SACD vs DVD AUDIO

Obviously imports. This occurs with CDs too - look around the CD racks and you will find imported CDs from Europe and Japan priced at double the average.

Most SACDs are between 15 and 19 dollars; classical slightly higher.

There does appear to be a hiatus regarding Sony's SACD releases, but not so with Universal, Telarc, PentaTone and so forth; and new smaller labels releasing SACDs seem to spring up regularly. There are SACDs released on 268 different labels.

268!! Life support? I think not.

 

Seems to me that Warner is making an effort to gain audiophile market share by fighting back on the Redbook front considering the far superior re-masters they have been releasing recently. Not a bad strategy and all of us are in a win situation if so. Just a thought....

 

Well put Geoff!

I do agree with Mikey that some of the SACD pricing out there is insane. There are a bunch of $31 MoFis sitting idle at the Tower in my neighborhood...

I'm not convinced DualDisc will be hirez. It seems a lot of the early run was 48k. I don't get excited unless I see 96k or 88k (the rare format I actually record in).

 

Khorn, you may be right but wouldn't a better win be for Warner to also release some DVDAs so we get the hirez layer?

 

Hi Khorn,

Whatever ups the bar is good for all!

Take care,
Jeffrey

 

Maybe they're all early DVD-As... but these have distinctly different mixes:

Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies
Deep Purple - Machine Head
The Doors - LA Woman
Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

The only disc that sounds like the original mix is Chicago, and that one has a menu selection for Dolby Digital Stereo or 5.1 Surround.

I've hesitated buying more until I go multi-channel.

 

I am almost positive that the Doors LA Woman and Deep Purple's Machine Head use the original stereo mixes. And that the Chicago DVD-Audio's have stereo remixes.

 

Some Will and Some Won't

I don't believe that this feature/function/operation is the same in all players. I have had three different units over the past couple of years and though I cannot remember which player (Pioneer DV-47a, Sony DVD 999ES, Denon DVD2900) would do this and which would not, I know that they were different in how they handle what you described.

 

I am sure that this is a PLAYER function, not a disc function, as every DVD-A I have put in my Acura player starts up and plays perfectly, and there is obviously no option to view a menu to select the group. A simple press of a couple of buttons does that, no video at all. So all of the anti-video hoopla is strictly a hardware thing.

I think the first sign of HiRez distress came from Blue Note, when they did not release the new Norah Jones album in SACD. To me, that was a very bad sign. Here is a title that was guaranteed to sell well, yet no SACD depite her debut album from then an unknown artist, available on SACD.

Same with DVD-A. In the prior years, we got Fleetwood Mac's "Say You Will", and album that eventually tanked, yet we got a DVD-A. However, the other catalog FM titles are sitting there with Jackson Browne and others waiting for release.

It's not format specific, it's not good. If DualDisc can get this ball rolling again, more power to them. Even though I hate the concept and prefer a package like the Flaming Lips DVD-A/CD, I'll take the DD if it gets some of these mothballed titles out there.

And lastly, THANKS AGAIN TO UNIVERSAL!!!

 

Agreed. A remarkable decision which reinforced in my mind the truth behind the strategy of the person in charge of Blue Note. He cares only about $$$$. Sad.

 

Actually, the latest Norah Jones album has not sold particularly well--at least not compared to her first album. Frankly, it's amazing that BN released any SACDs at all. I think it's totally arbitrary to consider their decision to hold off indefinitely on a second batch of SACDs as "the first sign of high res distress". The real problem is the changing market, the push for MP3 and CD-R and resulting downfall of record companies. Their staff is slashed, their budget is slashed and now they are being asked to choose a next-generation format to CD? Not until they start raking in big bucks somehow.

 

I don't see hirez in "distress", I think it's just a solid niche format that has lost a little bit of momentum due to the Harry Fox royalty battle.

All in all, I think hirez is doing well and we are between major title announcements.