Cheers Jon,
to some extent bit like conversations I have with wife & mother-in-law about whether or not you can see the difference between HD & SD, and that although "modern" TVs may all be black & shiny, they are not all just the same! ;-)
Off for a wee google shopping session
Dont forget DVD audio in this coversation.
If you have a universal player then have a look into these
To add to what has already been said, I would also advise to look at reviews of albums you might be interested in purchasing on SACD or DVD Audio, before buying.
This is because while they CAN sound a lot better than standard CD's, there are some which only sound marginally better than the CD equivalent.
Here are a couple of examples of sites to look at :
The Super Audio CD | SA-CD | SACD Reference
QuadraphonicQuad Forums
Mark Knopfler - Shangri-la. Finally at a price where I couldnt say no - £7.49
Play.com
You will notice the difference more, if you have good playback equipment that does the SACD format justice.
Also agree with others that some SACDs are mastered better than others, just as some CDs are mastered better than others and if you get an exceptionally good CD and an exceptionally bad SACD, of the same album, you might not hear any improvement with the SACD, but this is not the usual case, it is the exception.
Also have to agree about surround sound, which is one BIG bonus on a good SACD. Take 'Dark Side Of The Moon' for example. Once heard in surround you'll never play the CD ever again, except to feel disappointed!
However there are surround CDs too, but they are DTS-CDs and IMHO equivalent to 'surround mp3'.
I think that's a bit harsh. DTS-CDs generally sound pretty good. I suppose you could say "Surround MP3 (320kbps)".
You do the math, if you want to 'split hairs', but the simple way to look at this is :
CD (16/44.1) Band width is pretty much at capacity with your average album, but to be generouous lets say only 75% full. So now you squeeze in 6 channels where there were only 2 before.
What has to go? Not the 16 bit that stays the same.
The 44.1Khz gets divided down to about a 3rd of what it was in stereo, that is mp3 quality.
.
Except that DTS-CDs are compressed and a 6 channel 16/48 bitstream is squeezed out through the CD compliant 16/44.1 standard.
Getting back to the bargainsdata:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7
I'm sure most of us have this in our high res collections, but for anyone that doesn't this is a lovely SACD for £5.23, definately recommend grabbing while it's at that price!
The Girl in the Other Room: Diana Krall: Amazon.co.uk: Music
Well Mr Orange you might like to argue every point I put, attempting to raising standards, but I've got ears and I've got taste and you can keep your mp3, your DTS-CD and all other compressed, compromised nonsense. Even CDs nowadays, with the loudness wars, sound pretty awful.
DVD-A & SACD are much better, usually, but even some SACD are not well mastered. There are also great DRM free downloads at 24bit/96kHz readily available. With today's decent broadband speeds and large cheap HDDs, there is not really any reason to remain locked into the poisonous fruit called iTunes: it's time to break free and enjoy lossless flac or even DTS-HDMA on blu ray. DTS-CD was a compromise for yesterday, it doesn't really have any place in a forward looking modern, music library.
In the past I made do with some DTS-CDs, only when I was not able to get the DVD-A or SACD version of an album. Thankfully those days are over and if you want them you can have all my DTS-CDs.