John Smyth wrote:

>Did you go 5.0?

I've had a home theater for a number of years now, and went with a full
5.1 system almost four years ago.  I have full range speakers all around
- Infinity for the mains and Martin Logan for the center and surrounds
- as well as two subwoofers.  It strikes a pretty good balance between
an immersive theater setup, and a great music system.  I have an Onkyo
surround receiver that has a proprietary DSP mode that does a fairly
amazing job of turning stereo into 5.1 surround (called five-channel
stereo).  It does a better job than any of the Yamaha DSP surround modes
I've heard.  Many classical recordings made in an actual hall, as opposed
to a studio, get a very subtle and convincing surround treatment from
this mode.  For instance, a Dorian chamber music recording made in the
Troy Savings Bank Hall played on this system puts you right in the sweet
spot, extracting just enough ambience for the surrounds to fool the ear
into believing that I'm in the hall.  I can't really hear the surrounds,
but when I switch to a direct, unprocessed stereo signal from the
five-channel mode it is like letting the air out of the sound.

>If you've heard the MTT Mahler in discrete surround, *tell me* you can't
>wait to hear the 2nd this Tuesday!

I have the Mahler 6th recording on order, so I haven't yet heard any of
the MTT recordings with the SF Symphony on SACD.  I'm very much looking
forward to it though.

>Some observations though: From my armchair I believe this drop in
>numbers represent SACD settling into the Classical/Jazz niche, (though
>sales figures for Bjork's latest on SACD were very good, over 100,000
>copies sold, for instance), where definitions of success may be different.

You are probably right.  I'm amazed at the sales figures for the Bjork
SACD (I assume you mean Vespertine).  In the US, only 300,000 SACDs total
were sold in the first half of 2004 (compared with 349,000,000 CDs sold
during the same period - that's a mere 0.1% of the market for SACD).
Amazon US ranks Vespertine (the album was released in 2001 on CD and
DVD-A - when it went to #19 on the billboard album sales charts - and
in March 2004 on SACD) at number 782 in terms of sales, and the SACD
version at number 146,458 for the hybrid SACD.  Amazon UK currently ranks
the CD at number 1,453; the SACD at number 11,428; and the DVD-A at
number 12,927.  I wonder who's selling all those Bjork SACDs!  In any
case, it is very true that there have been SACD sales successes including
the early Rolling Stones albums, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, the
Bob Dylan albums, Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, The Who's
Tommy, and apparently Bjork.

I do think several hi-end independent classical labels are highly
interested in the technology, and slowly making an investment in equipment,
etc.  But the efforts of Hyperion, Chandos, and others still strikes me
as experiments - a toe in the water if you will.

Let's play with the numbers a bit.  Let's assume that the sales for the
first half of 2004 hold for the rest of the year.  That gives about 600K
SACDs sold in 2004.  Let's be generous and assume that Christmas sales
are strong, and the actual number gets pushed to 750K.  In 2003 SACD
sales were 1.3 million.  That means that SACD sales fell by about 42%
in 2004!  Not good.

But let's assume that classical CD sales account for about 5% of the
total (it's varied between 4 and 7 percent over the years).  Using the
same logic as above, total CD sales for the year should be about 875
million units, making classical CD sales of about 44 million units.
Let's be real generous and assume that 50% of SACD sales are classical,
giving about 375 thousand classical SACDs sold.  That's about 0.008% of
the classical market overall is on SACD.  Last year, using actual sales
figures and assuming the 5/50% classical ratios as above, we get 37
million classical CDs sold vs 650 thousand classical SACDs.  That's a
little less than 0.02% of the classical market on SACD.  I don't find
those numbers at all encouraging.

 [I used sales figures that can be found at the RIAA web site in the Press
Room and Key Stats sections  http://www.riaa.org/)

>....  I would like to see if SACD sales are rising *within* the Classical
>market.  If SACD increasingly = Beethoven, the sales numbers are going to
>have to be interpreted differently.  Surely the release of the RCA
>Living  Presence and the MLP's will give a boost in any case.

I think you are right.  SACD seems to be getting more traction in the
classical market than elsewhere, but we're still a long way from having
more than a minute market share.

>Another thing: the 'a' in riaa--only about 1 in 4 of my SACD collection
>were purchased here in America.  I just (painfully) purchased the latest
>Hyperion SACDs--Hewitt/Chopin Nocturnes, Victoria Choral music, and the
>LSO Lives--over on Amazon UK. I'm not going to wait 6 months for them
>to show up on the shelves here.

But I think the majority of classical music lovers do wait until these
things are available domestically.  In my experience, the lag between
Amazon UK listing a release and the same release appearing at Amazon US
is much less than six months.

>I'll bet there are more SACDs in the hands of Americans than the numbers
>suggest.

And I suspect that SACDs are much more popular in Europe than in the US,
but even if they are 100 times more popular, that's still a pretty small
fraction of the market.

>I received a notice that they are waiting for another shipment of the
>Hyperion Hough/Rachmaninov--my order has been delayed until early
>December.  People must be buying.

That's great news.  I hope they sell a million of them.

>Finally, doesn't the addition of new labels on the SACD bandwagon, as
>well as new releases from labels already producing, bode well for the
>future of SACD?

I do think it means that SACD won't disappear in the next few years.
But I'm afraid the overall trends indicate that the day when all new
releases are on hybrid SACD is far, far, far away.  The next couple of
years should be interesting.

Dave
http://www.classical.net/