SACD - what went wrong?

[garyrc]

I didn't read all the posts but the real bottom line on the rejection of SACD is simple, the market rejected it. Millions of purchasers made the choice that they didn't want SACD. It matters not what the technical advantages were, the market spoke, and it's done.

 

Most of the potential market did not know SACDs existed, thanks to a lack of advertising. 

Edited October 17, 2014 by Garyrc

[Emjay]

I didn't read all the posts but the real bottom line on the rejection of SACD is simple, the market rejected it. Millions of purchasers made the choice that they didn't want SACD. It matters not what the technical advantages were, the market spoke, and it's done.

 

Most of the potential market did not know SACDs existed, thanks to a lack of advertising.

Exactly!

That's the frustrating thing about someone jumping in who admits they don't actually read the full topic, and instead spout off.

Some of the 2-channel guys (self-appointed 'audio purists') rejected multichannel SACD out of hand - I actually read a post on another forum stating "I only want to hear the stereo mix that the artist intended" - completely ignoring the fact that mark Knopfler was integral to the 5.1 mix of Brothers in Arms, or that quadraphonic albums were being made in the 70s, with experimenting since the 50s, and, laughably, overlooking the fact that, unless their devotion to purity kicked in during the mono years, they, too, are actually listening to multi channels.

But no one I know 'rejected' SACD - it was just never on our radars to begin with.

[Zen Traveler]

 

 

 I wonder why the people I know (myself included) who invested in HT never got the multi-channel SACD bug....

Because two great channels sound better than 4/5/7 good ones.

 

 

Doesn't make any sense in the context of what I'm saying

 

I agree that it doesn't make sense...Like I posted in another thread about the guy who owned 7 Lascalas---to paraphrase, would he be just as happy with 2? I think not.

[Zen Traveler]

 

 

I didn't read all the posts but the real bottom line on the rejection of SACD is simple, the market rejected it. Millions of purchasers made the choice that they didn't want SACD. It matters not what the technical advantages were, the market spoke, and it's done.

 

Most of the potential market did not know SACDs existed, thanks to a lack of advertising.

Exactly!

That's the frustrating thing about someone jumping in who admits they don't actually read the full topic, and instead spout off.

Some of the 2-channel guys (self-appointed 'audio purists') rejected multichannel SACD out of hand - I actually read a post on another forum stating "I only want to hear the stereo mix that the artist intended" - completely ignoring the fact that mark Knopfler was integral to the 5.1 mix of Brothers in Arms, or that quadraphonic albums were being made in the 70s, with experimenting since the 50s, and, laughably, overlooking the fact that, unless their devotion to purity kicked in during the mono years, they, too, are actually listening to multi channels.

But no one I know 'rejected' SACD - it was just never on our radars to begin with.

 

Yep! I agree with you guys.   That said, I used to be a 2 channel guy until I moved to Multichannel and now hardly ever play CDs and never play records.

 

{EDIT: Btw, I saw this was/is in the 2 channel forum but replied because of the title---Some 2 channel guys don't care about Multichannel and it appears that most don't care about DSD...I contend it's us folks with 5.1+ systems that would benefit most from SACDs/DVD-As and NOT for 2 channel.}

Edited October 17, 2014 by tkdamerica

[russ69]

 

Because two great channels sound better than 4/5/7 good ones.

 

 

Doesn't make any sense in the context of what I'm saying

 

I guess I'm the master of spouting off and not making sense....so I may as well continue, lol. The thread title was "SACD, what went wrong". My loosely expressed thoughts were basically saying, it doesn't mater why it went wrong technically, it was simply rejected by the mass consumer and it died. The mass consumer rejected all hi-res formats, that is until Blu-Ray came along, who knows why (most likely is because the bins at Walmart weren't filled with SACD discs)? Then to further that line of thought, 2 channel guys supported all the hi-res formats but compared to the mass consumer, our support mattered not one whit. Then progressing even more, dedicated 2 channel guys, like me, are not really looking at multichannel formats but in the end it doesn't matter because audiophiles are not the ones defining the popular formats. 

