SACD

[Coopmv]

BTW, has Naxos completely stopped releasing SACD's?

[71 dB]

BTW, has Naxos completely stopped releasing SACD's?

Naxos did extremely poor job with SACD. They should have released Hybrid SACDs only of the multichannel recordings and they should have done the SACD layers right. The one Naxos SACD disc I ever bought didn't work in my player (only CD layer worked) so I replaced it to the normal CD version (lower price). Why don't Naxos do things the right way, the way of BIS for example?

[Bunny]

Naxos did extremely poor job with SACD. They should have released Hybrid SACDs only of the multichannel recordings and they should have done the SACD layers right. The one Naxos SACD disc I ever bought didn't work in my player (only CD layer worked) so I replaced it to the normal CD version (lower price). Why don't Naxos do things the right way, the way of BIS for example?

I have two Naxos SACD/Hybrids, neither of which gave me trouble:  the Chants d'Auvergne I mentioned before and another of Händel's Fire Work Music.  Both of them play perfectly in my SACD player, in 5.1 sound.

[Bulldog]

BTW, has Naxos completely stopped releasing SACD's?

Unfortunately, Yes.

[Dr. Dread]

They still make those? 

[Brian]

BTW, has Naxos completely stopped releasing SACD's?

Stereophile did an interview with Naxos CEO Klaus Heymann.

JVS: Although you've stopped selling SACD and DVD-Audio releases, you're still recording in surround sound. Do you see Naxos releasing titles in high-resolution surround formats in the future?

KH: We record all choral and orchestral releases in surround. This means we create 40 to 60 new surround recordings a year, which we save for the day when we have a really good medium for them. I think SACD was never meant to be a surround medium; it was designed as an upmarket stereo medium, with surround capability added as an afterthought. Technically, DVD-A is a much superior format because of the amount of data it can carry. You also have longer playing times.

Unfortunately, DVD-Audio never took off, and SACD is dying. Even though smaller companies still sell SACDs, they're hybrids. People buy hybrid SACDs because that's the only format available to them, and they mainly play the normal CD-quality stereo layer. We actually have the market data.

For two or three years, we released all our big-budget productions in all three formats: CD, DVD-A, and SACD. When we sold DVD-A and SACD at a higher price, people only bought the CD. If people today had to pay a premium for SACD, they wouldn't buy it. That's why we're currently trying to recoup our manufacturing costs by selling all our remaining SACD and DVD-A titles for the same low price as our regular CDs.

JVS: HD DVD and Blu-ray can support higher-resolution data.

KH: And that's what we're going for. We're waiting until HD DVD and/or Blu-ray have good market penetration, then we'll release all our surround recordings in that format. You can have AC-3, discrete surround, encoded surround, stereo, and video all on the same carrier, manufactured at a price no greater than the price of manufacturing either SACD or DVD-A.

http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1207hey/index.html

[Todd]

I'm surprised anyone still sells SACDs.  SACD is a dying format.  High-resolution downloads are the future for people who want it - some labels are already selling 24/96 or better downloads.

[Bunny]

I'm surprised anyone still sells SACDs.  SACD is a dying format.  High-resolution downloads are the future for people who want it - some labels are already selling 24/96 or better downloads.

Linn sells high resolution 5.1 channel downloads, but I'd love to know what player those downloads will play on.  Do you need to get a player that supports FLAC multichannel music?  I know that Windows WMA format doesn't support multichannel play.  So far, I know only of players that support FLAC stereo.

[Todd]

Do you need to get a player that supports FLAC multichannel music?

I don't know, but I believe Linn's $20K unit handles everything properly.

[Bunny]

I don't know, but I believe Linn's $20K unit handles everything properly.

Just the ticket in these times.  Unfortunately I don't work for AIG so I didn't get a bonus this year.

[Coopmv]

I don't know, but I believe Linn's $20K unit handles everything properly.

The Linn Sondek for CD?

[flyingdutchman]

I'm surprised anyone still sells SACDs.  SACD is a dying format.  High-resolution downloads are the future for people who want it - some labels are already selling 24/96 or better downloads.

Wrong on every count.

[Bulldog]

Wrong on every count.

I hope you are correct, and I haven't noticed any decline so far in SACD releases.

[Todd]

Wrong on every count.

Really?  Please elaborate. 

The Linn Sondek for CD?

No, Linn has moved into the music server market.

[71 dB]

SACD is not dying, it is having small-scale co-existence with other formats. We live the age of versatile audio formats. There is room for CD, SACD, mp3, FLAC, vinyl,...

[Todd]

SACD is not dying, it is having small-scale co-existence with other formats.

Classical music fans are ostriches it seems.  Next, I suppose you will say that Blu-Ray is the format of the future for video, even when leaders of major Blu-Ray manufacturers are giving it perhaps 4-5 years before fading away.

[71 dB]

Classical music fans are ostriches it seems.  Next, I suppose you will say that Blu-Ray is the format of the future for video, even when leaders of major Blu-Ray manufacturers are giving it perhaps 4-5 years before fading away.

I don't know what is the format of video in the (near) future if not Blu-ray. People are buying HDTV sets and prices of Blu-ray players are coming down. Blu-ray's future seems good to me. I don't even have Blu-ray myself yet because I don't have HDTV yet.

[Todd]

Blu-ray's future seems good to me.

Then you know something execs at Samsung and Matsushita don't.  Only Sony touts the longevity of Blu-Ray, the same Sony that has abandoned SACD, which it helped create.  Blu-Ray sales are not up to projections, for a variety of reasons.  Many people are satisfied with DVD; higher hardware and software prices; apathy.  With ever faster download speeds, especially in the lagging US, and agreements securing rights of content owners, standard-res and high-res video downloads will start displacing physical media in the not too distant future.

Physical media will be around for years and years to come, but they already represent a shrinking portion of a shrinking market in music, and soon will in video. 

Back to the topic: SACD is a pitifully small portion of the market, and aside from an exceedingly small population who actively seek out SACD, most people couldn't care less or don't even know about it.  Small bands of classical fans can't keep a format alive forever.  Klaus Heymann is above all a smart business man, so he abandoned it.  And I believe BIS (or some other small label) is thinking about dropping it, due to extra costs.  With more and more titles available via download, and more content owners like Linn and Reference Recordings offering high-res downloads, the writing is on the wall. 

[71 dB]

Whatever. We can't predict the future. I just think there will always be people who prefer physical format (at least I do) so there should be also market for them no matter how much other people download.

[Todd]

so there should be also market for them no matter how much other people download.

Why is that?  And how is that?  If companies can't make enough money to stay in business offering a given product, then the product should no longer be made.