Today’s audiophiles and music lovers have wide arrays of options when it comes to music listening and recording. The latest innovations in home audio are Super Audio Compact Disc and DVD-Audio. Each of this has its distinct leap from present CD format technology, in which, each comes with its own great quality sound and storage capacity.

The underlying difference between normal CD versus SACD technology is how the data are encoded. CD format and DVD format make use of the digital encoding of analog signals through the so-called PCM process or pulse code modulation. PCM takes on the digital snapshots of an analog signal wave from varied points within the wave’s motion.

The CD takes the signal and converts the data back into sound waves. By interpolating the data, it approximates the sound and converts it waveform. These waveforms are loaded between the “snapshots” taken from the pulse code modulation process by the amp.

On the other hand, DVD-Audio or SACD has a finer PCM potential because of the sampling speeds. DVD-Audio sampling speeds are 96 kHz, 24 bit. It also has two channel or six channel data at 129kHz.

Additionally, DVD-Audio provides a storage capacity with seven times more than the current compact disc technology. Such add-on capacity may be used for lengthy recordings, or advanced quality sound, plus visual contents that are accessible via PC-liner notes or television, artist bios, video clips, photo galleries, or song lyrics.

On the other hand, SACD features new technology known as DSD or Direct Stream Digital, which is touted as the “PCM killer” by two huge companies, Philips and Sony. Direct Stream Digital enhances music resolution to an admirable degree, even greater than DVD-Audio, by means of following closely to the music’s original waveform.

In using DSD process instead of PCM encoding, Super Audio Compact Disc recordings do not need to address the primary sound waves to the interpolation and decimation stages connected with PCM. Direct Stream Digital records music at higher sampling frequencies such as 2.8224 MHz, converting it to one-bit data.

In addition to the better sound quality, the SACD format offers higher storage capacity. Head to head, SACD is six times more capacity than the traditional CD.

DSD captures much musical info than Pulse Code Modulation does for compact discs. As the outcome, SACD’s sound more analog, warmer, and smoother than the normal CD’s. Super Audio Compact Discs faithfully capture the freshness and purity of a musical performance, feeling the whole ambience of the concert venue or the studio where it is performed.

With the SACD multichannel, sound and sonic realism is achieved. When couples with a 5.1 channel home theater system, you can really take advantage of the musical data of SACD audio.

However, the glitch is, with these newfangled audio formats, users are required to get a new player in order to enjoy the boons of these current media. And though such players are less expensive than their first release, they are still significantly costly than your standard DVD-Video and CD players. SACD and DVD-Audio players manufactured presently also play CD and DVD-Video formats so the need to add more components into an already cluttered stereo cabinet is not necessary anymore.

Overall, if you truly love the sonic fidelity of more data and smoother tone, why not consider adding a SACD player to you system. In addition, it makes an awesome addition to your home theater system.