Death of the CD?

[Peter]

I notice Amazon are heavily promoting their mp3 store and it seems to me that this is the way of things to come. Surely this trend is not only reflecting but also encouraging the instant here today gone tomorrow attitude to music? Personally I like to have something to collect and keep.

[Maurice Colgan]

I notice Amazon are heavily promoting their mp3 store and it seems to me that this is the way of things to come. Surely this trend is not only reflecting but also encouraging the instant here today gone tomorrow attitude to music? Personally I like to have something to collect and keep.

I agree Peter. I still have a vinyl collection along with CDs. In fact I bought a Tchaikovsky LP on Sunday because of the very nicely done portrait of the composer on the sleeve.

Great grandchildren make make good use of them in decades to come?

[Michael]

When the CD first came out in the eighties, it was very much maligned by the vinyl enthusiasts. I had a huge amount of records but I welcomed the new format even though I had to start my collection all over again. For one thing, it meant I could listen to piano music without the sound of sausages frying in the background. Nowadays, any attempts to upgrade the CD (such as SACD) have met with limited success, but the much lower MP3 formats (and their equivalents) have taken off like a rocket. I know there are various quality levels in the new formats but the vast majority of listeners try to cram as much as possible onto their listening devices with a subsequent drop in quality.
In classical music, the latest development is the pre-loaded ipod.
For example, you can now buy an ipod with the complete works of Bach on it (which would normally take about 180 CDs!) Backup is provided by a measly three DVDs. I am not a real high-end audiophile but I do like decent sound quality and whenever my son plays his ipod through my amp and speakers I notice a huge drop in quality from the original CD.
Maybe I’m showing my age but I cannot understand why anybody would want to carry thousands of pieces of music around with them. I imagine the urge to perform the audio equivalent of channel-hopping would be very strong. And when the hard-drive crashes and you have thrown away all your original CDs? Okay, you have flash drives, but what happens when you drop your sugar-cube sized player down the toilet bowl (as very nearly happened to my daughter)?
I am beginning to sound like someone out of the “Grumpy Old Men” television series, so I’ll end by agreeing with Peter. I want to walk into my listening room, glance along my shelves of CDs, select one – and one only – look at the cover, maybe read a few of the liner notes, give the disc a light wipe (a hangover from the vinyl days), put away the remote control, sit back and give my attention to what is playing, whether it be Elvis or Elgar.
Speaking from bitter experience, I don’t trust hard-drives and I believe people will always want a hard copy of their music and, for that reason at least, I cannot see the compact disc dying out for a very long time.

[Chris]

I like CDs, but I do appreciate the idea of having everything on a hard drive/flash drive. Very convenient to carry around. But I agree about the quality problems - it needs to be done in high quality in a lossless format. I don't really think backups are a problem - just always keep a clone of it. The odds of two unconnected hard drives failing at exactly the same time are remote in the extreme.

[Joy]

Well said Michael. My nephew has an iPOD that can hold 7,000 songs!! Some that are out there can probably hold even more. I agree about the quality aspect of it. Although I do enjoy mine when I'm doing gardening out in the backyard or when I'm out and about. The conveience of it and you don't even know its there they're so tiny and slim.

[Michael]

I use a portable minidisc player myself, Joy, and when I tell my offspring that it holds about five hours of music they think it's hilarious. And they wonder how I can bear to lug around such a huge item - it's four inches square!

[Sorrano]

I use a portable minidisc player myself, Joy, and when I tell my offspring that it holds about five hours of music they think it's hilarious. And they wonder how I can bear to lug around such a huge item - it's four inches square!

We've certainly come a long ways from the Walkman!

[Michael]

We've certainly come a long ways from the Walkman!

I remember back in the late sixties, when I had no car, trying to lug a huge - and I mean HUGE - Sony reel-to-reel tape recorder to a friend's house. I eventually had to balance it on the back of a bicycle and hold onto it while my friend pushed the bike! Happy days.......

[Hofrat]

I still have a couple hundred LP's, both mono and stereo, and I do not have a phonograph to play them on. That probably ages me.

