Re: [ARSCLIST] Vanguard Classics reappears in 2 cd sets

[phillip holmes <insuranceman@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Kind of reminds you of the Beta debacle.  Sony continues to do good product 
development and then hamstrings it with onerous licensing and poor business 
plans.  It's a good thing CD was co-developed with Philips, or it'd probably 
have failed.  Someone's competing 14 bit format would've become the standard 
(or 12, or 10).  I think the two problems with SACD and DVDA is that the two 
formats are very expensive to master and the presence of four different 
formats with seemingly infinite numbers of channel options (one bad for the 
producer, one bad for the consumer).  I learned when I was in insurance not 
to confuse the customer with "too many options".  "Mr. buyer, here's option 
A and option B, which do you prefer (then just shut up)?"  "Mr. buyer, here 
are two competing formats, and you have to buy a new player, and you can't 
pop it in your car's CD player (the only reason I started buying SACD was 
the advent of dual layer CD-SACD titles or I'd never have bought), and that 
DVD player you bought for $100 is not adequate, and we can't guarantee that 
we'll issue anything you want to hear.....etc., etc...."  Why didn't Sony 
make every player it produced a combination SACD player (even if they had to 
do it at a loss)?  Then they screwed up by not putting the DVDA option on 
its players, further driving away buyers who would've had a Sony player that 
played SACD.
Can you blame the average guy for not buying?  I don't.  And there are 
plenty of people with good systems and good ears who refused to buy because 
they could see all the same mistakes being made.  "I remember Quad, and I'm 
not making the same mistake".  I think that the regular DVD video option of 
96khz could've been the defacto audiophile format (and it should've been 
more successful).
For me, the only two reasons I started buying SACD were the advent of the 
RCA and Mercury dual layer issues, done on supposedly superior parts and the 
advent of cheap all in one players.  My $140 Pioneer is surprisingly good 
for a cheaply built throw away.  And I will NEVER buy a DVDA or SACD disk 
that can't be played in a regular CD player.  The DVD dual disk is very 
cool, even if the DVD layer is often filled with crap.  But that's another 
problem with the formats:  bad production choices.
Just my consumer oriented opinions (funny thing is I still feel that R2R is 
a viable playback medium and I do buy old R2R tapes regularly--even spent 
$50 plus on the original 2 tracks from the late '50s).
Phillip
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dale francis" <dallen@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, June 11, 2006 7:04 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Vanguard Classics reappears in 2 cd sets


> On Jun 10, 2006, at 2:14 PM, Don Cox wrote:
>
> > It simply has not been marketed. And probably most consumers don't  have
> > good enough speakers to hear the difference.
>
> This is all too true and the other half of the equation,
> the equipment needed to produce sacd is proprietary (sony).
>
>
> dale
>
> ___________________________
> Dale A. Francis, Owner/Engineer
> Long Run Audio :: Athens, Ohio
>   : dale@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx :
> <http://www.longrunaudio.com/>