CrunchGear

Please keep in mind that Sony speakers are hardly high-end audio. Although only audiophiles will really get into a big argument about it, I’d recommend Paradigm as a great speaker of choice for an excellent price.

I bought an OPPO DV-981HD for the 1080p DVD upconversion capability, and I saw that it can also can play SACD (& DVD Audio), but I’ve never really gave much thought to it, to be honest. They *may* sound better than the 384 kbps MP3s I usually buy, but I can copy/move/rip/burn my MP3s wherever/whenever I want. Can’t say the same about SACDs.

I’d throw a few in a “Wish List” for someone else to buy for me, but I doubt I’d buy one for myself, and judging from the selection of titles, there very well may be just a few I’d want:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD

“As of January 2007, there have been over 4,000 SACD releases, a little over half of which appear to be classical. Jazz appears to have fewer releases, and popular music, mainly remastered previously released albums, appears to have even fewer releases than Jazz.”

Although, Dark Side of the Moon in 5.1 intrigues me…….

What other formats can the SACD player accommodate?

I’m rather clueless about the SACD players,
but (IMHO) ‘they’ certainly would sell more of these players if they
could play CDs/DVD’s with AAC/MP4, MP3s, and WMA files on them.

Include a (21?)-in-one card reader
(or a USB 2.0 port to plug-in your own card reader or USB Flash Drive)
and you have a real nice replacement for your old CD player!

How about a ‘rip to the USB 2.0 port’ capability as well?

None of the aforementioned would drive the price that much higher, really.

Marc: you don’t look for SACD players, you look for CD/DVD players that can handle SACD format.

For example, the OPPO I mentioned in my previous post can play “regular” DVDs (and upconvert them to 1080p), DVD & CD (+/-R/W, DL), DVD Audio discs, SACD, HDCD (whatever that is), Kodak Picture Discs, MP3, WMA, DivX, Xvid, and on & on & on… $229

http://www.oppodigital.com/dv981hd/dv981hd_features.html

One of the great experiences in listening to SACD or DVD-audio is the 5.1 surround sound. However, most home theater system do no justice to real 5.1 music. Most home theater systems use two good main L R speakers or perhaps a good center speaker. But the rear channels usually just use crappy speakers because in movies, the rear speakers are usully used for occasional sound effects like explosion, background chats etc. When real 5.1 music on SACD or DVD-audio is played, sometimes music and vocals can go to all speakers. So unless you invest on good quality speakers equally on all 5 channels, the sound will not come out right.

I would say you should upgrade the rear channel speakers and your 5.1 receiver before buying the disc players.

Perhaps there are more audiophiles in Asia, I notice that the Asian market release their music on SACD much much much more than the US music industry. In the US, MP3 is the main thing. The music producers do not need to do much when the music is to be listened through tiny ear buds.

On most low end home theater systems, the center speaker is only good for dialogs and the rear speakers are only good for bacground noise. They are never good enough for SACD nor DVD-audio.

Scott, you pointed out the only reason why I haven’t really thought too much about SACDs: lack of classical, and more importantly, jazz releases.

I listen to my fair share of “the music of the times”, but when it comes to music whose quality really concerns me, SACDs are lacking in numbers. Nuts.

I just bought a PS3 and was disheartened to realize that in order to get SACD playback you NEED to use HDMI…Toslink Optical doesn’t cut it. Is this the case for stand-alone SACD decks?

I have a sony dvd player with SACD capability and toslink optical doesn’t work for me either. No biggie, but I was kind of surprised.

I’ve been on this for a while, most DVD players now play either DVD-Audio or SACD; both in many cases. My old Toshiba plays both, my Oppo (older than the one mentioned above) plays only DVD-Audio.

In my experience, I don’t see either SACD or DVD-Audio as the superior format, they’re both good.

Some attributes of note for each:

SACD: compatible with a standard CD player… play it in the car… but that will have no advantage in sound over a standard CD.

DVD-Audio: Usually includes videos and normal dvd-audio 5.1 mix. THIS IS NOT as good as the high bitrate mix that is also included, FYI! Also normally includes videos. DualDisc versions has a standard CD of the release on the flipside, but some players (none of mine) apparently have problems with this..

OF NOTE: All Creative Audio cards for the PC, from Audigy 2 and beyond (including Xtigy) will decode DVD-Audio discs nicely.

Scott, no offense, but 384kbps MP3s are shiite compared to DVD-Audio and SACD. Give it a try. Dark Side of the Moon in 5.1 is something you owe yourself to experience. Mastered from the original quadrophonic recordings, you’ll hear things you’ve never heard before, and they’ll sound like they’re in the room with you.

There is also a bootleg of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here in 4.1 on the net… mastered from the original quadrophonic recordings. Sure, I’d buy a legit release of this when it becomes available, but for now there is an alternative.

The Flaming Lips DVD-Audios are also highly recommended.

Don’t bother with the SACD of Dark Side Of The Moon. Yeah, it’s decent, but if you want to be blown away, you need to download the Ultimate DSOTM 4.1 DVDA. Search the torrent sites. You’ll find it. It’s not a sanctioned or probably even a legal mix, but it was made from the original master tapes of DSOTM, and it the most incredibly eye opening version of the album I have ever heard. It is nothing short of amazing.

