For those who are audiophiles, 1999 was a fantastic year. This is when Sony and Phillips decided to launch a new format called Super Audio CD. The promise of these discs was superior audio, having the capability to be in true surround sound (not just the same audio cue coming from all of your speakers). To this date, a little over 6000 SACDs exist but the format never really caught on with the main stream consumers.

Therefore, it comes to me as a surprise that Sony has released a new SACD player, the SCD-XE800. Priced at $430 for an August 21st release in Japan, this unit is meant as an entry-level SACD player. Buyers can expect a frequency response of 2Hz〜40kHz (SACD)/2Hz〜20kHz (CD) and a dynamic range of over 100dB (SACD)/96dB (CD). As always, these units will also read the traditional CD as well. If I was a user of SACD, I’d be happy that Sony is still supporting this format but as a person who is interested in the bottom line of Sony, I’m not sure I like the move. Why would Sony invest the money and resources to create, ship and sell a format that more or less is dead? They can indeed take the same money and invest it in its core areas that Sony really needs to fight off its competitors with. This comes to a larger problem with Sony that it offers so many different products for different segment markets when in reality, it needs less product lines and more sales per product line. No word yet if this unit will make it out of Japan.

[Sales fact via Wikipedia]