I'm afraid that many of you in this thread are blaming Sony for something that really should be blamed on the general public. Sony pushed SACD plenty, but the general public responded with a communal yawn.
It's really nothing more than You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. How much money was Sony supposed to throw at this format before giving up? I'm sure they lost an astronomical sum on it. You can't expect them to drop millions of dollars on TV commercials. They'd have to sell millions of extra units just to pay for the commercials. A lot of these discs sold in the neighborhood of 1000-10,000 units.
Believe it or not, during 1999, the first year of SACD, when it was available only in Japan and the players were several thousand dollars, Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" SACD sold a whopping FIFTY (50) COPIES!
I agree Sony made some mistakes along the way, but I don't think they were big enough mistakes to alone have killed the format. It was simply: Lack of demand.
One of the major benefits to SACD that Sony was pushing to other labels was that it could not be copied. (And amazingly, its code has to this day never been broken!) But then when Sony made the hybrid disc, with a CD layer, that CD layer could be copied. So then all the disc had going for it, for this part of the sales pitch to other companies, was that the SACD layer could not be copied. Big Deal.
Good grief, will those who claim that Sony are not to blame for the lack of success of SACD (and DVD-A) kindly wake up and smell the coffee, anyone who claims that Sony effectively marketed SACD is barking mad.
I don’t wish to be combative about this but sometimes I just can’t stand it when people say such dumb things.
They did NOT market SACD effectively or really, for that matter, at all. It is simply untrue to suggest that they did. Or naïve. And we're talking PROPER marketing here; the kind that puts a better format (Sony Betamax for example) in the ground whilst allowing an inferior product (JVC’s VHS) to completely dominate the market. These guys don’t take prisoners.
But you’re missing the point. Sony and their kind
don’t care about the sound quality of their product. I’m sorry if that sounds like some nonsense conspiracy theory but the facts back me up. Sure the odd ad would have appeared in Stereophile (readership how many?) but was SACD on MTV 24-7? No. Was it in the newspapers, radio, on Internet banners, Spam, messenger pigeon? No, no, no, no and no. Could you buy anything you really wanted on SACD? Fuggedaboutit. And don't forget that DVD-A was not taken up by Sony and in reverse SACD was not taken up by Warners etc thereby introducing yet another format war. Should we then blame the public for 'a lack of interest'? That is total bollocks.
Sony researched the possibility of a format that would be both higher quality (relative to existing CD) and non-copyable, and they eventually found it with SACD but in the first place other much better sounding formats were dropped by Sony because of the copying issue. Even so, nothing on the scale of a major change in format will succeed without mass marketing and easy, global participation and Sony utterly failed to accomplish this. SACD (and DVD-A to some extent) was doomed from the word go not only because of the internal politics of Sony but because it was burdened with legal restrictions, lack of a continuous supply of across-the-board material (other labels’ products) distribution hassles, top-heavy contractual obligations and prohibitive costs. As a format SACD was almost exactly what Sony had in mind when they commissioned their original research into hi-res but they couldn’t get their paranoid heads around the copying and back catalogue issues. SACD was indeed impossible to directly copy but you had to be and still do need to be quite wealthy to even consider releasing anything on SACD, much less be an independent band or label considering releasing stuff. The costs are prohibitive to say the least and you can dream on if you think you’ll make any money out of it. This situation would kill ANY format stone dead. They know this. And. They. Don’t. Care.
On a global scale, these issues are going to remain largely out of our hands.
Consider the two biggest shake-ups in our lifetimes of formats: 1) Vinyl to CD and 2) Video cassette to DVD: Arguments of quality aside, the unit cost of a CD, even in the very first days was less than a tenth of the cost of a 12” vinyl LP and yet they could charge more for it! I forget the exact figures but I recall there being something like a 95+ % saving on the physical cost of a DVD over a VHS cassette in raw materials, manufacturing and distribution costs. A no-brainer of course that the industry would go for it but it could only happen on a global scale. And that sort of scale means a colossal amount of marketing is necessary. SACD never received even a sniff of that even though it was Sony's own baby.
Think back, the possibility in the early 1980’s of CD being nothing more than just a small luxury side-line is exactly the same as today’s situation with SACD and DVD-A but with one major difference: The change-over from CD to SACD or DVD-A cannot generate such exotic sums of money as the change from CD to vinyl, or VHS to DVD video. This is purely commercial pressure talking and it's talking DOWN to the general public. In these circumstances, with an industry that spends almost allof its profits on methods of controlling the use of material rather than the quality of it, hi-res and surround formats stand very little chance of success. The only thing that would make the Majors change formats would be mass action. The only mass action that has taken place is illegal downloading of compressed files.
And sound quality? Don’t make me laugh. They don’t give a toss. Now they are selling us those very same digital downloads which represent as big a step backward in terms of sound quality as it's possible to imagine.
I shouldn't need to point out that the marketing budgets for digital downloading services have probably already outstripped anything that was ever spent on marketing SACD or DVD-A by a factor of at least 1000 to one. OK, I'm guessing but even 10 to one will do. They are selling us shit and we are buying it because there is little choice but to do so. Kids are more likely to listen to new pop tunes on a tinny mono mobile phone 'speaker than anything that might actually sound good and the majors are all hypeing this shit to the max, everywhere you look it's MP3 this and download that. That's the reality and even if I want no part of it there is almost nothing I, or any other member of the public can do about it.
As a mass commercial venture Sony fcuked SACD up entirely and made sure that DVD-A died with it. FACT. Deal with it.
In these circumstances I find it incredibly offensive to blame the public for the lack of hi-res stuff and I will continue to rest the blame ENTIRELY on Sony, BMG, EMI and the other majors with an entirely clean conscience as should every other member of the public who gives a damn about sound quality. Yes we'd all like to have something that sounds better but in all honesty how is this going to happen? I'll tell you, it's when we can't buy any more shit.
Now again, anyone, tell us Sony are not full of shit!
As the head of Meridian Audio said: In the war between the SACD and DVD-Audio, the winner was the iPod.
Cheers all,
Colin at See Why Audio.