Both DVD-Audio and SACD required you to use the 6-channel inputs and not your decoder [Coax or Toslink] to be sure you couldn’t rip a digital track of such quality since HDCP wasn’t around as a trusted container. HDCP over HDMI offers that security so I think as more amps handle HDMI/HDCP natively the more SACD/DVD-A will be adopted. [e.g the PS3 echoing the comment above]

For me, the major advantage of DVD-A over SACD is that DVD-A can be ripped to hi-res digital audio with the proper software, whereas SACD cannot.

My Denon DVD-1920 player also handles SACD’s.

The Dark Side of the Moon SACD is nothing less than incredible. I was stunned to find stuff that I had never heard before in this “evergreen” CD. Amazingly, I’ve probably listend to Dark Side of the Moon more than 500 times in the past 30 years.

But this SACD yielded an entirely new, exciting listening experience.

LM

As a self proclaimed tweak (2 full systems in the house, one pure 2 channel high end and one multi channel mid-line) - here’s why you want SACD, DVD-audio and DTS music disks - plain and simple, they contain more data. And there is a marked difference once you get away for the basic SONY gear and spend a few more $$ on good amplification and speakers. Best bang for the buck in speakers I’ve seen in a number of years is Monitor Audio out of the UK (monitoraudio.co.uk) - combined with, say, Yamaha amplification, you will spend not much more than the sony stuff and be far happier. btw…..I have the 5.1 of Dark Side as well as some Paul GIlbert dts, Alan Parson’s Gaudi - and it is amazing!

oooppppssss…..forgot - most systems support toslink for output provided you have the right decoding gear - otherwise, use the integrated 5.1 output of the player

I’ve had a DVD-Audio player for years now and the only problem is the smaller selection of music. One guy here pointed out that you should make sure you have high quality speakers for all 5.1 channels which is definitely the case. The other thing you should get an idea of is that for your music to come naturally at you from 5.1 channels, it has to have been recorded with mics situated in the same 5.1 physical orientation. I seriously doubt that Pink Floyd dark side of the moon would have been recorded this way. Obviously, the publisher would take the original tracks and run them through a processor to “simulate” the 5.1. Some people may not care, but I personally like to hear the music as close to the natural sound as possible so “processing” by my amplifier silicon or by the publisher doesn’t interest me.
The best reason to get a DVD-A or SACD player is when you find the recordings that make you feel as though you’re sitting in front of the musicians.

I would beg to differ that $400.00 worth of audio equipment in the path between your audio data source and your ears would allow you to tell much of a difference. Many or all of the titles you mentioned were originally recorded on multi track analog tape.
The reason CDs and SACDs sound better than the old vinyl is the much wider dynamic range available. Individual tape tracks or frequency bands can be dynamicaly enhanced and digitally “cleaned” to sound different and hopefully better than the previously rendered version.

Yes, TOSLINK does not have enough bandwidth to handle the uncompressed format. I use a six piece analog cable into my receiver from a Sony DVD/SACD 5 disc player. It is essential that your receiver either handle bass management via the analog source (the Harman Kardon 745 I use does) or your player handle it. For details on this, go to avsforum.com.
BTW, my two cents, I love SACD, but it is a dead format. We seem to want worse quality via 128K MP3s, not better. The market has spoken.

the truth! mentions something EXTREMELY important… SACD came around before digital audio connectors were standard… so you really only have two options for connectivity: multi-channel analog connection (six discrete connectors) or HDMI for full-bandwidth digital transfer… if you don’t use one of those two, you aren’t actually experiencing SACD — DVD audio, on the other hand, will work over a fiber optic connection.

of course, then you have to be aware that many many surround sound receivers do not have multi-channel input, nor do they have HDMI processing (even if they do have HDMI switching) …audiophile audio is not an area to tread into lightly

MusicGiants ( http://www.musicgiants.com ) offers SACD and 5.1 Surround Audio in downloadable digital files. You will need big pipes as the files are huge compared to compressed MP3s, but the sound quality is amazing.

What ever happened to SATD or super audio tapes. Come on now, when I here that a guy tells me that his super audio tape is better than CD. Now its gonna be SACD thats better than all the rest.

Please keep in mind that he thinks Rock N Roll is a good album. Even Ryan Adams says, “yah what was I thinking with that one.”

I happen to have some very expensive audio components and spent a ton of money on an SACD capable player. I have a couple of CD and SACDs from the same title. I’ve found that in order to hear the improvement you really have to compare back to back. The CD format itself is capable of very high sound quality. What hurts sounds quality more than anything are the modern production techniques of applying too much compression, e.g. RHCP Californication, U2, or any rap album.

SACD is nothing more than a way to continue license revenue from the soon-to-be or maybe no-longer-copyrighted Red Book CD standard.

I happen to have some very expensive audio components and spent a ton of money on an SACD capable player. I have a couple of CD and SACDs from the same title. I’ve found that in order to hear the improvement you really have to compare back to back. The CD format itself is capable of very high sound quality. What hurts sounds quality more than anything are the modern production techniques of applying too much compression, e.g. RHCP Californication, U2, or any rap album.

