Earlier than hi-res audio may very well be streamed from a USB storage system or the cloud, it lived on an optical disc the dimensions of a CD. All through the 2000s, two competing codecs – SACD and DVD-A – duked it out for market supremacy with neither rising victorious. Client indifference, the necessity for specialist {hardware} and a format battle that echoed the Beta vs. VHS videotape format wars of the Nineteen Eighties meant that each the SACD and DVD-A have been successfully lifeless by the top of the last decade.
Right now, we hone in on the SACD.
The Tremendous Audio CD (or SACD) was co-developed by Sony and Phillips and launched in 1999 as a higher-quality various to the then-dominant compact disc. The SACD’s increased audio decision is delivered with a pattern price of two.8MHz – a lot increased than a CD’s 44.1kHz pattern price – the place the audio information is encoded as a Pulse Density Modulation (PDM) bitstream as an alternative of the CD’s Pulse Code Modulation (PCM).
What’s the distinction? The SACD’s PDM encoding is a type of analog-to-digital conversion the place the amplitude of an analog sign is represented by the density of a steady stream sequence of pulses. A CD’s PCM encoding, then again, is a digital illustration of an analog sign the place the amplitude of the sign is sampled and quantized to a particular bit depth at common intervals: 44,100 per second.
The SACD additionally gives an extended taking part in time than the CD and might accommodate multi-channel audio.
To play an SACD, we want an SACD-compatible participant whose higher-frequency laser can learn the upper information pit density discovered on the disc’s floor. An SACD participant will then decode (to analogue) the ensuing bitstream with a low-pass filter that, by definition, strips out any undesirable high-frequency noise. In contrast, decoding a CD’s PCM datastream requires an off-the-shelf DAC chip, resistor ladder or FPGA + code. Fortunately, most SACD gamers characteristic each to be backwards suitable with CDs. Yow will discover an inventory of modern-day candidates right here.
I just lately reviewed Marantz’s SACD 30n: an SACD participant that additionally performs CDs. However not having a single SACD to my identify, I may solely analyse its prowess as a CD spinner. The ensuing consternation from some commenters – annoyed that my protection contained zero SACD testing – was palpable. Did I not see that ‘SACD’ was within the product identify?
I’ll reply to that query with a query: did the SACD die-hards not know that I solely began reviewing hi-fi in 2010, simply as the main labels had introduced SACD manufacturing to a halt; and the heavy promotion of its software program successor, DSD, was starting to ramp up? Simply as ripping a CD creates audio content material encoded as PCM, ripping the contents of an SACD (not a straightforward course of) places DSD-encoded digital audio on our arduous drive.
Moreover, did the SACD trustworthy not know that 99% of albums launched in 2023 are nonetheless issued as a CD however (subsequent to) none see the sunshine of day as an SACD? A click on on Acoustic Sounds’ on-line retailer tells us that two reissue labels, Analogue Productions and MoFi, dominate the Prime 10 best-selling SACDs the place not a single album is lower than thirty years outdated.
Lots of the extra mainstream SACD releases – Depeche Mode, Peter Gabriel, The Police, Bob Dylan – appeal to a reasonably penny on the used market. As Tremendous Deluxe Version’s Paul Sinclair factors out, buying a few of these albums on SACD would require a home remortgage — and that was ten years in the past.
Slightly than lean on anecdotal discuss, how about we ballot the Darko.Audio YouTube viewers about its SACD possession sample?
The takeaways? A whopping 83% don’t personal a single SACD and solely 17% personal greater than ten. The 🌶️ discovering? Solely 4% of the ten,000 ballot respondents personal greater than 50 SACDs. Set towards the backdrop of significantly bigger vinyl and CD collections, fifty SACDs are a great distance from what we would name a ‘significant’ assortment; and hardly sufficient for the rational amongst us to spend massive on an SACD-capable disc spinner. If nothing else, this reminds us that the SACD’s standing as a bodily format in 2023 stays above-niche.
