Thread: With Hi-Res downloads looming; physical Super Audio is still around, alive and kicking

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Post by Ad Rhenum August 26, 2015 (41 of 54)
Back to the topic:

I endorse most, if not all Adrian is writing is his first post.
Speaking for myself, I will continue buying sa-cd's till there is nothing left of my interest. I have no appetite for blu-ray's or downloads. I can play them on my equipment, but there are still enough sa-cd titles on my wishlist. I only regret many perfomances are available as cd-only. But most of them are available on streaming services as well. The advantage is the enormous library available at the very moment on subscribing.

I am not sure if sa-cd is alive and kicking, and have even more doubts hi-res downloads are looming. The future belongs to streaming music. I will wait for it to arrive as hi-res, preferably as dsd in multichannel, and skip the downloads.

Just a pity this site dedicated to sa-cd only seems to be terminating. But over years I have found my way on the internet to find information on sa-cd's. I visited HRAudio.net and am not convinced it will deliver for me what sa-cd.net did in the past.

Post by Adrian Cue August 26, 2015 (42 of 54)
Ad Rhenum said:

Back to the topic:

I endorse most, if not all Adrian is writing is his first post.
Speaking for myself, I will continue buying sa-cd's till there is nothing left of my interest. I have no appetite for blu-ray's or downloads. I can play them on my equipment, but there are still enough sa-cd titles on my wishlist. I only regret many perfomances are available as cd-only. But most of them are available on streaming services as well. The advantage is the enormous library available at the very moment on subscribing.

I am not sure if sa-cd is alive and kicking, and have even more doubts hi-res downloads are looming. The future belongs to streaming music. I will wait for it to arrive as hi-res, preferably as dsd in multichannel, and skip the downloads.

Just a pity this site dedicated to sa-cd only seems to be terminating. But over years I have found my way on the internet to find information on sa-cd's. I visited HRAudio.net and am not convinced it will deliver for me what sa-cd.net did in the past.

Thanks for returning to TOPIC (and agreeing with some of my concerns!). It is seldom that people do once they are hooked on somthing else. You may well be right about streaming, but I don't think it will ever be multi-channel and of high-whatever-quality. Folks in rural areas (like me) have, for some time to come, still to do with crappy internet through old telephone wires. And as for the new site: it may take some time to get ajusted to it, but it is geared towards the future. And above all: it is the only place where you will find a comprehensive overview of all new HiRes issues, including your cherished physical SACD's.

Post by Euell Neverno August 26, 2015 (43 of 54)
Adrian Cue said:

Thanks for returning to TOPIC (and agreeing with some of my concerns!). It is seldom that people do once they are hooked on somthing else. You may well be right about streaming, but I don't think it will ever be multi-channel and of high-whatever-quality. Folks in rural areas (like me) have, for some time to come, still to do with crappy internet through old telephone wires. And as for the new site: it may take some time to get ajusted to it, but it is geared towards the future. And above all: it is the only place where you will find a comprehensive overview of all new HiRes issues, including your cherished physical SACD's.

The collector mentality is never going to be happy with streaming and it's nice to have a library at home, although some may object to the amount of space consumed. Physical disks will be with us for a long time to come. I personally have no interest in streaming, particularly since our internet, while reasonably fast, does not afford sufficient gigabytes for substantial streaming or downloads.

Post by soundboy August 26, 2015 (44 of 54)
Ad Rhenum said:

I am not sure if sa-cd is alive and kicking

It's more than alive and kicking....we may get over 1,000 new releases this year. We were looking at about 488 new SACD titles released during the first 6 months of 2015.

Post by Ad Rhenum August 28, 2015 (45 of 54)
soundboy said:

It's more than alive and kicking....we may get over 1,000 new releases this year. We were looking at about 488 new SACD titles released during the first 6 months of 2015.

I'll try to explain why I think sa-cd is barely alive and kicking. The link below might help to illustrate. Just read "Kommentar des Produzenten Christoph Martin Frommen" at the bottom of the page. It is in german, but google translate gives an adequate translation.

http://aeolus-music.com/Alle-Tontraeger/AE11021-Sweelinck-Jan-Pieterszoon-Complete-keyboard-works

The sa-cd format has been a mixed bag of pro's and con's from the beginning.

- copyright production was an argument for the industry, but it makes sa-cd's expensive to produce

- hybrid sa-cd's made the acceptance easier, but many (classical music) buyers today are not even aware of the sa-cd layer and therefore not willing to pay a higher price (I've even read a review on Matthew Passion by Jacobs about the arrangement of the choirs: "It might have worked in quadrophone". The reviewer of age didn't notice it was a hybrid with surround version. At the time of introduction he was a strong antagonist of sa-cd and it's surround music.)

- expectations of the revenues from artists and music industry at the introcution were far to high, which led to disappointments and even obstruction to publish on sa-cd

- this site helped promoting sa-cd, but it's main sponsor, amazon, has been a major player in distroying revevues for the labels that produce sa-cd's

And then there is the distribution problem. Many labels came into serious problem when several distributor's went broke, losing their investment. I just checked the site of channel classics, there are eleven (or seven, taking same names into account) distributors for the single currency zone (Euro). That doesn't strike me as efficiënt.

