Sony's new universal UHD player coming soon will play SACDs and ...DVD-Audio. The End Is Near? Sony Announced Their First True Universal Player! »
I suspect it will be made available by friendly installation companies to a wider audience. Sony likes keeping their distribution in check.
I own a Denon 5910ci and Cambridge Audio Azur 752BD so I haven't been looking too closely at universal machines but it is nice to see Sony on board with DVD-A but it's also tremendous that are continuing to support SACD by virtue of the fact that in 2017 this new Sony unit supports the format they invented almost 20 years ago. Long live SACD and DVD- Audio!
So why don't you sell me the SA-11s? I'll give you a NAD C546 and a Thorens TD-180 and thow in $300. ;^)
Naw, the Marantz actually makes CDs sound noticeably wonderful, so the D/A improves the sound of CD. Maybe its my old ears, but SACDs sound identical on both systems.
As of this post, there are 11,356 SACD titles listed ay hraudio.net. A total of 714 new SACD titles were added for 2016. In addition, a minimum of 165 new SACD titles were released in Hong Kong in 2016. Therefore, 714 + 165 = at least 879 new SACD were released in 2016, which represents a decrease in the number of new releases when compared to the approximately 950 new SACD titles in 2015.
Been monitoring progress. As of November 1st, 688 new SACD titles were released/announced for 2017. This number has swelled since 10 days ago as hraudio.net added unreleased titles from, for example, Buddy Holly and Murray Head. To be fair, the unreleased SACD titles announced by MoFi is also on hraudio.net. With 2 months to go in 2017, it is unlikely the total for 2017 match the total for the previous years. Therefore, this marks another year of decline for SACD releases....although the difference between the format's peak year and now is that big, given the overall decline of physical media and SACD being a niche format. Surprising that pop/rock SHM-SACD releases seem to have stopped. Next update in 2 months.
Even though the numbers are decreasing (and that's to be expected), it makes sense to me that SACD's have made a resurgence in the last 6-7 years since they fill a particular niche for audiophiles. So it's doing quite well for a format that was essentially pronounced DOA nearly 20 years ago now.
the 2 refuse to be laid to rest...SACD & VINYL...now cassettes are having a nudge...what's next 8-Tracks, DAT and DCC Cassette?..may as well bring 'em all back! LOL.
I am just happy that this lovely format is not completely dead. Yet. Let´s hope for more interesting releases next year! There were plenty in 2017.
In addition to CD and vinyl, new release to be available on cassette, minidisc, digital compact cassette, and Elcaset!! But no SACD?? Boohoo!!! This album is coming to nearly every audio format
DSD is merely a pain in the ass in 2017. It's a cure for a problem that no longer exists. Most masters created in DSD inevitably get converted to PCM at some point, a sane format that everything plays. DSD has awful noise above 30k, which must be dealt with by low-pass filters and other tricks. It also limits the resolution of the format; something PCM isn't limited by. Its counterpart media format, SACD, can't be read into a computer by basically anything a consumer owns (except an OG PS3). DVD-A also has no reason to exist in a year later than 2005, but at least it's just a copy-paste of the digital master, and is easily extracted if need be. Edit: blu-ray audio also falls into this... It's just encrypted PCM that can be extracted and manipulated.
