Does anyone know just how much hybrid-SACD capacity is left in the world? I think it was discussed 
on this list, that Sony closed down whatever they had in the U.S. and was down to one manufacturing 
line in Japan. Did whomever ended up buying UMG's capacity in Europe keep the SACD manufacturing?

Don Cox, if you doubt my point about surround-sound systems, please investigate DVD and BluRay 
player sales vs. sales numbers for any sort of surround-sound gear. My guess is that less than 5% of 
all movie-disc players are connected to more than two speakers, and most of that 95+% is connected 
directly to the TV set, so sound is coming from whatever speakers are built into the TV.

A big question going forward is, will the download market firmly split into less-than-CD resolution 
for the mass media and greater-than-CD resolution for the niche, with no need for manufactured 
plastic discs anymore? It seems to be headed that way, but it's hard to tell anything certain this 
early in the trend. The Chesky brothers' HDTracks operation continues to license more content and 
expand its offerings, which I don't think they'd do if they didn't have enough buyers to justify 
whatever licensing and logistical costs involved. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, only 
the latest pop hits sell for $1 per song. Amazon downloads are typically less than $10 per album, 
usually far less than $1 per song. For the record companies, there seems to be a combo-niche that 
justifies some of the recent high-resolution remastering -- sell LPs at $25+ per album, some 
companies also sell SACDs in the $20+ price range, and then many of them license high-resolution 
downloads to HDTracks in the $18 per album range. It seems to net out enough margin to justify the 
remastering costs, to the benefit of some long-neglected material.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Barton, Matthew" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2012 3:40 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Early digital recording history -- a couple of followups


Isn't the issue really the future of high-resolution and surround sound, and not whether one gets it 
on a disc, from a cloud or in some other fashion? That future may be uncertain, but I don't think 
the news is all bad.

Quite a few SACDs have been coming out of Europe in the last few years, and the trend shows no signs 
of abating that I can see, so I think its reasonable to suppose that the customers for these discs 
will continue to be serviced with high-rez recordings in one way or another.

Some of these new SACDs are reissues, and some are just new performances of familiar repertoire, but 
there's also a lot of new and worthwhile music. Gunnar Idenstam, for instance, is a fine Swedish 
organist who's released several SACDs on BIS and other labels of an original mix of classical, 
choral, traditional Scandinavian and a bit of rock.

Matthew Barton
Library of Congress


-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of 
Tom Fine
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2012 3:07 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Early digital recording history -- a couple of followups

Look at how the high-end (and not-so-high-end) audio equipment makers have gone into "music 
streaming players", sometimes built into preamps. They operate either from an attached hard drive, 
over a network from a computer running server software, over the interwebs, and/or all three 
options. Plus the trend toward "cloud" computing, where you don't own things that live in your house 
or on your devices, rather you own the right to stream it to any player you have with you. The kids 
don't mind the idea of not having tactile booklets and the like as much as an ARSC member collector 
or archivist would. Some kids, a niche rather than the mass market, are into vinyl because they like 
the tactile product, the ritualistic aspects of playing it and the somewhat hipster social cred of 
being "into records."

To be honest, I've been pleasantly surprised with the recent wave of budget-priced CD reissues.
Examples include many classical box sets from UMG, EMI and Sony priced at least than $2 per disc, 
plus Sony's on-going jazz "complete Columbia albums" series, which are priced far south of $10 per 
disc, sometimes as low as $5 per disc. As for new pop and rock music, as often as not, an album will 
generate more sales as iTunes downloads and streaming content vs CD purchased at the few remaining 
retailers (for mainstream pop and rock, the biggest CD retailer nowadays is Wal-Mart).

It's a very different world from when you older guys developed your music habit. Also very different 
from my youth, in the late days of the LP and early days of the CD.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl Miller" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2012 2:52 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Early digital recording history -- a couple of followups


> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Roderic G Stephens <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Wed, November 7, 2012 11:31:06 AM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Early digital recording history -- a couple of followups
>
> Tom, you seem to be writing off the SACD as a dying animal.  From what we've
> been seeing on http://www.sa-cd.net/ new releases keep coming, so does that mean
> that they (the record companies) are getting the message?
>
> *******************************
> My label is distributed by Naxos and they have asked all of their labels to
> provide higher resolution audio masters for electronic distribution. I am not
> one at predicting anything, but I do notice that our monthly sales reports
> indicate a declining interest in the disc. We don't have any SACD releases.
>
> Karl
>