For those who continue to comment about my opinions on the cost of an SACD player, it is in reference to a high-quality standalone SACD player. Yes, there are devices out there like certain Blu-ray players you pick up at the local charity shops and such that can play the format. However, for the sake of argument, most of those players are not on the market today. So I gave examples from players I found readily available on Crutchfield. Just thought I would clear that up. Thanks for watching and enjoy the channel.

You left out one of the main reasons: a studio wanting to record DSD had to invest around 50K to a 100K. And when they wanted to edit the file, they couldn’t, had to convert it to PCM to do their mix or whatever and then re-converted to DSD. This led to the fact that mostly classic and jazz music was available as SACD, but to be a broad success they would need pop music. So it stayed a niche product until today.

I wouldn't say it failed. It's still available. I buy them and love the quality and the surround sound of them. There are still new sacd's still coming out.

SACD is the "metal" tape and CD is only "Chrome" tapes..for those old enough to compare.

You know why?! Because of that damn copy protection of those SACD's !! You can't play those discs on a normal computer. DSD 256 audio files should be sold on Music selling websites without that stupid copy protection by Sony. DSD Audio (if well recorded, mixed and mastered !) on those SACD's can sound absolutely fantastic, and sometime even better than a AAA Vinyl record ! That's my 2 cents...

There are tons of Classical music that is available on SACD in six channel and it has been used for a long time and till is.

I agree with a great deal of what you said. Timing, cost of new equipment to play the discs and lack of titles all had a great deal to do with its lack of general acceptance. I have been a devotee of the format right from its onset (I bought my first SACD player in 1990) and still love it - and there are a small number of record companies that are still supporting the format wholeheartedly.. My main musical interests are classical (ugh! - a term I hate) music and jazz and I feel these musical genres tend to benefit most from the format. I do have some pop and rock SACD releases, like Pink Floyd albums, but wonder if the quality of the original masters is capable of providing the resolution where SACD can shine, at least when compared with other formats. I also agree with your comments about DSD and have been downloading a number of non SACD DSD albums at DSD128 resolution from NativeDSD Music and rate them very highly.

Most people don’t care that much about sound quality. They are obsessed with video. More advertising money was spent on video quality and advancements. Audio quality was never explained in ways that the average person could understand. The audio industry never spent as much money on advertising as the video industry did and still does. Cost only matters to most people and they don’t value audio over video. Because they trust their vision more than hearing. They only believe what they see.

44.1 kHz sampling at 16 bits is beyond the hearing specs of the far majority of listeners. What happened to bring the CD format in to disrepute was LAZY mixing & mastering. You CANNOT mix & master in 16 bits & expect the end file to sound great in 16 bits. Yet, that was often done. If you mix/master in 24-32 bits - the end mix in 16 bits will be just fine. Actually - excellent. Too many times I've heard granulation on a CD - something that proper dithering should render inaudible. The problem in ALL of these cases is that some engineer was exhausted or indifferent & chose the wrong setting believing that most people wouldn't care. And 98% of the time - they were right. It was the 2% of us who listened & said "WTF!" - that makes improving the product today, necessary.

