• 06-26-2008, 04:03 AM
    emaidel
    The agony of buying SACD's
    Despite the SACD's ability to delivery the best sound possible (some of them do, and others don't, unforunately), the long term survivability of the medium itself is in question. There are reasons galore for this, including an apparent rejection of the medium from many who've never even heard it (!), but one that is destined to doom the SACD to oblivion is the exceedingly difficult process one has to follow in order to simply purchase an SACD!

    First, forget about going to a retail store: asking a sales cretin at either Circuit City or Best Buy if they sell SACD's is a question met with a vacant stare, and the inevitable question, "What's an SACD?"

    You can go to telarc.com, amazon.com, AcousticSounds.com and sa-cd.net to buy up to 5,000 discs, but once you get to some of these sites (especially the last two mentioned), you'll find navigating the site(s) a royal pain in order to try to find whatever you may be interested in. Having to scan through roughly 900 "pages" online of discs, listed in no order whatsoever is an excercise in frustration, to say the least. That's sort of like going to a record store, and having to look through bins and bins of records of all varieties of music, all just lumped in together.

    While my listening preferences are classical, I also enjoy a good deal of popular music, and would really like to know what's available on SACD without spending hours scanning through page after page of unorganized listings of tons of other stuff I have no interest in.

    It sould seem that to , at the very least, alphabetize the list, would make searching a lot easier, but I have yet to find any site that does even that. Since both AcousticSounds and sa-cd.net seem to prominently feature the sale of SACD's, one would think they'd have known better. Oh well, some day.....
  • 06-26-2008, 06:46 AM
    emesbee
    Yes, I think the SACD format will likely disappear. There just doesn't seem to be much of a selection of titles available on the format. Lets face it, if I can't get the music I like on SACD, I'm not going to buy. Besides which, most stores seem to treat them as some kind of novelty item.
  • 06-26-2008, 09:33 AM
    Feanor
    Agree: difficult to track down
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by emaidel
    Despite the SACD's ability to delivery the best sound possible (some of them do, and others don't, unforunately), the long term survivability of the medium itself is in question. There are reasons galore for this, including an apparent rejection of the medium from many who've never even heard it (!), but one that is destined to doom the SACD to oblivion is the exceedingly difficult process one has to follow in order to simply purchase an SACD!

    ....
    At Amazon.com, in Advanced Search, it's helpful to include "hybrid SACD" in the 'Keywords' field. (Of course, if you do that without any other qualifiers and you get back 2800 items.)

    ArkivMusic is a great place for classical music of course. It's one of the best sites for finding what you're looking for since they have excellent point & click search facilities. From the main page, first click 'Super Audio CDs' in the left-hand column, then choose your "Refine by" selection at the top of that page. (Arkiv claims to have almost 2000 titles available.)
  • 06-26-2008, 09:34 AM
    Ajani
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by emaidel
    Despite the SACD's ability to delivery the best sound possible (some of them do, and others don't, unforunately), the long term survivability of the medium itself is in question. There are reasons galore for this, including an apparent rejection of the medium from many who've never even heard it (!), but one that is destined to doom the SACD to oblivion is the exceedingly difficult process one has to follow in order to simply purchase an SACD!

    First, forget about going to a retail store: asking a sales cretin at either Circuit City or Best Buy if they sell SACD's is a question met with a vacant stare, and the inevitable question, "What's an SACD?"

    You can go to telarc.com, amazon.com, AcousticSounds.com and sa-cd.net to buy up to 5,000 discs, but once you get to some of these sites (especially the last two mentioned), you'll find navigating the site(s) a royal pain in order to try to find whatever you may be interested in. Having to scan through roughly 900 "pages" online of discs, listed in no order whatsoever is an excercise in frustration, to say the least. That's sort of like going to a record store, and having to look through bins and bins of records of all varieties of music, all just lumped in together.

    While my listening preferences are classical, I also enjoy a good deal of popular music, and would really like to know what's available on SACD without spending hours scanning through page after page of unorganized listings of tons of other stuff I have no interest in.

    It sould seem that to , at the very least, alphabetize the list, would make searching a lot easier, but I have yet to find any site that does even that. Since both AcousticSounds and sa-cd.net seem to prominently feature the sale of SACD's, one would think they'd have known better. Oh well, some day.....
    When I was initially considering either taking the plunge into SACD and buying the Marantz SA8001 or fully embracing Computer audio once again, I went to the same websites you mentioned, to check out what albums are available. I found navigating the website such a total pain in the @$$ that I totally dismissed SACD... I just can't spend my money on a player if I can't easily find the music I want to play on it....

    I think these online SACD retailers, really need to take a look at how good online music stores run their websites (especially the search feature) and copy them!!!!
  • 06-27-2008, 04:58 AM
    emaidel
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Feanor

    ArkivMusic is a great place for classical music of course. It's one of the best sites for finding what you're looking for since they have excellent point & click search facilities.

