While the SACD medium is hardly thriving, it is by no means dead, as readers of many posts here at audioreview.com often imply. It's highly unlikely that SACD will ever attain the status Sony and Phillips originally had for the format, but to all but completely dismiss the format is doing the readers of this website a disservice. Specifically, referring to SACD as a "fad that came and went," or one to be "blown off," as some have done, is just plain wrong.

As of this morning, sa_cd.net, a dedicated website to fans of the medium, lists 5785 available titles. While that's a drop in the bucket compared to titles available on other formats, it at least indicates that the format is still around. It's probably fair to say that well over 5,500 of those 5785 titles are classical, and that, understandably, limits the appeal of the medium, as not everyone is as enamored of the classics as I, and other fans of SACD are. Still, to ignore SACD as a flash in the pan is unfair.

There appear to be two divergent schools of thought here: one is those who favor vinyl and analog sound, and includes members willing to spend huge sums of money on turntables, tonearms, moving coil cartridges and step-up transformers. While I'm not critical of those in this group, I simply disagree with their approach.

The other group consists of those willing to spend large sums of money on outboard DAC's to improve the sound of their CD players. While there's nothing wrong with doing that either, it would seem to me that money might be better spent on a quality SACD player that both improves the sound of existing CD's, and plays SACD's as well. Onkyo has a 2-channel "audiophile-grade" SACD player in the works, and Luxman has one as well, but for a pretty steep price of close to $5,000, each of which would fit into this category.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons SACD's failed to dominate the market, and I've even thought of a few of my own, but after living with an SACD player now for just over a year, I am more and more convinced of the medium's sonic superiority over all others, especially PCM recording on CD's. While I'll wholeheartedly agree that the CD layer of a hybrid disc, when played on a $3,700 CD player will outperform the SACD layer when played on a $400SACD player, such a comparison is simply unfair, considering the huge price and performance disparity between the two units.

My SACD player is the Marantz SA-8001. While certainly not the finest such player available, it did receive a Stereophile Class-A recommendation, and in their review, the folks at Stereophile found that when using the unit as a stand alone CD player, or in conjunction with a highly rated DAC (The Benchmark Audio unit), they couldn't hear a difference between the two.

That said, it's fair to state that the level of performance from the 8001 (and, one would hope, the 8003, though there have been dissenting opinions on that unit posted here) would provide equal playing fields, and fine performance, for both CD playback, and SACD playback; That said, whenver comparing the CD layer to the SACD layer of the 50 or so discs I now own, the SACD layer always noticeably outperforms the CD layer. The differences? Far more "air" around instruments; a sweeter, smoother top end; deeper and more solid bass; a deeper and more delineated soundstage. In short, the SACD layer sounds more lifelike.

Perhaps that quality is why the medium so favors the classics, and symphony orchestras. Much popular music (and this is by no means a criticism) simply doesn't exist outside of a recording studio's various recording sessions in which each instrumental line is added to previously recorded ones. Actually, I watched in total amazement once as a business associate of mine sat down at his keyboard, and completely composed a piece of music with piano, drums, bass, guitar and brass - all from his keyboard!

Popular artists don't use (or need) the costly microphones required to pick up the far wider frequency response range of a large orchestra either. While the SACD layer of my copy of Eric Clapton's "Slowhand" sounds better than the CD layer, the difference is small, but the difference between those layers on a well recorded orchestral piece is enormous.

Several recording labels still quite enthusiastically support the SACD medium, despite its much higher cost of mastering and recording. Chandos, Pentatone, Ondine and BIS are now releasing most of their efforts in the SACD format, with Pentatone and BIS doing so exclusively. Clearly, recording engineers at those companies hear something they believe in.

No matter how much one spends on an outboard DAC, the one element that can never be changed is the sampling rate of 44.1KHZ. That is a constant, and is the PCM recording standard for CD's. I don't question for a minute that a better DAC will noticeably improve the sound of a CD player, but it can't possibly hope to ever compete with the 2.8 million times per second sampling rate of an SACD. An SACD has 64 times the digital information a CD has, and that's not something anyone can dispute.

I wouldn't even be bothering to write all of this stuff, if it weren't for the fact that so many of the SACD's I've purchased recently sound as good as they do. All of the Minnesota Orchestra's recordings, with Osmo Vanska at the helm, of all 9 Beethoven Symphonies on BIS are masterpieces in every sense of the word: sterling artistic interpretations of all these glorious works, and recorded sound quality that's simply second to none.

Several Ondine recordings have just about knocked my socks off. With Christoph Eschenbach at the helm, the Philadelphia Orchestra's recordings of Tchaikovsky's 6th (the "Pathetique") and the ever-popular Saint Saens' Third (The "Organ" Symphony) have provided the greatest sonic glories I've yet heard from my system.

Out of the 50 or so discs I have, only five are of popular music. Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon," along with The Who's "Tommy" are vastly improved as SACD's, but I can only listen to those discs just so many times. I'd glady purchase additional rock and popular SACD's if they were available, but they're just not. Still, later this month, Mobile Fidelity is releasing a newly digitally-remastered SACD of The Doobie Brothers', "Toulouse Street." I can hardly wait!

I think it's a fair statement to say that most listeners of popular music today, particularly rock, listen to it on an i-pod, and either don't own a stereo system, and don't care about owning one. That's a disturbing trend none of us can do very much about.

Still for those of us who adore the classics, and want the very best method of listening to these masterpieces that have endured for hundreds of years, we have the SACD to continue to provide us with better and better sounding recordings of some of our favorite pieces.

Will the SACD ultimately become exclusive only to classical music? Perhaps, as it certainly seems headed that way. And, with the emergence of such labels as Pentatone and BIS manufacturing exclusively SACD's of such music, maybe there's enough of us still out there to keep this medium alive and kicking. I sure hope so!