Great video and let me expand a bit behind the philosophy of Sony/Philips (This was my "field" in college, I lived that era). The story behind (or under SA-CD) is complex, dates are approximate. As reel-to-reel recorders became "affordable" (late fifties), tape recorder manufacturing companies got sued (fear of losing LP monopoly) - then record producers made pre-recorded tapes (longer playing than LPs i.e. a concerto/symphony did not have to be interrupted to change side/record - could be played in one take. Big record companies made some money). In 1963 Philips invented the Compact Cassette (initially for dictation) and it became a "hit" among kids to record off the air (AM/FM stations). The Radio Industry Association of America (RIAA) and especially RCA Victor sued Philips. Philips won "by a hair" after spending a fortune in their defense. Then imagine, American music producers made a fortune re-releasing previous (LP) recordings on this new media, without having to pay royalties to original performers... No shit! Japanese developed the media (Type I~ IV tapes) and the technology (Nakamichi...) into a viable quality recording. Meanwhile, the American hi-fi industry was rapidly falling behind - sticking to our vacuum tube industry while Germany/Japan were developing the new transistor (which we, Americans, had developed). In 1975, Sony releases the first consumer-oriented video cassette recorder (the Betamax) followed by Matsuhiba (VHS) a year later. Disney corporation (yes, that Disney) and the MPAA sued Sony all the way to the Supreme Court, Sony won by one vote I believe! Otherwise, the entire VCR revolution would have been squashed by ... us Americans! On the other hand, American companies, again, made a fortune selling pre-recorded movie cassettes and tried all kinds of methods to prevent them from being "copied" (along with degradation in video quality). Around that time-frame, researchers at Bell Labs (among other) developed the digitization of music - RCA (and others) bought the patent and "squashed it" to protect its LP sales. Philips and Sony, remembering their experience with American business "philosophy" decided to pursue digital music format on their own (and at their own risks). US makers had already interfered with the distribution of DCC (Digital Compact Cassette, Philips), DAT (Digital Audio Tape, Sony) and a few other technologies... RIAA and its lobbyists almost succeeded in preventing distribution of CD format in the States (but lost). The story gets worse as we (USA) lost the lead we used to have in technology (Hi-Fi, camera, Audio, computers...) - yes, it is called greed, corporate profits, investors preferences, etc. I will not explore the "regionalisation" and "compartmentalization" of the DVDs, Blu-Rays, and any future recording/playback technologies by... guess who? Yes, our American companies... Another aspect of the problem is that, in the US (as opposed to Germany and Japan markets), the most money is made with articles that are "cheap"; this is what the AVERAGE American consumer goes for. This is why many of our best companies (USA) have folded under Chinese imitations or lesser quality products. This is quantity over quality paradigm, how sad - and sadly enough, it is not over yet. "Cheaply-made" products lead the preference list of most AVERAGE American consumers and destroys the High Quality/Fidelity/Technology/Automotive/Tooling... landscape. And yes, I am American and this change in our "American ingenuity and productivity" breaks my heart. Ciao, L (Veteran)

I had never heard of SACD until I bought the Sony UBP-X700 to watch 4k movies. I bought the Allman Bros Live at the Fillmore out of curiosity and was immediately hooked. The clarity of the kick drum and bass guitar blew me away. All of the low end mud was gone. I've bought about 30 since and they very in quality - some aren't much better than the cd and others reveal things you've never heard before. The main thing is to get the ones that have DSD mastering from the original analog tapes, and not DSD mastering of 96K, 24 bit files. MOFI will put this at the top of the front of whatever SACD they're selling. The Stevie Ray Vaughan stuff they did was really good.

Great overview ! Part of SACD's challenge is there are no optical or coaxial digital signals outputted by the SACD player when playing back DSD layer of an SACD disc.... Hence an external DSD capable DAC is useless in this case. The only way to use an external DSD capable DAC with an SACD player is to use I2S interface (e.g. PSAudio uses HDMI connector but it is NOT HDMI for video) which is whole can of worms due to lack of standardization on pin-outs. Denafrips makes DACs that have I2S over HDMI that is configurable. Also, I have one of those CD/SACD/DVD carousels by Sony , since the 90's. It consistently struggles reading SACD layer and wants to read CD layer even though it is set up for reading SACD layer first. The only way it will always read SACD layer is to use SACS discs that are single layer only, no redbook. Finally, a practical SACD "player" would be a BluRay player than can also play SACDs and if connected to a receiver that can decode DSDs via normal HDMI, it works great BUT can not be connected to an external DSD capable DAC unless you get one of those HDMI to DSD extractors. Also for SACD discs that have multichannel tracks, it works wonders too. Soooo much effort and frankly rather confusing.

Easy answer: How many time do you want me to buy the same damned thing.

Great video Mike! FYI, Yamaha, Arcam and Denon all have brand new, current model SACD players on Crutchfield for under $1500. The reason some high end audiophile companies separate CD and SACD playback into different models is that technically there’s a sound quality hit with combining them. Feel better!

Another reason for SACD’s failure to take over from CD was that it was in a format war with DVD-Audio. Also, the multichannel capability was added late in development to counter DVD-A’s own MC abilities. The DSD format was used as an archive format for some of Sony’s master tapes but ended up being used as a royalty extension scheme as the patent for CD was running out. Sound quality improvements were mostly a marketing angle.

