Wow, this is crazy!
I received the SACD of Romero’s album. And I didn’t hear anything!!!
I learned the that the industry has not been able to agree on a way to connect the SACD player to the Surround Sound System. Normally, one connects a DVD player via a coaxial digital audio cable or an optical digital audio cable to a processor, which in turn is hooked up to a surround sound amp – basically 6 amps for 5.1 surround sound (the .1 is the subwoofer) or 8 amps for 7.1 surround sound. Often the DVD player contains all of the processing and can send seperate outputs to a receiver.
Well, I found out that the industry hasn’t been able to agree on how to send SACD to a processor. Instead of using the coaxial digital audio cable or optical digital audio cable which already exists for Dolby or DTS, some use a FireWire cable – also known as IEEE 1394. Well, since my Lexicon processor is from 1997, it does not have a seperate FireWire input for SACD and my Pioneer DVD/SACD player does not have a FireWire output… To listen to SACD I would have to buy a new receiver – if I want to use the analog outputs of my existing DVD/SACD player, since my Parasound THX amp does not have any volume controls as that is controlled by the Lexicon processor… or I have to buy a new SACD player AND a new receiver, which both have the said FireWire interface.
Who cares? What were they thinking? They basically crippled the technology right from the start. How many people will spend thousands of dollars to listen to a pitifully small number of SACDs? Hilarious, actually. The music industry is shooting itself in the foot – again.
Hmmmm, maybe there’s a conspiracy to make older surround sound systems obsolete! Well, you’d think it would be obvious to produce for the most common decoding system.
Thinking about this SACD stuff – while it would be really cool to listen to you in surround sound I mostly wouldn’t just because of how that room is set up for use in my house. Besides, I think most people who are really into music tend to put their money into good stereo equipment. What most people, like me, have for surround sound is cheap speakers because that’s adequate for movie special effects. (Just my 2-cents.)