Why haven't audiophiles enthusiastically endorsed the SACD?

[emaidel]

Then along comes DVD-A and SACD. The engineers again started putting instruments all over the room. Don't they ever learn? First off, the cost is still to high for the disks and secondly, they are made for multi channel systems. Most people who are serious about music have a dedicated two channel system that sounds much better than their surround system.

I agree that the multi-channel capability of SACD's is more hurtful than helpful in making these discs attractive to most audiophiles (as I said in my initial post on this thread), but the primary purpose behind an SACD isn't to surround listeners with "instruments all over the room," but rather, to offer better quality sound. More importantly, almost every SACD made today is a hybrid disc that will play back in 2-channel stereo without any loss of fidelity.

One of Telarc's engineers once sent me a very long, and highly technical, email outlining the entire "digital scheme" behind the DSD system for recording music, and explained that the SACD as the only medium capable of capturing all that DSD does. A sine wave is far smoother with the DSD process, and its dynamic range is extraordinary - 120db. While the frequency response of 0-100,000HZ is impressive, I have yet to understand the benefit of recording material so far beyond the capabiliites of human hearing.

I didn't even consider SACD's until I wrote to Jack Renner (former founder/president/chief recording engineer for Telarc) and asked whether I'd benefit from the improved sound of an SACD on a 2-channel system, and he very enthusiastically said that I would. The "proof of the pudding" is in the DSD-remastered Telarc discs originally recorded via the Soundstream digital tape recorder.

The Soundstream system sampled music at a rate of 50KHZ, and when converted to the 44.1KHZ rate for standard CD playback, there was always a loss in quality. The DSD recording system, and the SACD playback medium are now capable of reproducing those Soundstream recordings as they were orignally meant to sound, and they are all exclusivly 2-channel discs. The CD layer on all of such discs that I've purchased so far (about 8) sounds a good deal better than the "redbook" CD of the same music, but the SACD layer on those discs is afar and away the best of all.

SACD's typically sell for from $3 to $5 more than their CD counterparts (not that much in my book), and at the moment, all Telarc SACD's are selling for $13.98 apiece. That's a pretty good deal as far as I'm concerned!

[Kevio]

A sine wave is far smoother with the DSD process, and its dynamic range is extraordinary - 120db. While the frequency response of 0-100,000HZ is impressive, I have yet to understand the benefit of recording material so far beyond the capabiliites of human hearing.

Same here. I'm convinced that the principal improvement in the sound from SACD comes from the additional care taken in making and mastering the recordings.

Keep in mind that audiophiles, as a subgroup of buyers, don't have the capability to make a new format a sales hit. The numbers needed for volume sales simply aren't there.

True. Also add to this the fact that audiophiles tend to be freethinkers and don't generally act as a cohesive consumer demographic.