You were on the mark on DSD especially now DAC’s have become such an integral part of the audio file system. Great video and I hope you feel better soon!! 🎵

Wow interesting video, but there's definitely some misinformation here. Not many people know SACD & DVD Audio better than me because I probably have 100 titles of each. I'm still pissed at his day that the music buying masses basically ignored these far superior formats and killed them off! First comment on price. Now maybe so...but back in the day SACDs routinely were $14.99 at Best Buy--same price as a CD and had the CD layer usually included! I still have several disks with the price tags still on the cover. As for players, you could get a cheaper Sony or Denon universal to do that... pricing which is a far cry from 4 grand. It also didn't take long after that for Oppo to come out with their inexpensive good players. Finally, although the MLP format from Dvd-Audio is definitely pretty much dead, the DSD format definitely lives on with manufacturers like PS Audio and sites like native DSD. The biggest difference between DSD and PCM, although DSD usually sounds better, there is no adjusting of the signal, a la Direct Stream Digital. It also required about 6db more level raise... most notable in your subwoofer. In my case, it's not easy to make that adjustment. But it's also worth it in my opinion the struggle little bit for the sound quality. Now for the main reason of the failure: even though I said there were reasonably inexpensive ways to play them, overall you had to have a pretty top-notch system to take advantage of the upscale in sound quality, especially multi-channel. I happen to have 100% analog Multi-channel Conrad-johnson and Audio Research pieces which were MADE for this format in particular...so they sound incredible playing them. The playback on those Ultra quality releases like Beck Sea Change, and most of the Pink Floyd or Steely Dan M-Ch catalog will blow the doors off anything digital even to this day.

I have the Yamaha CD S1000 for my SACD's and it is a beautifully functional piece of gear. Don't use a DAC as of this moment and I am considering the Ares II. Your thoughts?

Hi Mike...tanks for the video. I've been collecting SACDs since around 2010. They were hideously expensive here in NZ and almost no-one stocks them locally. The cost of importing was also prohibitive. Luckily, a bunch of labels are now re-releasing these at affordable prices (MoFi, Accoustic Sounds and others). The sound quality compared to redbook CD cannot be understated but my disclaimer here would be it depends on the player, amp, speakers, room and last ut not least your ears....a lot of variables there! Whilst my system is mid-low range audiophile (Cambridge Audio MMAmp + unversal player), I am lucky enough to be able to hear the difference! More good news also, is that places like HDAudio are now selling remastered artist albums in DSD as well as FLAC, ALAC etc.

SACD was a solution looking for a problem. CD sounds amazing and has no DRMs BS.

The SACD seemed to solve a problem no one had.

You did not touch on the format war that was occurring at the time of the SACD release. Sony and some other record companies were on one side and Warner Music was on the other side championing the DVD Audio format. This result of this was some consumer reluctance to buy into a new format that might well be going to be dropped. Another effect of this was a lot of popular music was never going to be published on SACD since Warner was busy releasing their massive catalog of music on DVD Audio. DVD Audio has since gone the way of the Betamax and players that can use those discs are few and far between.

From video tape to laser disks, to dvd, to blu-ray....the newer format succeeded because the public can easily discern the significantly better quality. Sadly, the improvement in sound quality of SACD is maginal to the general public, and therefore, why bother with the much higher cost (of player and disks)? I have a collection of almost 200 SACD's, but I fully admit I belong to a very small market segment. Fortunately, the format is still alive, with about 4-500 new titles issued annually.

Never really thought much about sacd till recently. I have an oppo and started buying some sacds. The sound quality is sort of the same but the sound stage is a whole different story. I can tell instantly the difference from lp to flac to sacd. Been buying up everything I can find in the format that I like.

Modern internal and external DACs, better amplifiers, speakers, acoustic treatments, cables and isolators have all extended the life of CD audio for those of us who enjoy the benefits of CD collecting.

A lot of people had just replaced their vinyl and cassettes with CDs when SACD came out. That is why I wasn’t interested in SACD.

I use the Sony XM800M2 as a transport and this plays both SACD and DVD audio. It's their new player, goes on sale under $300 sometimes 😁

The best genuinely practical use for DSD and SACD is digitizing analog tapes. I have a small collection of jazz, rock and classical recordings (Dire Straits, Miles Davis, Shostakovitch) that sound excellent. I might do a 24/88.2 conversion just to see if I can hear any difference.

