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Both SACD and DVD-Audio formats are effectively dead, but the question whether high resolution audio is distinguishably better that CD sound still lingers in the air.

The Journal of the Audio Engineering Society conducted a very interesting comparison in the form of year-long double blind ABX comparisons. The results? 50% of listeners found no difference between CDs and high-res formats. Furthermore, no single listener was able to consistently distinguish formats correctly.

Does that mean that SACD and DVD-Audio are no good and just marketing tricks to resell the same albums? I do not think so, and I have the following comments:

• As correctly pointed out in the Audiojunkies post, recording quality plays a major role, in my opinion even more important than the medium used for playback. Think of your vinyl record and CD collections. Do all your albums sound equally good? Aren’t some of them absolute crap? Do not some of them sound so good that you listen to them again and again?
• Both SACD and DVD-Audio discs hold inherently more information than CDs and have wider dynamic ranges. So by definition quality is better if we talk about the same recording and the same reproduction equipment.
• Blind tests indeed have their problems, with familiarity with equipment and listening rooms being a limiting factor. But provided that conditions are good, if differences exist it is unfair to use unfamiliarity as an excuse to cover for the fact that SACD and DVD-Audio are not really as big an improvement as advertised.
• The more detail there is in a recording, the better the reproduction equipment must be. Try to connect a good SACD player to mediocre amps and speakers and you stand no chance of any improvement over a CD player.

The sad truth is that P2P and online music commerce have pushed music quality back to MP3 levels. File size convenience has taken priority over everything else and with the prevalence of music and MP3 players it will be hard to reverse that trend.

Since SACD and DVD-Audio players never managed to catch on, the first step is to try to keep performance at CD levels and then talk about better things…

Link: Audiojunkies