Re: VHS formats & SACD

[DorianLS@aol.com]

Dear John,

I was interested in your commends about Super Audio CD but dismayed by the
prohibitive cost of the units.  Why should they be so expensive?  DVD is now
very reasonable.  Why doesn't the next generation of musical recordings not
simply use the DVD audio format?  With all the additional space for
information on a DVD disk the quality of sound should be impressively
superior to the current musical CD.  And DVD disk players also play CDs in
most cases, so there would not be a problem of making one's current CD's
obsolete.  It sounds to me like a development that is becoming overdue.  Does
anyone know what is anticipated for the immediate future (the next couple of
years) in musical recording formats?  I'd certainly like to see some
improvement in sound and it certainly appears within reach technicologically.
  Dorian

<< .... I have heard two different demo presentations on SACD, one by Telarc
and one by Sony.  The demos were very impressive (particularly the Telarc
one).   Telarc had set their demo up so that it was possible to switch fairly
quickly between listening to the red book (standard) CD playback vs. the
Super Audio CD and the differences were astounding.  Despite the fact that we
were listening in a very
 non-critical space (actually a medium-sized lecture room) I believe that
*every* listener there heard quite a dramatic difference between the two
formats.  It was
 not subtle and the SACD sounded really amazing.

 Whether SACD takes off or not in the consumer market is another question.
 It's still only a two-channel format and the hardware and software used in
 its creation is still quite expensive.  Hopefully we will have truly
 *universal* DVD players soon that will allow DVD-V, DVD-A, SACD, standard CD,
 DTS decoding, etc.  Right now, I believe that the SACD players are still
 up around the $3k (US) range and this will also work against mainstream
 market acceptance of the format in the short term.  How many of your
 friends would be willing to spend $3k on what is essentially a CD player
 upgrade (albeit a pretty impressive one)?  >>