These are just a few reasons why sa-cd has a market share of something like 0.1 % of music sales. (No exact data is available.)

Due to the high costs and low returns of multi-channel recordings, it means that, at least some, multi-channel recordings these days may end up the same way as quadrophonic recordings in the seventies: in the archive.

And I don't see a better future for blu-ray's or downloads.

Post by Adrian Cue August 28, 2015 (46 of 54)
Ad Rhenum said:

I'll try to explain why I think sa-cd is barely alive and kicking. The link below might help to illustrate. Just read "Kommentar des Produzenten Christoph Martin Frommen" at the bottom of the page. It is in german, but google translate gives an adequate translation.

http://aeolus-music.com/Alle-Tontraeger/AE11021-Sweelinck-Jan-Pieterszoon-Complete-keyboard-works

Maybe you sent the wrong link.

At the end Cristoph Martin says: " Aber wir haben diese Aufnahmen selbstverständlich auch im Surround-Sound-Format geschnitten und gemastert und hoffen, bald eine Lösung zu finden, um diese Versionen für die Liebhaber von Mehrkanal-Wiedergabe auf einem Download-Portal anbieten zu können, denn der Klangeindruck ist auch hier phänomenal und in der Abbildung von Instrument und Raum unglaublich realistisch!"(we will release the recording in multi-channel Hi-Res download; the sound is phenomenal and very realistic).

We all know there is staunch opposition towards SACD and other Hi-Res, right from the start, with all sorts of bland arguments! Furthermore: most people are not interested anyway: MP3 is good enough. And why not. Others want more, others want best. It's a niche product, like Porsche etc. Market share is small and will remain small, like Porsche and Bugatti & so on. As long as Universal International goes on re-issuing back catalogue in SACD and Blu-ray there must still be profit in it.

So what's your point? Streaming multi-channel is for most NOT an option.

Post by Ad Rhenum August 28, 2015 (47 of 54)
It's in an other part:

Aus Budget-Gründen war es uns allerdings leider nicht möglich, diese Aufnahmen auch tatsächlich auf sechs Super Audio CDs zu veröffentlichen (der Vertrieb gibt meistens die Preiskategorie eines neuen Produktes vor, und um ein solches Produkt (eben vor allem preislich...) „konkurrenzfähig“ zu machen, muß es natürlich möglichst billig zu haben sein. Leider stellt die SACD mittlerweile offenbar kein Verkaufsargument ersten Ranges mehr dar.

hoffen, bald eine Lösung zu finden, um diese Versionen für die Liebhaber von Mehrkanal-Wiedergabe auf einem Download-Portal anbieten zu können

Partially tranlated:

For budget reasons, we were, however, not possible to actually publish those recordings on six Super Audio CDs
.....
Unfortunately, SACD no longer represents a selling point of the first rank.
.....
we hope to find a solution to offer it as download

Post by Adrian Cue August 29, 2015 (48 of 54)
Ad Rhenum said:


For budget reasons, we were, however, not possible to actually publish those recordings on six Super Audio CDs
.....
Unfortunately, SACD no longer represents a selling point of the first rank.
.....

Maybe you are too pessimistic. Look at this (all Aeolus SACD's) /search/aeolus. 6 times Sweelinck (however good he is) is not on everybodies hitlist. The demise of SACD has been predicted for the last 10 years. It may eventually happen, but not now. There will still be some for you to look forward to.

Post by wehecht August 29, 2015 (49 of 54)
Adrian Cue said:

The demise of SACD has been predicted for the last 10 years. It may eventually happen, but not now. There will still be some for you to look forward to.

Just so! My principal supplier lists 10 more titles released or to be released between Jan 1 and Sept 30, 2015 than for the same period in 2014 (classical only and not including high priced Japanese reissue labels). Granted an average of 23 titles a month isn't exactly a flood, but it's enough to separate me from a couple of hundred bucks every month and keep my stack of unheard discs at a pretty constant five or six.

Post by Euell Neverno August 29, 2015 (50 of 54)
Ad Rhenum said:

I'll try to explain why I think sa-cd is barely alive and kicking.

- copyright production was an argument for the industry, but it makes sa-cd's expensive to produce
- hybrid sa-cd's made the acceptance easier, but many (classical music) buyers today are not even aware of the sa-cd layer and therefore not willing to pay a higher price
- expectations of the revenues from artists and music industry at the introcution were far to high, which led to disappointments and even obstruction to publish on sa-cd
- this site helped promoting sa-cd, but it's main sponsor, amazon, has been a major player in distroying revevues for the labels that produce sa-cd's

These are just a few reasons why sa-cd has a market share of something like 0.1 % of music sales. (No exact data is available.)

Due to the high costs and low returns of multi-channel recordings, it means that, at least some, multi-channel recordings these days may end up the same way as quadrophonic recordings in the seventies: in the archive.

And I don't see a better future for blu-ray's or downloads.

My, we are a nattering nabob of negativity, aren't we?

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