SACD is nothing more than a way to continue license revenue from the soon-to-be or maybe no-longer-copyrighted Red Book CD standard.

And 5.1 works for movies but is useless for music, IMO.

The whole Genesis catalog is being released in Multichannel SACD, 2 Channel PCM, Digital Dolby 5.1 and DTS 5.1 starting in March 2007 through March 2008. They have been working on this since 2003. It will be a 2 Disc set with audio and video content. Finally, A Lamb Lies Down On Broadway in SACD.

i have been listening to SACDs for a long time and they are about as close as you can get to vinyl records. only a few places have a decent selection, like Acoustic Sounds. Once you start hearing music in 5.1, you won’t wanna go back.

Just for some clarification, DVD-Audio has been replaced by the DualDisc format. New releases should not be happening anymore.

I’ve been saying for years now, that if the traditional music industry wants to compete with mp3s they need to offer the consumer more value for their money. CDs are 25 year old digital technology and have always sounded terrible. MP3s are worse. DVD has become cheap. Imagine the sound quality that could be had from an album using all 4GB of space on a DVD. I expect it may even approach the quality of vinyl. Many people won’t be willing to download that 4GB for 60-90 minutes of audio. This is where the industry could have a chance to do something very positive. Offer consumers more. Audiophile quality, the jewel case, liner notes, all the things they can’t get for free online. Or keep pushing the same horrible 25 year old tech, see where that gets you.

The trouble is the DRM crippleware they are loaded with. That is why they have never succeeded. I have over 5000 flacs from CD’s, I will start buying higher bitrate music when I can load it into my home server and back it up using standard DEPENDABLE electronic copying methods.

Why should I rent my music library?

One thing to note, only Hybrid SACDs are will play on normal cd players and there a quite a few SACDs that aren’t hybrid. Also, there are SACD players that you can just connect stereo RCA jacks to and use the 2 channel track of the SACD. I have a 2 speaker setup and on my system you can really tell the difference between SACD and CD. The way I see it is if you can compare an 384k mp3 to an SACD, save the money and keep on trucking with your mp3s. It’s all about opinion.

nice writeup, when it was time for a new dvd player at my house I bought one that would do cd/dvd/dvd-a/sacd, and I’m very glad I did. The few sacds I have sound tremendous, for rock things, I have the Ryan Adams “Heartbreaker”, you’re right, the instruments are so clear, it really sounds ‘live’. Then there’s the jazz (drool) I’ve ‘rebought’ a few Sonny Rollins and Coltrane things, and I think this is where the long term appreciation will come in. Look at folks that hang on to LPs considering them to be better than cds, I don’t know if they would go to sacd instead, but for ppl like me I can see my sacd jazz collection growing up to match my cd jazz collection one day. If they keep re-releasing them, I’ll keep buying (or rebuying). Long story short, I agree with you 100%, if you’re up for a new cd player, might as well get one that does dvd audio and sacd as well. Of course this will make you look into a better amp, then better speakers, then…

;)

Can’t believe no one linked to http://sa-cd.net

SACD is a niche market: a market that is doing just fine, thank-you.

No. They can shove them.

Both SACD and DVDA are crippled by DRM and the quality is ruined by digital watermarking.

And they’re incompatible due to the same Sony vs The World mentality that is keeping HD-DVD from going mainstream.

An “audiophile” that uses $150 M-Audio Studiophile AV40 bookshelf speakers? Ok…

It’s a newsflash that 1-bit 2.8224MHz DSD SACD audio & 24-bit 96 kHz DVD-A audio sounds better than 16-bit 44.1kHz CDs? Welcome to the 1990s & the world of pro audio!

An “audiophile” that uses $150 M-Audio Studiophile AV40 bookshelf speakers? Ok…

It’s a newsflash that 1-bit 2.8224MHz DSD SACD audio & 24-bit 96 kHz DVD-A audio sounds better than 16-bit 44.1kHz CDs? Welcome to the 1990s & the world of pro audio!

Sorry, but SACD is complete and utter bullshit. There are two possibilities here that explain why you think it sounds better:
1) Placebo effect. If you expect something to sound better, it will. I don’t care how dramatic you claim the difference is; unless you can successfully distinguish between sources after repeated blind tests, you _must_ assume it’s a placebo. Ask Wikipedia about ABX testing for more info on this.
2) If you are comparing the quality of the SACD layer to the CD-DA layer, be aware that record labels deliberately master the CD layer poorly so as to trick you into thinking SACD sounds better.

SACDs are pure snake oil. Don’t be an audiophool.

I have a copy of Sonny Rollins’ Tenor Madness on CD and SACD. My listening room is acoustically treated, and I’ve got big B&W speakers hooked up to an HK receiver and Onkyo player… The difference between *stereo* performance on these was extremely subtle and I had to keep going back and forth between the two formats to hear it.

But when I switched to a HeadRoom Desktop Headphone Amp and my Sennheiser HD650’s, the differences really jumped out at me. Sadly, one of those differences turned out to be imperfections in the original recording…