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ie8 fix

sacd

Are SACD & DVD-Audio already kaput? Are HD DVD & Blu-ray similarly doomed?

It's safe to say most, I mean like 99 percent, of music buyers don't give a hoot about sound quality. Why else would CD sales continue to plummet and worse than CD quality downloads go up every year?

OK, that's the mainstream, what about the other 1 percent; why have the audiophiles, according to a poll on the Stereophile website, already given up on SACD and DVD-Audio? Before I cite their feedback I'd like to point out that despite the naysayers, the super sound formats are still hanging on. Neil Young's latest release, "Chrome … Read more

High(way) fidelity: Sony unveils SA-CD car stereo

While the rest of the world is driving around listening to compressed music files on home-brewed MP3 discs and iPod tracks broadcast over FM, Sony is betting that there is a market for audiophiles who want a far richer in-car acoustic experience. The company this week released the XAV-W1, the first superaudio CD-compatible (SA-CD) in-car stereo, which is able to play the proprietary Sony format in 5.1-channel surround sound (if you have the right car speaker arrangement).

With a 7-inch LCD screen, the XAV-W1 is also the first in-dash DVD player from Sony, which has to date confined itself … Read more

PS3: Final nail in SACD's coffin?

Much has been made of how the PS3 is Sony's not-so-secret weapon in the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war. But I actually held out some small hope--call me naive--that the PS3 might be able to breathe some new life into Sony's near-dead, high-fidelity audio format, SACD (Super Audio CD), which competes with another near-dead, high-fidelity audio format, DVD-Audio.

In case you hadn't heard, the PS3 supports playback of SACD discs. There aren't a whole lot of SACD discs out there, but I happen to own five of them. I made an effort to find them the … Read more