Attn John from Arcam

Hi John if you are about. Can you tell me if Arcam have any intention of ever supporting SACD? I'm looking for a pre/power/DVD set up and I like the look of the FMJ stuff. I'm a big fan of SACD and DVD-A though and I would like a player that does both as well as good CD playback.

Any comments?

Steve

 

To be frank it is unlikely we will be supporting SACD in the foreseeable future. To do this we would have to tear up and throw away most of our existing work and start again, as you cannot use anything but a Sony or Philips mech to play SACD, as they do watermark detection on the mech. Since the mech and its interface is an integral part of the whole player and these companies show no signs of licencing SACD technology to others I think we'll take a raincheck.

DVD-A has much more chance of long term commercial success IMO and we will be releasing players with this in the early new year. All existing Arcam DVD players can be upgraded to support DVD-A by the way. The CD and DVD-A performance of the latest Arcam players is IMO class leading and they will play the red book layer of hybrid SACDs, so you are not losing very much and gaining quite a lot by going for an Arcam DVD player.

HTH.

John Dawson (Arcam)

 

OK, thanks. I am still looking for a full hybrid player but none of the top names seem to make them, probably for the reasons you outline. It would be a shame if Sony and Phillips kill SACD through it's own ignorance. You would have thought lessons would have been learnt from VHS/Beta.

I do love the look of the FMJ stuff ,something that is important to me. I think I'll hold off for 12 months and see what happens with the whole hi-res scene. It's a pity because I'm holding off buying too many disks of either in case they wipe out.

Thanks again.

Steve