It baffles me why this format never took off?
On the bunch of carefully selected SACD's I own, its just stunning sound.
Betamax type thing I suppose?
Honestly though Dark Side of the Moon is a cheap but essential entry to SACD sound, if you know the album its never sounded better this way IMHO.
Roger Waters Amused to Death was just made for SACD and hi fidelity and sounds amazing, not a big fan of Roxy Musics Avalon album, but heard so much about it I just had to own it, eventually got it for a quite inflated price ... but not as inflated as some were paying.
Avalon sounds superb in SACD, its just crazy the difference to a normal stereo system.
SACD is simply 1 bit and a faster rate around 2Mbit/sec instead of a wider slower bit rate of CDs. It's equivalent, directly, to DSD64 'single rate'.
I have a DSD native DAC that runs faster at DSD512 that takes streams from the computer via USB - this form of high quality streaming was the last nail in the head of SACD (and the fact that CDs died with iPods etc). Additionally the technical implementation of a DAC for 1 bit DSD is simple, and due to that simplicity it's usually easier/better for the designer*
The mastering of the material used is quite often very high bit rate DSD nowadays - even for CD or vinyl. That's the rub - often the SACD was the same mixed down material as a CD unless extra expense covered the remastering. It's the same with streaming content, so you'll need a high quality streaming service (ie tidal etc) and a fast machine to store and stream it. DSD streaming is seen as the audiophile niche in the same way as SACD, but there's a larger uptake as a DSD stream is easier to get a wide selection but then you're locked into the particular player etc due to the copy protection used.
You can convert from CD into DSD.. but then it's not going to be as good as the original master being used as the source. Useful if you have CDs as the number of CD laser assemblies for CD players is disappearing.
* a point on DAC design, for multi-bit designs such as a 32bit DAC (or ADC) to offer anything like 32bit - as the bits at the lowest end represent so small voltages that (a) you won't hear it and (b) they are below the noise created by the chips and components. For example, some of the best '32bit' DACs can only get to 27bit when measured in a lab and when a 24bit ADC is used.. the majority of the time the best resolution is 21bits due to the noise floor of the chip itself. I built an ADC for testing audio gear.. its noise floor is -160dB, enough to measure the noise floor of my 1990s CD player and even my Siglent signal generator! You will not hear anything below about -120dB (that's basically silent). The lowest bits of a 21bits of a DAC will be below this (for example 127dB).
Another way to look at this is 140dB will permanently damage your hearing, 120dB will do to after about 5 minutes.. it's that loud.. now can you hear a whisper at 50dB at the same time? Or your heatbeat?
In the end a long as the mastering masters the music at a inaudible accuracy (needed for mixing multiple streams, balancing the volumes etc) and at the last moment downsamples then you're going to get the best DSD experience.
Also MP3 compression is really, really bad for the final quality.. but makes it easy to fit 1000s of songs on a small device.
