Like everyone on this site, I am an avid jazz listener, and have quite an extensive collection of LPs and CDs. I have decent system, and love the sound from my old lps. When I first heard about SACD, I was very curious. A buddy of mine who has the greatest audiophile setup I've ever seen/heard bought a player and we did a bunch of A/B comparisons with SACDs/CDs and LPs (I guess technically that would be an A/B/C comparison, right? ). We came to the general conclusion that the SACDs sounded better than the CDs, but did not eclipse the sound from an LP in nice condition. Since I have so many LPs and CDs already, it really did not seem worth it to buy into yet another format, particularly since I didn't hear any improvement over the format the record companies would call the most obsolete and which I have the most of: LPs! ("Progress" isn't always better!)
Also, I am not into surround sound for listening to music. I like either stereo or mono coming out of two speakers. While I'm sure a bunch of people would be interested in many of the SACD issues' multi-channel abilities, I will admit that this is a benefit that is lost on me.
In addition, it bothers me that SACDs have copy protection that prevents their being burned digitally. To me, that seems like the record companies' prime motivation for pushing this new format.
So my bottom line is that the quality may be better, but it isn't enough of an improvement for me to buy a new machine and then have to deal with three different formats for the music I love. Hopefully, if the companies really want to push SACD, they will do it in the dual-layer format (like the recent Rolling Stones releases, which unlike their early CD counteparts finally compare with the old mono LPs I have). That way, we can make a music purchase ONCE and get both formats so we won't have to buy it all again when they stop making CD players (although i don't think CD players are going anywhere soon because the vast majority of music listeners don't care all that much about sound quality).
Don't know if this is helpful to anyone or not, but I thought I'd add my two cents.