It is a shame that surround music has fared so poorly in the marketplace, especially since many of the reasons for its failure were preventable. DVD-Audio and SACD both came to market at around the same time. The two competing formats both offered high-resolution audio, with surround standard on DVD-Audio from the get-go and added to SACD in short order as a reaction to DVD-A. The format war led to confusion in the marketplace, especially when the average consumer was quite content with the CD. Then there was over-zealous copy protection on both formats that prevented digital audio output during the formative years of both formats, leaving us forced to use multichannel analog connections and making it very difficult to own players for both formats. Digital output options exist for both now, but IEEE-1394 never saw hardware support because it couldn't support both formats until both had basically settled into "niche" status (at best) in the marketplace and HDMI has had its own share of problems achieving presence in hardware. And of course it didn't help that studio support was spotty and many stores never offered much selection.

The topic of DVD-Audio/SACD and HD DVD/Blu-ray was discussed a few months ago in my Advanced Digital Mixing class a couple months ago. Like you said Gonk, they came out at around the same time. This certainly set up competition right away. What's more is that players that offer support of both only pro-long the life of the loser. The same thing is beginning to happen with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. It's the DVD-Audio/SACD war all over again.

You are quite right. The software libraries for HD-DVD and Blu-ray are turning out to be a bit stronger than those that developed for DVD-Audio and SACD, but otherwise the similarities are striking - which is why some people continue to worry about the future of HD optical discs. The HD format war is not likely to play out exactly the same way that the high-res audio disc format war did, but it is still not a situation that is healthy for HD optical discs in the long term.

So do you think Blu-Ray will come out on top? Or are they both doomed?

I think Blu-ray's software library gives it a definite advantage, but Toshiba has done a much better job with hardware than anybody in the Blu-ray camp has. At one point last year, I started to wonder if Blu-ray was going to survive its launch at all. At this point, they've made up most of the ground they lost but I still don't think they're ready to claim any sort of definitive victory.

In response to this thread gonk wrote:

DVD-As can have DTS tracks, but I'm pretty sure DTS-Surround discs are audio only.

And I said when I received them I'd give update. Here 'tis. They sound fabulous. The discs are indeed audio-only, though there is a tracklist and some choices.

I bought three: Les Brown, Chick Corea, Brazilian Jazz. They sound incredible. My understanding is that they were recorded for this format, so they sound correct. Of course, I'm playing the Oppo thru 990-7700.

I have(on dvd-a or dvd-v)

bjork - surrounded collection :dts
hotel california - eagles :dts
harvest - neil young :dts
wind & wuthering - genesis :dts
homecoming - america :dolby
fragile - yes :dts
goucho - steely dan :dolby

and dark side of the moon on sacd

there`s a huge advantage(in terms of sound) on dvd audio over sacd. this is mainly because of the fact that its digital out from the oppo to the 990 for dvds. sacd needs the oppo to do the D to A, then the 990 to do A to D to process the information....then A to D to send to the amps. I find the oppo`s D to A to be far inferior to the 990s.

after listening to 24/96 its pretty lacklustre when returning to cds. lets hope we see/hear some titles on hdvd or blue ray.
I read everywhere that dvd-a are finished...but the release of the genesis box set on dvd-v makes me happy to know that the same level of audio is available.
sorry for the ranting.