I don't think you can say audiophiles stayed away from SACD. Most high end manufacturers either went to all universal players or at least offer a full line of them. And, the titles that are on SACD, for the most part, weren't picked for the masses. Almost every audio manufacturer offers something that will play SACD.

Music disc sales are way down in general, so when you combine that with SACD's additional cost and limited selection, you have, what you have.

It also seems like those behind SACD just quit with the thrust. I haven't revisited SACD in a long while but you'd think with it's potential the sound quality improvement would be more noticeable against redbook players in the same price range. Maybe they should have put a couple killer SACD stand alone players on the market rather than stuffing everything into a universal player. After DVD player manufacturers being forced to include CD playback in the player and the manufacturers then putting the cheapest thing possible in to meet that need, I am leary of universal players. I may be wrong but I am of the mind set that you should do just one job and do it to the best of it's ability.