. Any ugly effects of this switching (dithering) happens at frequencies way beyond what your ear can hear, but you would see them on an oscilloscope.

I’m talking about the DAT (Digital Audio Tape) vs the Mini-Disc, the exact same story back then; two rivaling formats in a market where CDs already dominated and satisfied the needs for the average consumer and beyond; (and Cassette tapes were still common enough to market a tape based format). And again there were two formats totally uncalled for and therefore, mostly ignored.

The only plus of those formats is that they allowed digital audio recording in a time when analog mix tapes were still the way to go; CD burners were unheard of, and thus some people found them appealing as a private recording, primary from their CD collection.

I guess that third is the charm, right? To all consumer electronics companies: please learn from the past and stop doing this to your customers.

CD – 44 thousand samples every second (44,000)
DVD A – 96 to 192 thousand samples every second (192,000)
SACD – 2 million samples every second (2,000,000)

To me, the SACD is far and away the best sounding.

These are only the latest two of the many new audio formats that have failed in the 25 years since the cd was introduced. The early 1990s saw the format war between DCC, DAT, and Minidisc – a war that nobody won, since consumers refused to move to the new digital formats from the analog cd

Keylimesoda: You’re right about SACD playback over the PS3 analog ports, but I didn’t mention those because that only supports stereo output. Thanks for the correction! HDMI is still the only way to get the full benefits of SACD from the PS3 though.

Vex: I didn’t mean to offend anybody, but you have to admit, far fewer in the general public know about these formats than they did about HD DVD and Bluray when that war started out. It’s the fault of the manufacturers who never really publicized DVD A or SACD.

PS3Owner and Greg: You’re right about those stats, I think I just looked up the wrong article when trying to source that information. I was just a kid in the 80s, so I didn’t have any first-hand knowledge ;)

DVD-A Owner: I’m in total agreement with you. With the music companies focusing on loudness in CD quality, and a public ignorant to how that ruins their music, there’s little chance we’ll see either of these formats truly take off…

First off, the cd player wasn’t even introduced in the US until 1983 (It had been introduced abroad a year earlier) By 1986, people were buying 3 million players and 53 million discs a year. By 1990, worldwide disc sales were approaching one billion a year.

The CD player was, to quote a 1985 Time Magazine article, “the fastest selling machine in home electronics history.”

Now, the new convenient music format is the mp3 (or aac, or wma, or whatever), and so that’s where the standard consumer goes. He/she lacks the inclination to buy the expensive audio equipment it takes to hear the difference, because he/she is perfectly happy with the way things are now. It takes a real audiophile (read: snob) to go out of their way.

So frankly I don’t think either of these formats will ever gain ground. Higher definition audio will only come when it is convenient as an mp3 and fits on an nth generation iPod.