PMFJI but the elephant in the middle of the room that everyone seems to be
dancing around is this: (1) There is the way you do analog-to-digital
conversion, and (2) there is the way you STORE what you converted. Now,
there are lots of 1-bit converters out there. The idea is that doing a huge
number of 1-bit conversions at some huge multiple of the sampling frequency
avoids certain electronic problems. I have no opinions on that, and if I
did, it wouldn't matter as I'm sure this has been discussing more times than
global warming and 9/11 put together. But it's all irrelevant to (2). Your
storage method need not be bound by how you did the conversion. Once you've
got a certain digital stream, then your problem is how to preserve its
information completely, in the most efficient possible format.

And what I don't understand is how any delta-modulation scheme, which is
basically what SACD is, wherever it came from, could store information more
efficiently than a PCM scheme having the same bit rate. We covered delta
modulation, and ADPCM, and all that in engineering school. They have some
uses, mainly I think as a quick-and-dirty scheme for certain
telephony-related, lo-fi purposes. In about 20 years of watching the digital
audio scene, I never heard anyone propose such a thing to replace PCM, until
now, when the CD is a mature technology and somebody desperately needed an
"improvement" to milk more money from consumers.

That said, no doubt I'll eventually own some SACD discs, and a player that
can handle them. That's just because there'll be remastered versions of some
favorite artists, and I'll want the new version just because, I will hope,
the mastering will have been done better. This kind of dilemma occurs now
and then, and certainly not just in audio.