ABSTRACT
An extremely high-quality disc-playback system designed by Philips and Sony to surpass what was possible with the compact disc. The original technical proposal was for the disc to have a multichannel SACD program on a semitransparent middle layer, with a standard density, two-channel CD layer underneath. This would allow the disc to be played on conventional CD players as well as SACD players. The SACD tracks could also be done in high-quality two-channel format, for two-channel purists. For some reason, early SACD releases were done only in two channels, but surround versions followed somewhat later.
