I have noticed that Blu-ray players don't play SACD or DVD-A. Is multichannel music dead?

Thanks, I haven't been following this.

dvendaros asked:

I have noticed that Blu-ray players don't play SACD or DVD-A. Is multichannel music dead?

Answer: No.

Visit: Great Source for Multichannel: dts, DVD-A, SACD

HTH

Currently, no Blu-ray players support DVD-Audio or SACD. Part of that is history - no Panasonic player has ever supported SACD, and no Sony player has ever supported DVD-Audio. Part of it is the logistics involved in just getting Blu-ray to work. With the relatively small market that still cares about those two formats, it's just not an interest to the big makers. I'm a bit surprised that Denon (who has been including DVD-A and SACD in most of their DVD players for years now) has ignored both formats so far.

Change is on the horizon, though. OPPO Digital has said that their BDP-83 will support SACD and should also support DVD-Audio (the hardware will, but as of CEDIA they were still working with their chipset vendor to incorporate it into the firmware).

Gonk's post noted.
The site to which I referred has many good dts discs. This is great multi-channel material...many of which were recorded as such.

Additionally, DVD players will decode the discs, though there are outboard dts decoders for those who wish to play their dts discs thru regular CD players (must have digital out for this of course).

And as I write this I'm listening to a dts disc thru a Sony 455 changer, decoded by a Millenium dts decoder into 990. Yes it displays the fact that it's got a dts signal.

So guys enjoy multi. DTS really has great separation. When a DVD has both dts and DD I choose dts.
HTH

As good as DTS can be (and it can be quite good), there are opportunities for even better. Both DVD-Audio and SACD tried to achieve that, as both are based on lossless compression. Unfortunately, both suffered an assortment of maladies (copy protection paranoia that prevented digital output for years, disastrously poor marketing, and the arrival of the iPod). It will be curious to see if Blu-ray brings about a resurgence of high resolution lossless audio - either stereo or multichannel. While we wait, though, I have a small assortment of DVD-A and SACD titles that I still enjoy...

Maybe not a current model, but my Blu-ray player (Panny 10A) supports DVD-A playback. From what was reported at CEDIA, the upcoming Oppo BD player should support SACD and (eventually) DVD-A.

Thanks for the replies and bringing me up to date. It is a bummer that they didn't support multichannel music over digital when it was introduced. Can you imagine the average joe trying to hook up six interconnects to get it to work? A big missed opportunity by the music industry and they wonder why their sales are down.