    You're absolutely right about ArkivMusic. You and I are classical fans, but only about 3% of listeners favor the classics, and that will never carry the SACD medium as far as one might hope. Other sites (AcousticSounds, sa-cd.net, etc.) could take a lesson from ArkivMusic, and they just might sell a few more SACD's!
  • 06-27-2008, 05:58 AM
    Feanor
    Classical SACD labels
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by emaidel
    You're absolutely right about ArkivMusic. You and I are classical fans, but only about 3% of listeners favor the classics, and that will never carry the SACD medium as far as one might hope. Other sites (AcousticSounds, sa-cd.net, etc.) could take a lesson from ArkivMusic, and they just might sell a few more SACD's!
    It's interesting to check out then number of titles by label at Archive. Looks like the tops are:
    • Telarc, 108 -- including quite a few re-releases of old material
    • BIS, 97
    • Channel, 92
    • Sony, 90 -- including many re-releases
    • then a fair drop to Linn, 62, trailing off from there.
    When I buy recordings my priorities are usually:
    1. Performance -- in effect, reviews
    2. Price -- love those Naxos :p
    3. Medium -- CD vs. SACD
    However if it music is large-scale orchestral or large-scale choral, then I will tend heavily to SACD mostly for the multi-channel aspect.
  • 07-06-2008, 11:42 AM
    braxus
    I find that getting any new releases at all seems to be difficult. It seems that not many are releasing new discs, and its usually nothing I want or know anything about.
  • 07-13-2008, 11:10 AM
    PDN
    Yes, I recently asked at a Barnes & Noble. The sales person knew what SACD's are but said they have very few in their store and the ones they do are of classical symphony music. I too have been considering the Marantz SA8001 but what for? I have a Rotel RCD-1072 which decodes HDCD's and the SA8001 does not. I am seeing some more HDCD's becoming available (Brian Culbertson: Something 'bout Love and Crosby Stills & Nash (the one with Marakesh Express). So my HDCD collection is starting to build a little bit. It seems this hd format is in more main stream music. So no need to upgrade to the Marantz SA8001. If anyone is buying a CD player, be sure it decodes HDCD. My gut is that this format will be here with us.
  • 07-13-2008, 12:26 PM
    Feanor
    Hdcd
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by PDN
    Yes, I recently asked at a Barnes & Noble. The sales person knew what SACD's are but said they have very few in their store and the ones they do are of classical symphony music. I too have been considering the Marantz SA8001 but what for? I have a Rotel RCD-1072 which decodes HDCD's and the SA8001 does not. I am seeing some more HDCD's becoming available (Brian Culbertson: Something 'bout Love and Crosby Stills & Nash (the one with Marakesh Express). So my HDCD collection is starting to build a little bit. It seems this hd format is in more main stream music. So no need to upgrade to the Marantz SA8001. If anyone is buying a CD player, be sure it decodes HDCD. My gut is that this format will be here with us.
    If you think it's hard to find SACD titles try looking HDCD. This process is so obscure that when it's used the producer doesn't even bother to put the info on the label.

    I have an HDCD-decoding DAC and a few titles thus encoded, mostly from Reference Recordings which are great BTW. I have at least one CD in the EMI label that appears to HDCD-encoded because it lights the indicator, but it nowhere says that.

    On the other hand I have several times as many SACDs. Granted I listen to a lot of classic.

    There is one huge advantage of SACD that can't be denied: multi-channel. Not everyone chooses to take advantage of it, but it's there for you if you wanted. This will never be the case for CD or HDCD.
  • 07-13-2008, 02:23 PM
    blackraven
    Dont count out the Marantz SA8001. Its not just a great SACD player, its also a great standard CDP. The virtue of this CDP is that it gives a nice warm almost analog sound in std CD and SACD. There are very few sub $1,000 CDP's that can approach the sound quality of the SA8001 in std CD.
  • 07-13-2008, 02:26 PM
    blackraven
    You guys should also consider buying XRCD's and XRCD24. I've recently bought a few and they by far and away superior in recording and sound quality over std CD's. There are quite a few Jazz and blue's titles in addition to classical.
  • 08-04-2008, 04:35 AM
    icehockeyboy
    Having recently bought an sacd player (Marantz SA15 S1) I hurriedly set about looking to add to the one sacd I already had, and managed to acquire DSOTM Pink Floyd, Brothers In Arms Dire Straits, and one or two others...................... I dont know why I bothered!
    Having said that, I should point out that the non sacd side of things goes through a Theta Dac, whereby sacd doesnt, so maybe an unfair comparison, but, standard cd's sound better than sacd's in my system, so I wont bother burning the midnight oil perusing Amazon and similar anymore!
  • 08-07-2008, 07:13 AM
    frenchmon
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by icehockeyboy
    Having recently bought an sacd player (Marantz SA15 S1) I hurriedly set about looking to add to the one sacd I already had, and managed to acquire DSOTM Pink Floyd, Brothers In Arms Dire Straits, and one or two others...................... I dont know why I bothered!
    Having said that, I should point out that the non sacd side of things goes through a Theta Dac, whereby sacd doesnt, so maybe an unfair comparison, but, standard cd's sound better than sacd's in my system, so I wont bother burning the midnight oil perusing Amazon and similar anymore!
    That sound about right. Most who listen to SACD's for the first time come away with that impression.

    Some factors into that are:

    (1)Don't know what to listen for, critical listening is a must at first.

    (2)Player is not broken in.

    (3)Placement of speaker.

    The most obvious is player is not broken in, and your expectation of SACD. After you get use to them and player is broken in, you will hear the difference.


    frenchmon