Still have my Onkyo CD/SACD carrousel player, it has analog outnputs in the back so you just need to attach it to a preamp, sounds wonderful. Now, one down side of SACD is that, aside of the gear needed to playback the content, the DSD recording was not necessarily made from the masters and thus, sound wise, didn’t provide a true HIFI experience vs regular well made CD recording… and it also was competing with DVD-A which also failed

Very informative and educational video. I almost went the SACD route but I'm glad I didn't. I do want to find an SACD and see if it would work with one of my Sony Blu Ray players. I hope you feel better, my wife and I had covid in 2021 even after the shots. She got it again last month and I was breathing her hot covid breath for a week and didn't catch it. Both of my sons, my wife, my daughter in law and my grand children all had bad stomach flu two weeks ago and I didn't get that either. I'm feeling pretty cocky right about now. LOL

I have a Sony 4k blu ray player that plays them nicely (via HDMI eARC) and I'm glad more titles are starting to be available, and prices have dropped quite a bit. HOWEVER I would like to do a sound 'shoot out' if I could between an SACD, and lets say Amazon music (ultra hd) it'd be interesting to see if I could actually hear any difference at all.

Bottom line, I guess, is that CDs sound more than good enough for 99% of people and they can't tell the difference. There is also the possibility that the younger generation are not interested in digital technology like those of us who suffered through vinyl's skips, cracks, snapples, warps and bad stereo separation. Thus CDs and their greater than -90dB signal to noise ratio, wonderful bass response and a host of other audible differences from vinyl are what those in the know realize is far more than good enough. If you are fortunate you can even get your favourite band on Blu-ray, getting both the video and audio in excellent quality, and almost always multi-channel for those with surround sound systems and big screen HDTVs. That is about as good as it will ever get for the average person without $10 million in the bank. 🤷‍♂😉👌

Bought a discontinued Pioneer CD/DVD/DVD-A/SA-CD player connected to a multi-channel amp. I have been picking up SA-CD here and there on the cheap and REALLY appreciate the fabulous sound quality!

A lot of DVD players play SACD, my 14 yo LG certainly does.

I was really on to SACD and wanted the player at launch. Massive, impressive and expensive. I got to hear the sound back in the day and was immediately convinced this was the next thing. Then: 1. Nothing happened. Very slowly was material brought out. I bought discs that were dual layer hybrids, so I could still play them om my CD system while saving up to the SACD player. Player prices came down, but still very little material out. 2. When it became known that their dual layer hybrid SACD disks had been manipulated so that the SACD layer presented more loudly than the CD layer it contributed to my losing interest. 3. I did get a multi disk player that could handle SACD, but unfortunately it broke pretty quickly. 4. Later on I learned, from someone inside of Sony's own organization, Sony had not been good at coordinating the hardware and software side at launch and were having a hard time convincing studios to invest. Chicken-and-egg, part of that. 5. PCM allowed room correction to be applied and since this had far bigger impact on my experience of sound than an artificially raised SACD volume, and PCM could provide at least as good dynamic range as SACD, and could be applied to all my music except my few SACDs, room correction was an easy winner. 6. In addition PCM allowed me to rip my non SACD disks and have access to my entire music collection in a local stream available on a sophisticated remote control; the SACD disk's fate was sealed, at least in my place, and it all happened a very long time ago.

Could you do a video on a budget CD player setup? Something around the $1,000 mark? I have no player or speakers and don't know where to start. Also zero knowledge and not a lot of time to research.

It didn't fail: it is the most successful physical hi-res format and particularly popular and successful in the classical market ... and i just bought a whole bunch of new releases tonight.

You forget the kinda sorta "Format War" that happened back then too. With DVD-Audio competing with SACD, some record labels supported one while other labels supported the other. None other than Sony's own Colombia records really putting a big push behind either.

For the money I prefer sacd to new vinyl.

I bought and still buy SACD's although the available catalogue is quickly decreasing. I use an Oppo universal disc reader through a Cambridge multichannel A/V receiver. The difference in sound quality from the standard CD of the same album is really noticeable, especially in the 5.1 format. Only one disappointment, "Chicago Transit Authority" sounded almost "sterile", thin, not nearly as good as the original pressing of the double album going through a very modest system. Prices are still, in most part, at $29.99 or less if/when on sale and the 2 sites I buy from are Music Direct (MoFi) and Elusive Disc Music. I haven't bought a "normal" CD in a long time, but I continue to buy SACD's and LP's!