[Joy]

It amazes me how far technology has gone. So many things are becoming obsolete that aren't really that old but everything is moving so fast nowadays. Here in the US everyone has to have a digital TV by February
17th or a converter box on your analog TV or it won't work. So we're all getting the HDTV. They are pretty amazing. The picture is crystal clear and the TV's are so slim now.

[Chris]

It amazes me how far technology has gone. So many things are becoming obsolete that aren't really that old but everything is moving so fast nowadays. Here in the US everyone has to have a digital TV by February
17th or a converter box on your analog TV or it won't work. So we're all getting the HDTV. They are pretty amazing. The picture is crystal clear and the TV's are so slim now.

You know that digital TVs are not necessarily HDTVs, right? Some people are under the impression that they must buy an HDTV now, which is not true. And if you have cable, this doesn't affect you at all.

I have an HDTV and honestly, I can't tell the difference.

This kind of technical stuff comes up in music recording a lot. Do you wait for the 24-bit recording technology or just go ahead with 16-bit? Woops, they invented stereo sound, should I re-record the piece I recorded many years ago? This was one reason Glenn Gould re-recorded the Goldberg Variations in 1981. I'll say stereo really makes a difference. But does digital vs. analog recording? 16-bit vs. 24-bit? 48 kHz vs. 192 kHz? Honestly, I can sit there and listen for hours and still not be able to detect the difference.

[Joy]

[QUOTE=Chris;41145]You know that digital TVs are not necessarily HDTVs, right? Some people are under the impression that they must buy an HDTV now, which is not true. And if you have cable, this doesn't affect you at all.

That's right and I have satellite direct tv so I'm ready.

[Preston]

Yes I have a SD digital TV. I really want an 1080p HDTV though, primarily because of gaming. I would like to get a 50" Samsung. Technology is constantly changing. Earth is now based on technology. My theory is that technology can be our best friend or our worst enemy, depending on how it is used. I would say that it is quite possibly one the most powerful things that the human race has ever come across, it will guide us into the future with ease, or it could destroy us with ease, imho. What I mean is, for instance, I saw IRobot last night, or at least some of it and started thinking that technology, particularly programming, is quite possibly something that could eventually wipe out mankind, and I am majoring in computer programming. If it was used in the wrong way, such as bad artificial intelligence, and was manufactured in the masses, it could be bad. So my point is that there can be good and positive technology and basically, evil and dark technology. Hopefully technology will prove to be a positive thing, but I imagine that hundreds of years in the future that it could start getting really ugly, if it gets in the hands of the wrong people.

[Hofrat]

I found that the technology did not keep pace with the performance. When I was a university student (1967-1971), LP stereo was the rage. Anything recorded in stereo sold like hot cakes. So, a stereo recording of the Beethoven 9th done by the Backwater Philharmonic under the baton of Maestro Bozo sold better than the mono recording of the NBC Orchestra under Toscanini!! While the stereo freaks bought the terrible Backwater album for $20 a pop, I was buying the outstanding Toscanini recording for $2 just because no one wanted the mono recording.

[firoze]

I have a large LP collection and a top end LP player. I gave CD's a miss entirely - I dont have a Cd player and dont listen to CD's through my Hi-Fi system.

However with the advent of the iPod and lossless encoding I now also have a large collection of music in digital format (mosty in Apple Lossless format). This is because I'm travelling most of the time and can now enjoy high quality music away from home. The sound quality of my iPod through high-end in-ear headphones very satisfying indeed.

I think whether we like it or not, the future of marketing music is going to be via digital downloads. Broadband speeds are now sufficiently high to make it very convenient to download even large files. Moreover, for many, CD does not afford sufficiently high quality; and with the constant bickering among manufacturers over agreeing to a common standard to replace CD with, Im afraid there is not going to be a widely accepted higher quality physical format to market music on.

Therefore the only way to market music with quality higher than CD is going to be via download. I think in future 24bit/192Khz will be the standard format offered for high quality downloads. This format is of sufficiently high quality to even please most hard-core analogue enthusiasts. I certainly can easily hear the difference between 16bit and 24bit encodings. If anyone is interested in hearing the difference for themselves, download the free sample tracks from the Linn Records website and hear for yourself:

http://www.linnrecords.com/linn-down...testfiles.aspx

Regards