Happy Birthday, SACD! You're 20 Years Old Today!

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esimms86 said:
Yeah, they're going in and out of style.

Today @soundboy posted a link on the Steve Hoffman Forums re: this being the 20th birthday of the SACD:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/happy-birthday-sacd-youre-20-years-old-today.841805/
https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press_Archive/199904/99-002/index.html
Click to expand...

And ironically, to celebrate this auspicious occasion, SONY MUSIC, AFAIK, has NO new SACD releases planned to earmark this anniversary!

Oh wait, UK's Dutton Vocalion does have [I'm certain] some upcoming SONY [and associated labels] QUAD SACD releases in the wings......so to them, Hip, Hip Horray!


See the source image
 
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bmoura said:
Check the listings on CD Japan.
They show SACD releases from Sony Japan continuing through July 2019.
Click to expand...

Mostly Stereo Classical titles, Brian. When I type in SONY SACD a number of pages are displayed and most are much older OOP titles no longer available.
 
Ninecats said:
SACD shares the same birthday as me :) I turned 15 when this news came, some ten years went by until I started using the format, I remember the first players were expensive as hell.
Click to expand...
And they stayed expensive as hell for quite a while. The discs too, I saw O’Jays, Aerosmith, Miles, Dylan, and Isleys in the bins new, and I sure as hell noticed the surround logos on many of them.

But I had to decide - and deciding I did, I decided on a DVD-A player that could do more than just play SACDs. The universal players were years away, and they were a grand each at first.

I was forced to enter the SACD arena after buying a half dozen titles from the used bins, and with a used Denon Uni player from eBay.

Sony never helped me on my road to having access to play all formats. I was left out in the cold fending for myself with limited funds, when I finally got a bit of better cash flow going, retail dried up it’s supply of new discs - the used market prices just skyrocketed.

Then when Audio Fidelity came along offering quad and 5.1 masters at $20.00 if you knew where to shop online. Used prices starting coming back down to earth as the copy protection was cracked wide open. Old OOP titles started being traded on the used market at more reasonable prices as a result.

Computer music servers make formats irrelevant- it’s all stereo or surround, HD or SD.

DVD-A seems to have really died to be replaced by BluRay which is an esoteric Audiophile format never to soar in any real commercial way. And the DVD-V format rises up as a surround format of the labels choice with DTS/DD encoded discs that have more compatibility and are easier to copy. Who’d have guessed?

And SACD is still here being utilized by many Audiophile labels as their flagship product. More than a decade after Sony called it a day for SACD we have new releases out with more announcements imminent.

Unless you are loaded with disposable cash, or just well off in general - it’s not been an easy ride.
 
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Even though I reought lots of albums on 1/2 speed master LP's, Gold CD's, European and Japan vinyl, I resisted SACD at first. Tubular Bells, Blow by Blow, Gratitude and Hourglass on surround SACD convinced me it was time.

Since then, I've bought nearly 1000 of the buggers. Sadly, 2/3's of mine are 2ch or mono.

Lots of goodness. Thanks Sony for another way to pick my pocket. Countless hours of enjoyment make it all worthwhile.
 
It was the titles they had I would go every week to buy new dvd audio and see the sacd section, (ya they had them) and the one that made up my mind was Blow x Blow. I ran out and bought a SACD player, now got 2 dvd machines, (pre-Oppo) But is so worth it! And still going strong.
 
4-earredwonder said:
Mostly Stereo Classical titles, Brian. When I type in SONY SACD a number of pages are displayed and most are much older OOP titles no longer available.
Click to expand...

I share the disappointment that you have since I am not a big classical music fan.

However, I often wonder why so relatively few pop/rock titles show up on SACD. Did they not sell good? For example, I see Japan Universal Music continues to release new classical music SHM-SACD titles.....but no more new pop/rock titles. So a classical music SACD will sell more copies than a pop/rock SACD? On a worldwide basis?
 
quicksrt said:
. The universal players were years away, and they were a grand each at first.

I was interested in DVD Audio and SACD from the beginning but I decided to wait until either (a) the format war ended or (b) universal players came out at an affordable price. I bought my first universal player in 2006.
Click to expand...
 
I forgot to mention in my post that DTS Entertainment CDs were my way into cheaper surround while I waited for DVD-A players to drop below $700. Yes, $700 was the lower end of those players, as regular DVD players were heading south to the $99 range, the DVD-A versions were not dropping.

It was a brutal ride trying to get into this. I was a vinyl LP collector the whole while, buying my favorites on LP and CDs. For CDs I combed the used bins to fill in some cracks. Always spending $30 to $45 a week on new and used LPs/CDs. The Hi-Rez Surround discs would just blow this budget out of the water had I attempted to jump in. I also attended concerts semi-regularly. Somewhere after the age of 39 or 40, I could really feel that the music industry did not want my money. I was in denial for a little while, and then I was forced to face up. But that's another sad story, not for this thread.

Scott65 said:
I was interested in DVD Audio and SACD from the beginning but I decided to wait until either (a) the format war ended or (b) universal players came out at an affordable price. I bought my first universal player in 2006.
Click to expand...
 
bmoura said:
And the SACD section at Fry's, Tower Records and other music stores back in the day.... :)
Click to expand...
Ya all we had was CC and BB but they both had the set up to listen. And only a few titles in a display, both formats, that lasted about what? 6 months or so? I remember going to a local record store, must have been about 05 asked if they had any dvd a, and I was taken for a mental case, my buddy got pissed off at them! for ignorance-but remember scouring the web for titles? That's how I found QQ.
 
soundboy said:
I share the disappointment that you have since I am not a big classical music fan.

However, I often wonder why so relatively few pop/rock titles show up on SACD. Did they not sell good? For example, I see Japan Universal Music continues to release new classical music SHM-SACD titles.....but no more new pop/rock titles. So a classical music SACD will sell more copies than a pop/rock SACD? On a worldwide basis?
Click to expand...

The thing that DROVE ME CRAZY about these sections is that the Best Buys NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER restocked them. Say a pop/rock title that everyone wanted came out on a Tuesday. They got 3 or 4 copies. SACD and DVD-A fans were there, bought them, and that was it. Gone. Never to return. Well, this meant that the racks were filled with the stuff no one wanted. Many copies of Silverline DVD-A's and no copies of WB DVD-A's or Sony or UMG Pop/Rock SACDs. Why? Because they were all sold and only on some bizarre occasion when one store dumped their section did the stock get redistributed to other stores. Otherwise, nothing great.

So many times I would be sitting in the Acura dealer waiting for my car to be service, strike up a chat with some folks who had 5.1 in the car and told them about Best Buy. They would almost all say, "Yeah, we know. We looked and there was nothing there we wanted".

As much as I was annoyed at SACD for splitting the market (Sony? Nah, they'd never do that!), they really threw their own format under the bus with DualDisc. SACD deserved a better fate. I sound like a broken record on this one, but DSOTM just came out, Rolling Stone had the free SACD sampler in the issue, the press was all ga-ga about the Pink Floyd with articles in many national and local papers about it, and at that very moment when Joe Public awareness was at it's height (even if it was an over all blip), Sony stopped most pop/rock SACDs. For the fucking DualDisc!! The SACD was ALREADY a dual disc!! And a better one at that.

I could scream.
 
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