Reading a comment below reminded me of another story I heard from a friend of mine. Sony apparently dropped out of the SACD business because one of its recording artists saw an opportunity to obtain three lots of royalties from the artist's multichannel hybrid SACD catalogue (multichannel SACD layer, stereo SACD layer and standard RBCD layer) and when Sony refused to pay, the artist took Sony to court and won the case. Sony realised that the case had set a precedent and that it could be faced with a lot of claims and so decided it was time to get out.

The reality is that DVD-Audio failed to capitalize on the high resolution market. SACD is still a viable format with new material being released each year. Mind you it is still somewhat of a niche market, but it certainly is not dead by any means.

I have a Sony SACD player. I have no SACD disc.Cds work good enough for me. Feel better my friend

Mike, thank you for your effort here knowing you're not feeling well. I'm excited about your future videos. I need to follow someone that knows more than I do about the how and why of music and I think that's you. So, let's give it a go. Okay? Be well.

1. expensive 2. proprietary 3. incompatible with CD players 4. DRM (can't be ripped to your iPod) 5. marginal improvement in quality (for stereo) Of course it failed!

Thank you for explaining that. I collect SACDs, along with DVD Audio and Blu-ray discs that are multichannel. I love the SACDs because there's no menu. Just pop it in the player. (I bought a used Oppo and have it connected to a vintage quadraphonic receiver.) One place you need to look into is a British firm called Dutton Vocalian. They have an awesome selection of SACDs that they license and remaster. Although a lot of it is historic and classical, the pop and rock stuff is amazing!! And most have the original (1970s) quadraphonic mixes.

Cheers for that video. I have always loved high quality audio all the way back since early eighties. From high end Aiwa cassette decks to portable gear and then CD came along and wow i loved it and was an early adopter. now i still love quality audio from Cd and i use a DAP when im out with quality headphones and digital streams from my NAS at home.

Classical sacds were well worth it. I have many, but it was the copy protection that killed it. All my CDs are on my sound server though I keep the CDs. To listen to a SACD I have to actually use a physical disc.

I love the concept of DSD and I so want it to succeed. I’m very aware of the editing problem and I wonder if there is a potential way to resolve the difficulty with it. It seems a shame to have to convert it to PCM and then to DoP! Nevertheless I’m on the threshold of spending an improbable $5k to buy a used CD/SACD player that also does BluRay audio and video as well as other formats. I’m counting on companies continuing to release new SACDs! I’m on the mailing list of one company from Japan that regularly announces new releases. The only downside is that I’m spoiled by the cheap prices for used CDs and I’m struggling to adjust to the pricing of new SACDs. They are expensive! I’m also spoiled by the ease of streaming my own CD collection via Roon. I will have to keep a physical library of SACDs because I don’t have a DAC capable of handling DSD.

If you can remember far enough back, CD players were also crazy money when they were first released. (Can you remember the £$1k drives that you could purchase for your PC) The Sony SCD1 is a work of art and was also crazy money but the models that followed were much cheaper and multi-channel. In the last 5 years Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer and Oppo have all made Blu-ray or 4K Blu-ray players which can play back SACD. The biggest prohibitive factor for me purchasing SACDs back in the 90s, was that the disc cost £30, even then. There are a couple of companies out there that are reproducing old albums on SACD and they are relatively cheap to buy. The whole point of Sony buying their own record labels was to help support minidisc, you would have thought they would have used that also to support SACD but I seem to remember most of the discs that were being released at the time were classical albums and not mainstream popular music whether it be rock or pop. I salute Sony for the technical tour de force of digital formats that they attempted to release back in the 90s but SACD is essentially a long dead format. It is far better now to purchase Blu-ray audio disc and more are being made available in Dolby Atmos. The beauty of that format is that you can have as a new release which has five versions of the album on one disc, in multi-channel without the need for a DSD converter.

Same reason open reel tape was made irrelevant by the LP. Quality playback is for the 3rd standard deviation.

I bought a lot of SACDs at the time (Dylan, the Stones, Elton John, Dark Side of the Moon etc) largely because they were compatible with a normal CD player but also playable on a suitable DVD or Blu Ray player to take advantage of any surround sound option. I always found the mastering to be excellent, I guess because of the DSD coding. This compatibility with ordinary CD players should have enabled SACD to become the standard, but you are quite right in that the increased sound quality was a niche thing - most listeners equipment wouldn’t reveal any difference and CD was perfectly good enough for most people. Add in the mp3 and the rival DVD-A formats emerging at the time and it was doomed sadly.