The statement that 2 great channels is better than 4/5/7 goods ones was just a personal interjection and can be considered off topic. However the average guy with a cheap stereo (or a really great stereo) or a guy with a HTIB does not care about SACD (or any format other than what they already have). Is that making more sense?  

[Emjay]

(somehow managed to double-post - sorry!)

Edited October 17, 2014 by Emjay

[Emjay]

Look, I'll try being a little more conciliatory - maybe it's just a difference in phraseology?

 

Saying the format was rejected implies, at least in my reading, a willful act.

 

My point is that I, personally, never rejected SACD, it's that it was never something within my experience to accept or reject.

 

Now that I've fleshed-out my thoughts on the subject further, I think I should have posted this in the Home Theatre forum, not 2-channel audio, because it was the 2-channel guys who really did reject SACD, or at least the surround capabilities of the format, as being a gimmick.

 

Not in every instance, of course; some embraced the format for 2.0 sound improvements (whether due to different mastering techniques, or inherent differences in the DSD vs PCM underneath matters little to this discussion).

 

It would be interesting to know how many others went from being '2.0 guys' to embracing surround-sound audio off the back of SACD/DVD-A (other that tkd, above), but that's another forum post

 

Perhaps the title should have been "Why didn't I know about SACD 10 years ago? It's great, and I'm loving surround-sound mixes of some of my favourite albums, but, being late to the party, my support won't matter to the future of the format, and many of the SACDs I want are now out-of-print, and therefore command huge prices"

 

Gary made the point that there was little advertising of the format, and I think I have to agree with that - that might even be the simple answer to the question that I'm actually asking (although I like to think I'm somewhat immune to marketing, I'm probably having myself on).

 

Being someone who invested is 4/5.1 nearly 20 years ago, and knowing several other people who did the same, primarily for movies (in my case also PC gaming), and being a music fan, and knowing those others are also the same, we are a prime demographic to have been brought into the SACD fold.

 

"Come for the surround-sound, stay for the improved sonics"

 

Instead, none of us ever had SACD on our radars.

 

Not a one of us actually rejected SACD - I've spoken to several people since I posted the initial question to confirm - it's that SACD was simply never brought to our attention. 

 

The most active verb you could ascribe to our interaction with SACD is "ignore", but even that probably over-states our mental engagement with the format. ("Ignorance" might be more accurate - perhaps using any verb is inappropriate, since it implies an action)

[russ69]

Don't sweat the small stuff. It's looking like no media will be loaded to any disc in the future. We'll still be talking about formats but it will all be down loaded from the cloud. I'll still be scrounging in the used CD bins...Oh and I'll take an SACD if it's in there, I can play that.

[Chris A]

That said, the vast majority of potential buyers would be the multichannel aficionados who enjoyed watching movies in 5.1 not realizing how awesome their old albums could sound in multichannel--This audience never got tapped.

 

from Toole's book (pg. 34):

 

"Apparent Source Width (ASW): a measure of perceived broadening of a sound image whose location is defined by direct sound. In live performances, it is the auditory illusion of a sound source that is wider than visible sources, this is considered to be a strongly positive attribute of a concert hall. Perhaps because they lack other pleasures of live performances, many audiophiles have come to think that pinpoint localizations are measure of excellence, so there are opposite points of view. It is a perspective also cultivated by the bulk popular recordings, many of which are directionally uncomplicated: left, center, and right.

Listener Envelopment (LEV) is a sense of being in a large space, of being surrounded by a diffuse array of sounds not associated with any localizable sound images. This is regarded as perhaps the more important component of spaciousness, differentiating good concert halls from poor ones. Envelopment was absent from monophonic reproduction and only modestly represented in stereo reproduction, so music lovers have experienced decades of spatial deprivation. Through multichannel audio systems, moviegoers have occasionally been exposed to better things for many years, and now, finally, the capability can be extended to the music repertoire."

