Death Knell for SACD?

Can someone out there expound on or verify this rumor?

The following recent quote is from a well-known (and trusted) audio publication:

I for one would rather not sink my hard-earned money into a technology or format that is going away ...

Thanks.

 

Slumping sales due to a lack of new releases? Who could've figured that one out?








BTW, it's death KNELL.

 

At the very worst it'll remain a niche format...no need to ditch it, and there's no indication of total abandonment, either.

BTW, that's death knell...and no, I'm not gonna bury my SACD collection at the grassy knoll....

 

Agree. SACD is still a lot of fun. Just because there's nothing new coming, it doesn't mean the format's no good and you can't enjoy it.

The software for SACD will certainly become a collectors variety.

 

That's a ridiculous article. Sony is known for it's continued backing of formats it has originated, not for precipitously pulling the plug (e.g. betamax, mini disk, etc).

 

Disagree with Mickster that SONY wont pull the plug on SACD. They will, in a heartbeat. My friend works at SONY and he tells me SACD is on its last gasp. SONY is looking to sell multimedia that will play on PCs and DVD players.


Dont forget the following when talking about Sony and DSD:

The money SONY spent on DSD research was NOT for selling music disks. It was to archive the Columbia and Epic Records music catalog to digital to preserve it for future sales. At the time, the thought was to develop an "as good sounding as analog" archiving system to put EVERY analog tape on Digital media. At that point, SONY was going to WIPE the analog tapes clean and sell them for scrap, and reduce their storage costs by 80%. Yes, they were going to scrap the reel to reels.
Digital tape cartridges were/are about 80% smaller than reel to reel tapes, especially those huge 2 inch tapes. Subsequent management changes had a change of heart, and it was decided to keep the analog tapes after conversion to digital.

The SACD disks came about as an attempt to launch a new consumer product at a time when there wasnt anything new. Unfortunetly, fromn the start, SACDS were priced wrong. People went into their local Tower store and saw Elton John Cds for 8.99 and SACDs for 19.99....for the exact same album. Guess which they bought?

Sony should have used the early SACD hybrids as loss leaders to push the format. The fact that they did not shows the lack of faith they had in the acceptance of Hi Res. They also never offered discounts on SONY SACD players if one bought the software. That, IMHO was a HUGE mistake. Once one has the hardware, one feels almost obligated to buy the software.

Oh well, I'm sure SONY will push Blu-Ray as the next big format. knowing them, however, they will leave 70% of the space on the disks empty.

I'ts hard being a music fan in this day and age.

 

Heck, even if the discs dry up, I still have a carosuel because of it.

 

I'm not trying to be overly argumentative, but this is misleading. There wasn't even an Elton John title available on SACD until GYBR was released in late 2003. When GYBR finally was issued, it was a 2-disc set available for about $20 at a lot of places (and Best Buy's pricing error seemed to result in a lot of people getting the 2-SACD set with the bonus dvd-video for only $20).

I agree that SACD's were launched with a high price, but Elton titles weren't what people were seeing when they went to their local music store.

 

As for Sony abandoning the SACD format, it does seem like their software side of the house could be abandoning the format but the hardware side of their business keeps producing both ES and regular line players, both with dvd-video capability and without. I think it would be hard to make the argument that the entire Sony Corporation is abandoning the format when they keep releasing new models on which the discs can be played.

 

Its 2005, and 3 years running. Doomsday for sacd. Bah bumbug
As far as I can tell. DVD-A lost. Dualdiscs will lose also.
And SACD will chug along. Classical has a lot of titles in sacd. And I like classical a lot better with sacd surround.

For god sakes, Sony still sells minidiscs.....they still sell beta tapes to businesses.
They don't ditch formats. SACD still looks promising to me. Warner will give up and start releasing in SACD. As long as Universal is committed, things are looking a-ok to me.