Funny thing is most dacs are delta sigma, so you are already listening to “DSD”. PCM is nothing more than a storage format, unless you use R2R dac.

You can pick up a Sony universal player for under $300..plays all formats well...constantly finding used sacds in the used bin for under $5...if you like classical cd's the majority of them are sacd now

I started picking up SACDs in the 2010s -- after they were basically a dead format. But what I discovered was that, with Columbia/Sony's Dylan and Miles Davis catalogs, for example, the remastered DSD sound quality was top-notch -- AND some discs had immersive multi-track capabilities (the equivalent of vintage quadrophonic or Dolby 5.1 Surround) that put you in the middle of the music. Some of the recordings were originally made and released in Quad formats (also commercial flops) and have been "digitally remastered" for multi-channel digital playback. I play SACDs on my early 2000s HDMI-equipped Oppo Universal Disc Player (CD, SACD, DVD, Blu-Ray, USB) through my surround system and they provide a listening experience I can't get any other way.

The dual layer SACD is great ,especially the MOFI and Analogue Productions ..They sell very well

Get well soon. As far as I know, no Beatles was ever released on SACD. Also DRM didn't help matters

I have a small collection of SACDs. Around 10. As opposed to over 1750 CDs. I bought them for rhe Redbook layer because I heard the remastering was better. I do find that to be true vs the same release on CD.

SACD & DVD-A were not marketed well. I would've been interested early on if I'd known about them. I bought a Sony SACD player around 2005 to hear the Genesis catalog in surround (remixed by Nick Davis). That carousel player was well under $200 & didn't sound as good as my old Harman Kardon CD spinner. I don't find SACD & DVD-A too appealing for stereo, even on my Cambridge Audio player, but I love the surround discs that appeared. Many remixes were done by veteran producer Elliot Scheiner, working with the multi-track masters, while Greg Penny remixed Elton John's early catalog. The Vocalion label has released quite a few rock, jazz & classical albums from the 4-channel era of the '70's as SACDs recently. Universal released 2 Pink Floyd albums in the last year or 2, but they sold out quickly. New standalone SACD players are expensive & don't do surround sound. Sony has universal players (Blu-ray, CD, SACD) selling for under $300 USD that do include multichannel playback.

SACD was the answer to a question very few asked. Plus many were cynical about needing to buy yet another format. LP to CD to SACD in under 20 years.

SACD just had its 25th birthday last week.

The real problem with SACD is you had to buy yet another player and even mores discs that were significantly more expensive than standard CDs. And most people couldn't hear the difference anyway. The time has passed for SACD. Much higher qualify audio is available legally from many sources (up to 4 times the sampling rate and in 24 bit format) in standard FLAC format and they are playable on any PC or if you have a high-end stereo using a high-end DAC. Anyone talking about moving to a different physical media is 10 years behind the times.

if you are curious about SACD David Bowie's Heathen is an excellent example

It didn't take over from CD because of the cost of recording which most bog standard pop music doesn't do, no great loss. Classical music however does put the effort in and there is still an awful lot of new recordings released on SACD with 5.1, so I wouldn't call that a fail. Also, high quality rock, jazz and avant-garde music is released on SACD, so again, not really a fail. Nobody really cares about pop or general rock, mor, so the general population who only listen to that crap can have the CD. The rest of us will keep the SACD thanks, at least until blu ray takes over.

They’re having a strong comeback.

Nicely done video on this particular topic! Get well soon 🍀🍀🍀🍀

My first DVD player, made by Denon, which we purchased around 2003, was capable of also playing SACD. I think I might have bought half a dozen SACDs before eventually upgrading to a BlueRay player when they became available. I recently found a nice Pioneer Elite DVD/SACD player at a neighbor’s yard sale for just $10 and added it to my 2.1 audio system. Yes, it’s nice to be able to again play SACDs, which sound wonderful, but the Pioneer has outstanding Brown/Burr DACs which make even pedestrian CDs sound so much more natural than cheaper CD players.

I didn't jump on SACDs when they first appeared. In early 2020, I needed to replace my CD player. I was able to get a deal on a Marantz SA KI Ruby, and I've been playing catch-up ever since. I love the format. I have over 90, many of which cost me dearly, like Roxy Music's 2003 Avalon. Worth it!