 

The second measure above directly correlates to the difference between stereo and multi-channel recordings as one of the two most statistically significant measures of loudspeaker array performance and listener involvement in sound reproduction. [taken from http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/262988-drivers-big-soundstage-2.html#post4092249]

Edited October 18, 2014 by Chris A

[Mallette]

Look, I'll try being a little more conciliatory - maybe it's just a difference in phraseology? Saying the format was rejected implies, at least in my reading, a willful act.

 

Aye.  Phraseology and semantics are actually the main issue in this thread.  The FORMAT was not rejected at all and is in wide use.  The MEDIUM was rejected. 

 

Dave

[Chris A]

Now that I've fleshed-out my thoughts on the subject further, I think I should have posted this in the Home Theatre forum, not 2-channel audio, because it was the 2-channel guys who really did reject SACD, or at least the surround capabilities of the format, as being a gimmick.

I believe that you hit the nail on the head.

 

It would be interesting to know how many others went from being '2.0 guys' to embracing surround-sound audio off the back of SACD/DVD-A (other that tkd, above), but that's another forum post

Maybe not...

 

Not a one of us actually rejected SACD - I've spoken to several people since I posted the initial question to confirm - it's that SACD was simply never brought to our attention.

 

You're essentially right--I wasn't paying attention until the late 2000s and wasn't actually listening to native DSD on a daily basis until this year, due to restrictions on getting DSD bit streams to my DAC through any bus other than HDMI (and sometimes you have to choose the "right HDMI bus"...).  Getting everything set up to hear the differences has been amazingly difficult and plagued by land mines/potholes IMHE.

 

I do believe that DSD/DST via downloads will continue to be sold through online suppliers--something that I personally haven't done yet due to pricing alone: even used SACDs at premium prices still seem to cost less for whole albums (for the music that I prefer to buy) than paid downloaded DSD/DST.  I hope that changes soon since the distribution costs to suppliers is effectively zero nowadays, but the suppliers are still not passing that savings on to the consumers.

 

But I'll also broach a subject that historically seems to be taboo in these circles: what you listen to is as important in terms of the current relative market size as does the format itself.  I find most of the issues are not with the genres that I typically listen to nowadays. 

 

Knowing that this subject further subdivides the readers here, I'll also say that most all the issues with badly done music (i.e., Loudness Wars, "Wall of Sound", mastering for commercialization) and resistance to adopting multichannel products in better sounding digital formats--all seem to lie in one major marketplace: popular music (which is not limited to "pop" in this context).  Anytime the music seems to get more popular among buyers, it seems that the producers/mastering engineers that are creating all the problems show up in force and apply their psychoses and culture to their resulting music products. 

 

That's the problem--not the buyers, IMHO.

Edited October 18, 2014 by Chris A

[Schu]

Sony has a dedicated dsd unit.

[Mallette]

Then progressing even more, dedicated 2 channel guys, like me, are not really looking at multichannel formats but in the end it doesn't matter because audiophiles are not the ones defining the popular formats.

 

I think there is a perception problem with "the 2 channel guys" both of themselves and also as they are perceived by the rest of the audiophile community. 

 

The "2 channel guys" arose as a group following the quad debacle of the 70s.  Of course, many of them today weren't around for that. 

 

What they really are is QUALITY oriented not only in the specs but in the experience.  While the quality of surround mixes has improved greatly, for many of us they still remain contrived, phased, multiplexed, processed, steered...one or more. 

 

Engineers have failed to produce a "Mercury Living Presence" microphone plan to deliver the purity "2 channel guys" expect.  It is not hard to do naturally if one simply places the microphones such that they emulate the 360 degree soundfield we hear, but for whatever reason they seem to want to try to produce it the hard way. 
 

"2 channel guys" are perfectionists are not luddites.  I don't think you'd find a single one who would prefer having concert seat with a semi-circular backpiece of sound absorptive material to reproduce that "real stereo experience" whether it was a rock, jazz, symphony, or whatever concert. 

But they won't settle for clearly artificial surround. 
 

