Sony and SACD

mstrane21

Well-Known Member
I was looking at some used disk players today and a question occurred to me. With Sony and maybe to a lesser extent Philips having a vested interest in SACD, why didn't they equip more players to read SACD? Why on earth didn't every single early generation Sony blu ray player decode and reproduce multi channel SACD disks? Why didn't most of their post-2000 cd and DVD players, as the format was in its infant stages? Most of those old DVD players had multi-channel outs anyway, how much more would the production cost have been to equip it for SACD?

Did they bank too much on people going out and buying SACD players? The answer is probably obvious, but I don't understand the logic of not pushing the consumption of this media format that they developed by making it more easily accessible. Seems like if they had made it more accessible, maybe more people would have been interested.
 
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I was looking at some used disk players today and a question occurred to me. With Sony and maybe to a lesser extent Philips having a vested interest in SACD, why didn't they equip more players to read SACD? Why on earth didn't every single early generation Sony blu ray player decode and reproduce multi channel SACD disks? Why didn't most of their post-2000 cd and DVD players, as the format was in its infant stages? Most of those old DVD players had multi-channel outs anyway, how much more would the production cost have been to equip it for SACD?

Did they bank too much on people going out and buying SACD players? The answer is probably obvious, but I don't understand the logic of not pushing the consumption of this media format that they developed by making it more easily accessible. Seems like if they had made it more accessible, maybe more people would have been interested.

I would think Sony wanted to recoup the cost of R&D, plus the marketing of SACD with their early SACD player offerings. As you posted, it was their hope (and dream) that consumers would go out and replace their existing DVD players with ones capable of playing SACD, but that idea never became reality. For a year or two, Sony did make a push with low cost DVD/CD/SACD players such as the DVP-NS500V and the audio only SCD-CE595 5-disc changer. Sony even had a couple of car SACD players available. However, by that time, downloading has already sealed SACD's fate as a mass market failure. That fact that the format survived until today is already a miracle. 2019 will be SACD's 20th anniversary.
 
I would think Sony wanted to recoup the cost of R&D, plus the marketing of SACD with their early SACD player offerings. As you posted, it was their hope (and dream) that consumers would go out and replace their existing DVD players with ones capable of playing SACD, but that idea never became reality. For a year or two, Sony did make a push with low cost DVD/CD/SACD players such as the DVP-NS500V and the audio only SCD-CE595 5-disc changer. Sony even had a couple of car SACD players available. However, by that time, downloading has already sealed SACD's fate as a mass market failure. That fact that the format survived until today is already a miracle. 2019 will be SACD's 20th anniversary.
I think the 500 was my first player. Came with a copy of Kind Of Blue.

What I found weird is that after that they didn't release many titles.
Dylan's Time Out Of Mind screamed for a multi-channel release, but they went with stuff like Another Side Of instead.
 
Logic and Sony aren't too two words that go together all that well, lol.

While we're on the topic, why weren't more Sony Music artists' releases put out on SACD back when they were trying to push it?

In early SACD promo material, Sony Music announced many titles that never materialized. Who really knows why?

Nowadays, Sony Music doesn't directly release its titles on SACD. Instead, the Sony Music's titles is licensed to a reissue label, such as Mobile Fidelity (Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Hall & Oates, Carole King, Miles Davis, etc.) and Audio Fidelity (Elvis, Blood Sweat & Tears, Earth, Wind & Fire, etc.). Mobile Fidelity has already announced an upcoming SACD from Simon and Garfunkel.
 
In early SACD promo material, Sony Music announced many titles that never materialized. Who really knows why?

Nowadays, Sony Music doesn't directly release its titles on SACD. Instead, the Sony Music's titles is licensed to a reissue label, such as Mobile Fidelity (Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Hall & Oates, Carole King, Miles Davis, etc.) and Audio Fidelity (Elvis, Blood Sweat & Tears, Earth, Wind & Fire, etc.). Mobile Fidelity has already announced an upcoming SACD from Simon and Garfunkel.
Yeah. I think I have a magazine somewhere that had an ad announcing the Dylan titles with one that never came out.

Makes no sense how they were trying to launch a format, had a stellar catalog of music, and then didn't do much with it.

I worked for them at the retail level a few years before SACD came around. Confused as F would be a generous description of how they did things.
 
I worked for them at the retail level a few years before SACD came around. Confused as F would be a generous description of how they did things.

There seems to be a disconnect between the hardware side of the company vs. the software side.
 
SACD failed to catch on with the general public for all the usual reasons (cost, requires a special player, very difficult to copy for backup, most people can't hear any sound quality difference between SACD and standard CD, etc.) but it still has a small market among audiophiles. Certain out of print titles command pretty high prices these days. I would imagine that high resolution downloads (from HDtracks, for example) probably surpass SACD sales by now, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD
 
There seems to be a disconnect between the hardware side of the company vs. the software side.
Back in my day there was a disconnect between all of the sides.
I was there when the 1st Playstation was coming out. They pushed HARD for us to pre-sell it, with the idea that our customers would have them before anyone else. And then didn't deliver the units to us.
The bungling of SACD didn't surprise me at all.
 
SACD is primarily a classical music format. Hundreds if not thousands of titles released annually and almost all of the back catalogue available at reasonable prices.

There appears to be little interest in it outside that genre for reasons already mentioned.

Ray
 
My first HT was a all inclusive package from Sony. Combination receiver and Disc player and cheap small speakers with 20 gauge speaker wire. But as an upgrade to TV sound it was a great step up. Not to long after buying it I discovered it would play SACD. I built up a small collection of discs which I kept after the receiver/disc player died. Just recently picked up a multi-channel receiver and decided to try SACD again.
 
SACD is primarily a classical music format. Hundreds if not thousands of titles released annually and almost all of the back catalogue available at reasonable prices.

There appears to be little interest in it outside that genre for reasons already mentioned.

Each of the last 3 years saw over 800 new titles released on SACD globally, which I would think is a much higher total than the initial annual global release rate. There has been approximately 12,000 SACD titles released worldwide.

And yes, classical music is still the predominate genre on SACD, although there's a good pop/rock selection as well.
 
IMHO ... My guess ... just speculation on my part.

The initial push behind SACD was to re-live the glory days of the CD cash cow sales.
Get everybody to re-buy their music collection over again $$$ .. when it was clear that was not going
to happen (probably based on data driven projected sales models) .. backers bailed.
 
No, according to Sony and dcs (who helped develop the DACs and the tech), it was for conservation and storage of studio masters.

Sony developed DSD to archive studio masters, for example Elvis' catalog and the old CBS Masterworks (now called Sony Masterworks) classical recordings. SACD was an attempt to re-sell the same music after Sony converted the masters to DSD.

Instead of releasing these recordings on SACD, many of the recent Elvis CDs and Sony Masterworks CDs are converted from the DSD masters.
 
Each of the last 3 years saw over 800 new titles released on SACD globally, which I would think is a much higher total than the initial annual global release rate. There has been approximately 12,000 SACD titles released worldwide.

And yes, classical music is still the predominate genre on SACD, although there's a good pop/rock selection as well.
Where would one find these 800 new SACD releases?
 
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