Of course the most important element in all of this is the SOURCE material. How well was the original music recorded and mixed in the studio? Taking the very best and presenting it in SACD format can sound truly spectacular. Unfortunately there was a bit of a cash in with some labels releasing sub par material on SACD. Silk purses and sows ears ring to mind. I still collect CDs and SACD along with the other audiophile formats, SHMCD, Blu Spec 24bit and HDCD included. Interestingly I discovered an article published on this day, 5th March 1983, in the UK music weekly Record Mirror which announces the launch of the laser audio system- the compact disc. SONY, Phillips and Phonogram combined to launch the new revolutionary system that was predicted to replace vinyl...

It would not fail, if there were more recent titles , not the 70/80 stuff , if I play these SACD on my Denon DCD-A110 , with Denon PMA 110 , it's amazing , mind you Blu ray music , very good as well !

Thank you for the interesting info. Get well soon!!

I always thought SACDs came out 5-8 years ago. I had no idea they came out in late 90s. I really missed the boat🤕🤕🤕

My Yamaha S2300 mk 2. Is a DVD player (transport) with an option to read SACD which I never use..but the player itself not that expensive

I have a few sets with a blu ray and a sacd. The sacd usually sounds better. Have a OPPO disc player

Please don't forget your viewers to buy the Sony - UBP-X800M2 a SACD / DSD multichannel and Ultra HD player. Nice audiophile chassis.

Timing is at least part of it. I think Sony should've dropped SACD onto the scene by 1995 when they stopped developing new DAT devices. That would've given them a jumpstart at least. Maybe they hesitated because their DASH format flopped in studios for a bit due to competition from Mitsubishi's ProDigi format, and their continuation of the X-80 recorders. I don't really know. I was more concerned with going to concerts in the 90's because it was the 90's, and I was in Seattle. I've always enjoyed the SACD's I have had the chance to experience though. It would've been nice to get more mainstream hardware, and a lot more media to enjoy though. Hope you feel better soon!

Re: music piracy. There are a number of things in my life that cost money, that I could enjoy for free, but paying for them makes me feel like a grown-up.

You can use a good dac/preamp and your cds will sound just as good, if not better then 2 channel sacd. Now surround sacds that’s another story, some of those are phenomenal

I recently bought 2 old Blu-ray Sony players that play SACD. Plus my new Sony and my old Toshiba dvd player that also plays SACD. I have a bunch of SACDs and gravitate to them for surround mixes and high definition output. Love them but also love red book CDs as a very early adopter. The are many SACDs available and they are often affordable unless they go out of print I also love Blu-ray audio discs. High quality high definition sound!

I bought into SACD and DVD Audio but there just wasn't enough content to make either sustainable. In the end I bowed out when my Blu-ray player didn't support either. Didn't want to, but it didn't make sense to have two players.

It's really no different than giving the keys to my wife a new Porsche 911 Turbo S and she comes back elated. Then I tell her that I only put in regular Fuel and not premium which gives an even greater amount of performance. 🤪 At a certain point regarding sound quality most people are fine with the cd or streaming tidal.😇 As someone has also mentioned, people aren't thrilled about buying the same song on a different format that basically sounds the same unless you have a ultra-expensive Mega System.🙄 Most people could care less about ultra high end sound but please don't take away their latest iPhone that they don't use 99.8% of the features.🤪

I would add, in my opinion : 1- SACD reading is really hard on lasers. Most of them give up this function quickly. 2- A lot of SACD players that can read DSD send it to multiple PCM dacs ( see schematics before buying ). So you won't hear the difference with CD. This is most certainly the case for your cheap player.

Michael: An informative video, but please improve the audio. Your words are muffled big time.

btw do you remember the run on anti-piracy software included in CDs, late '90s & early '00s?Companies did it so well that sometimes it was impossible to play a disc on a computer,and a note was at the back of a cd jewel case saying IT MIGHT BE HARD TO PLAY IT BACK ON YOUR COMPUTER 😁

Sounds about like what I remember. #1 Being expense all the way around! Plus current releases were not available for most recordings. I grew up listening to vinyl and have a nice turntable now. But ya can't skip through a LP or repeat, conveniently!