ATMOS, using a concept I mooted here a few years ago of treating directionality as metadata in a sound object (as opposed to channel) as great potential to reproduce an acoustic space/time event accurately...but only if provided audio recorded as in accordance with natural sound as possible.
 

Dave


 

[russ69]

Dave, I totally agree. No quarrel at all. But like I said, it doesn't matter, the kids buying pop music are driving the industry not us guys.

[Chris A]

"2 channel guys" are perfectionists[,] not luddites.

Hum...I'll agree to disagree on this point.

[willland]

While the quality of surround mixes has improved greatly, for many of us they still remain contrived, phased, multiplexed, processed, steered...one or more. 

 

 

When I listen to multichannel SACD's on my main HT rig, I mostly use the native multichannel mix that my system defaults to which is a direct multichannel(5.1) PCM at 88.2kHz.  My Cambridge Audio 751BD will send a native DSD stream but the NAD has to convert it to PCM first.  I often opt for the 751BD to convert DSD to analog first and then send it to the NAD, which does offer a tiny bit more detail than DSD>PCM>NAD DACs>Analog.  Either method, SACD's sound great on my rig.

 

Now when playing redbook CD's, I use my NAD pre/pro's "Enhanced Stereo" feature which does wonders without being artificial sounding.  It maintains that classic stereo imaging while being a little more 3-dimensional and enveloping.

 

Bill

[Chris A]

When I listen to multichannel SACD's on my main HT rig, I mostly use the native multichannel mix that my system defaults to which is a direct multichannel(5.1) PCM at 88.2kHz. My Cambridge Audio 751BD will send a native DSD stream but the NAD has to convert it to PCM first. I often opt for the 751BD to convert DSD to analog first and then send it to the NAD, which does offer a tiny bit more detail than DSD>PCM>NAD DACs>Analog. Either method, SACD's sound great on my rig.

I found that any conversion to PCM from DSD severely affects detail and, believe it or not, perceived frequency response (low bass) of the resulting music.  This is particularly true of the decays of instruments/voices and the feeling or presence of the performance.  I was very surprised to the degree conversion to PCM had (Note: this is manufacturer-specific.  Onkyo Oppo converts to "XX" KHz LPCM, which shouldn't affect the sound, but something clearly is lost in their process.  YMMV.)

Edited October 18, 2014 by Chris A

[Mallette]

I found that any conversion to PCM from DSD severely affects detail and, believe it or not, perceived frequency response (low bass) of the resulting music

 

Fascinating.  Hard to imagine why as such understanding as I have of the algorithms suggests it should work fine.  But I have never made such a transcode so I am not in a position to debate it.

 

I have made a lot of transcodes from DSD to PCM and I've yet to hear any degradation not consistent with the target format.  DSD seems to be pretty much the perfect digital mastering medium for transcoding to any PCM format from mp3 to 24/196. 

 

Dave

[Chris A]

Since I don't have their source code (Onkyo's Oppo's) in front of me, I can't tell you why it is so but I've learned to trust my ears, and this one isn't even close. 

 

I suspect that the RIAA has something to do with this degradation, but I can't prove it.

 

Chris

Edited October 18, 2014 by Chris A

[garyrc]

Saying the format was rejected implies, at least in my reading, a willful act.

 

The public ("the market") rejected the New Coke and, in my parents' genertion, the Edsel, both of which they knew existed because they were bombarded with ads.  As several of us are saying, most of our friends did not know SACD existed.

 

I have replaced many orchestral (classical/romantic/modern) and jazz CDs with SACDs of the same performances, and many DVDs with Blu-rays.  Most of the SACDs are at least a little better, even when they are not in surround sound, and almost all of the Blu-rays are better than the DVDs.  The point is that some of the individuals in the market are willing to buy the same program material twice, if there is a good chance that the new one is better.  I've put the few SACDs that are not better (or even worse than!) the CDs in a cardboard box marked "Garage Sale," where they sit cheek by jowl with many, many CDs.

Edited October 18, 2014 by Garyrc