SACD: Super Audio Compact Disc
Sony's own Super Audio Compact Disc format
Consumer electronics and entertainment giant Sony can pretty much do whatever it wants. They can even summon the audacity to single-handedly create a format designed to compete with the rest of the industry for the next generation CD. When the hi-fi audio world thought the DVD-Audio was the next big thing in digital sound, Sony released SACD.
Roughly half of all music ever recorded is owned either directly or indirectly by Sony through its many recording arms. Only Sony could wage such a war against the rest of the industry- they have the power to produce their own players and create their own media. By preventing their properties from ever being released on DVD-Audio it gave SACD immediate appeal. Restricting audio players from the ability to decode the SACD format forced consumers to decide between formats when they purchased one of the pricey players for high resolution audio.
Despite the scorched earth format war, Sony did one thing right. The uniqueness of the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) process is certainly noteworthy. Rather than simply following the lead of the 20 year old CD pulse code modulation standards, Sony used their own proprietary system of digitizing analogue sound. Rather than using long high bit words, they shrunk the CDs 16 bit words and significantly upped the conventional CDs sampling rate from 24Khz to 2.8MHz. This far exceeds DVD-Audio's sampling rate of 96KHz. The result according to hi-fi purists is a warmer sound than DVD-Audio. SACD sounds more like an old tube amplifier might have sounded and less clinical or digital than DVD-Audio. With 5.1 channels of high resolution sound, either SACD or DVD-Audio are amazing advances from conventional DVD-Video and CD.
A new line of Universal DVD-Players have emerged that play both formats at a reasonable cost. The trouble with the new players according to some audiophiles is that they do neither format much justice. But it's generally a simple matter of the physics of economy; a $200 dollar Pioneer U-DVD player isn't going to sound quite as good as a $2000 Denon player. But today a $200 Universal DVD Player will give you excellent sound from both formats at a reasonable cost.