Funny. The marketing depts were so insistent that fidelity, hi spec audio, was the key marketable aspect of audio after cd became the prevalent format.... Yet JUST AS THEY SAID THAT people were presented with a lo fi alternative for which convenience was the benefit, mp3 or lossy digital codecs.... We know what won. Just funny how wrong the marketing depts can get it... Same goes for video. I had friends that thought dvd compression was a silly exercise, why make a lossy copy if it is inferior in viewing quality. Yet today streaming (lossy video codecs) are the norm; out of convenience.

SACD is not dead, at least for classical music

Still have a Denon universal player of 2007, (which played all, but "Blue-Ray Audio", obviously, as it had not come out yet). I bought only one SACD, no "DVD-Audio" disc's, and many CDs. The SACDs never were not sold much where I live. So money wasted on the universal machine? On the SACD? No, as this old Denon player actually performs very well enough that it got, and continues to get, positive comments of its sound quality from audiophile friends/acquaintances, not just my biased self. 😉 A very good player sample? Perhaps. No matter, regarding the one SACD I have, it did/does actually sound better than the CD layer, enough to be convinced of its superiority. Probably will seek more SACDs online, depending on $ sanity of each. Thanks for the review, Mike!!

My experience is that SACD's are only as good as the source where its good they are miles better than CD's. I have a Sony DVD player and I wouldnt recommend it as a player, I am lucky enough to have picked up a Maraantz ki pearl lite CD player for £200 and its preet good ( the pity frir most people is with SACD is you HAVE to use the internal DAC - so make sure irs good), TBC on this player even CD's sound pretty good but you also have the option of an external DAC. Maybe worth comparing SACD to DVD/Blu ray audio where you can use and external DAC so maybe a better option?

In addition to all the reasons outlined, there was no guarantee that the content was going to be any better than the CD. I have maybe 50 SACD's, most of which were dual layer and contained the CD. Some are better, a few worse and some had exactly the same content as the CD layer, the manufacturers hadn't bothered to get the masters and re-encode them in DSD. The upside is, via little cheap boxes from China, it's now possible to play them back digitally on a modern dac, HDMI > converter > I2S > DAC. I use my ancient Oppo BD83 and it works well, the only real issue is it takes the Holo some time to lock on the signal, still, it works pretty well and does sound very good.

Sony wanted to remove buyers' liberties so much that it literally gelded its format.

Im curious how the Sony MDR SA Headphones and how this effected it.

well I can say that regardless of their failure or otherwise I still buy SACDs, I mean obviously online but I play them quite regularly. regardless of what people might think or say I'm of the opinion that they sound better than conventional CDs and I enjoy the format. actually I just picked up a Yamaha SA CD player and it's probably one of the best source devices I've ever had

What it comes down to is… to get the true benefit of SACD and DSD you need a very well built player with a solid DAC (or even better, a transport only and an outboard separate DAC as it’s own component). DSD is pretty much very close to identical sound as a master tape. So to hear this you also need a real audiophile level properly set up stereo system. Hearing a DSD file on your air pods won’t do shit! And the reason a lot of SACDs are mostly older music like jazz and classical is because from the 50s until the late 70s early 80s music was actually recorded very well onto to tape. Today, most music is recorded pretty badly because it is made for air pods and Bluetooth speakers. Pretty sad.

It failed because 99.9% of people were perfectly happy with CDs 🤷‍♂️ It never stood a chance. Timing had little to do with it, I'm quite certain. Super VHS, while significantly more successful than SACD, also failed massively as a mass-market format, for the very same reason. Not enough people cared, and the price difference was way too high.

What about DVD-Audio…. ? Yes, both formats are on a DVD

SACD is a great format. You can invest in the hardware inexpensively. Say with a used BD player that has SACD and a cheap receiver such as those from Yamaha that supports DSD decoding. Discs are much easier to play. Unlike DVD-A which requires the use of on screen menus to play. My only gripe with SACD is the cost and availability of discs. Whilst you can still find some reasonably priced SACD albums. Many are quiet expensive, region specific (EG Japan only), produced in limited quantity and older titles are long since impossible to get. Especially if your a latecomer to the SACD format. Which is disappointing as there heave been many excellent stereo and surround sound releases.

notice ULtra HD blu-rays have not seemed to fair much better for the video market???

The discs are still sold and players are still made.

A nice Esoteric Cd 💿 Drive and a nice HaloMay DAC ..we’re good.