If you check the records of Usenet groups, you will see that it has long
been known, based on ABX and other blind listening tests, that so-called
hi-rez audio formats such as HDCD, DTS, SACD, and DVD-A offer little or no
sonic advantage.

So what is the box score for the market sucess of these formats?

Well, HDCD is now reduced to being a subfeature of the Windows Media Player,
DTS is no longer in the news, and DVD-A and SACD are dying on the vine
sales-wise.

For recent information about the latter two formats, check the RIAA sales
statistics posted at
http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/...midYrStats.pdf . What they show
is that same-half-year sales of SACD recordings has dropped by more than
half from 2003 to 2004. DVD-A sales increases failed to take up the slack.
Total first-half 2004 sales of recordings in both formats were about 600,000
units. which is about 0.2% of the sales of CD-Audio recordings. Even
cassette and vinyl which are even more lower-rez than CD-Audio vastly
outsold the two latest so-called Hi-rez formats!

While the so-called hi-rez formats were struggling to sell mere recordings
at an annualized rate of 1.2 million units, lower-rez formats such as MP3
and AAC were responsible for sales of millions and millions of players.
Sales of low-rez format recordings over the web are also booming.

There seems to be a lesson here, being that audio technology that can't
prove itself in ABX and other DBT listening tests, can resaonably be
expected to do poorly in the marketplace.