Just as the CD format surpassed those of vinyl, 8-track, and cassette, there have been attempts by others to unseat the CD technology--MiniDisc, digital audio tape, and MP3s. What makes DVD-Audio and SACD so much better? Both of these disc-based formats have been around a couple of years, offer superior multichannel sound, and allow for much greater storage capacity. But if they've been around for so long, why hasn't either of these technologies taken off yet?
Billy Pidgeon, an analyst with Jupiter Research, sees that consumers have little incentive now to upgrade their CD collections to a more expensive format. "There aren't enough player models or content discs yet for SACD, most DVD players are not fully DVD-Audio compatible, and all the players and the discs are too expensive," maintains Pidgeon. Most important, Pidgeon believes, is that consumers aren't aware of the benefits of either format.
Will these new technologies set standards or be Betamaxed into obscurity? Only time will tell. Let's check out both and hear what they have to say for themselves.
The openining comment "Twenty years have come and gone since compact discs vastly improved the quality of audio we listen to,.." is total rubbish.
CDs are LO-FI so they are a degradation of quality.The strenghth of the audiophile market for vinyl is prooff of that.
It has taken twenty years to recover audio sanity
although digilalisation will alwasys add its own colour