SACD, Not Just Another Ordinary Plastic Disc

The next frontier in audio.

What’s the big difference? It’s another plastic disc! With my technocrat father would probably ask.

That wouldn’t be far from the truth. Super Audio Compact Disc or SACD looks like any other CD out there. In two decades the design of the disc hasn’t radically changed. But while that may be true, beneath the silicon exterior, SACD audio, changed the expectations we set for our entertainment.

So what’s the difference in a nutshell? The technology utilized in SACD is much different from regular discs. It’s called “Direct Stream Digital” or DSD as opposed to the traditional PCM method used for encoding and reading. Suddenly you hear music with so much more detail than you would normally hear on a regular audio Compact Disc.

Here are the differences of SACD from ordinary CD:

1. It offers a much higher Resolution. SACDs owe their better quality to DSD technology, which was originally developed by Philips and Sony as way to archive analog master tapes of priceless recordings on a medium that provided better sound reproduction.
2. It holds more information. In the same way that DVDs can hold gigabytes of data which include an entire movie plus subtitles. Multiple audio streams and special features SACDs offer the requisite 2 channel stereo data and 6 channel surround sound. And even the text and images for a complete listening experience. Read the liner notes off your television screen and even scroll through photos of the performers on the disc.
3. It has a resolution that is 64 times better than regular audio CDs. This exponential increase allows the outputted sound waves to follow the original waveform of the music more closely. In SACDs it would be a clear uncompressed TIFF photo. As we hear them, the sound from regular audio CDs would be a compressed JPEG photo complete with jagged pixilated edges.
4. It provides a frequency response of over 100kHz and a dynamic range over 120dB. It just looks like numbers on the paper, but across the audible frequency range and when you actually hear the music on an SACD, it’s like emerging from an auditory haze for the first time.
5. Music you hear approximates the original. Data are being recorded in original form and shape of sound waves. Capturing and playing back the exact same sound. Since it can take much space and hold all the data.
6. SACDs can also accommodate 4 times more information than the current CD format. SACD contains 4.7GB of data as compared to the current audio Compact Disc of 700 or 800MB.

As I’ve mentioned above. The data includes data plus up to 6 channels of surround sound. Actually it’s similar but still not the same as DVD audio disc. DVD-audio was developed with video in mind while SACD was developed with audio in mind. DVD audio is reproduced with PCM technology. Even if it is able to deliver higher quality sound reproduction, still won’t compare to SACD’s DSD technology, which closely reproduces the recorded sound.

I don’t even need a special speakers to run my SACDs, it plays without running into problems. By the way, most high-end DVD players are already SACD compatible.

Merry Christmas to all and happy listening to 2008!