SACD - Well, well....

It's been around more then a while, as has DVD-A but neither has taken off properly.....I have purchased about 10 in total over the years and never really been that impressed with them........until now :)

I recently picked up a copy of Pink Floyd "Dark side of the moon" SACD pretty cheap and slapped it on with the normal reservations of SACD/DVD-A...

...but how I was wrong. It has been properly remastered and re-mixed for multichannel and sounds utterly superb. I was completely blown away by it. The depth, clarity and positioning of the audio were all perfect IMO. My neighbours are going to get sick of it, I can tel :)

the long awaited SACD of wish you were here with "new" 5.1 mix is due out soon. both DSOTM and WYWH had great quad mixes, the 5.1 of DSOTM is great so i expect WYWH to be the same. would be great to get animals, the wall and final cut in 5.1, likewise hitchiking, KAOS and amused by roger (who's opera album was also on 5.1 SACD)

SACD seems more effortless in comparison to CD IMHO.

Can you play these in a normal blu-ray/dvd player, or do you need specialist equipment for these discs?

You need something with the SACD logo on it to hear the proper SACD layer. Otherwse it plays the normal CD layer.

I have had DVD players over the years with SACD support and the older "fat" PS3s will also play them properly.....the big issue seems to be, with the exception of the fat PS3s and some Oppo players, all SACD players seem to only allow multichannel output over multiple analog outs.