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The Future of Digital Audio
Andru Edwards writes "It can be said that the current digital music scene can be a bit overwhelming with all the competing technologies and file formats. No matter what format you use, these fairly new compression methods make it easy to carry along your entire music collection with you wherever you go, surpassing anything we could have done a decade ago. So where are we headed? This article examines what the future of digital music will bring, both from the hardware and software perpectives."
There's more than mp3, Microsoft and Apple. This is a horrible article.
Everyone's really into this string thing now.
Companies will try harder and harder to make sure DRM exists in all these formats and is ever more restrictive ("Oh, well with our new Super-Duper Audio Discs, you can only play it 5 times on one single device.")
All the while, prices for these new formats will either stay the same, or go up, due to "increasing costs of production" and stay that way.
I'm stunned the article didn't talk aboutt the fragility of digital music. My coworker's hard disk crashed and he lost a few hundred dollars of iTunes songs. When he called Apple asking for a replacement for the music he already bought, Apple told him he should have backed it up, and they would be glad to send him a history of his purchase so that he may re-buy them. If the future of digital music is paying real money for soft intangible music, then I'm not interested. I'm happy with streaming radio and pirating my friends' CD's, the old-fashioned way.
Digital audio is doing for music what the printing press did for books, it makes the medium available for all, not just those with the means to enjoy it, or create it. Digital audio has led to an era of freedom for our music.
So why does everyone seem to be trying to take it away?
There is to people who are very tech-oriented like we are. My dad, who is pretty handy with a computer, knows only mp3, wma, and wav. Your standard to slightly above-standard user isn't going to be able to tell you a single damn difference between mp3 and ogg. Hell, as I'm just a programmer weinie/college student, I can only name mp3, wma, ogg, that shitty atrac-3, flac, aac, and mpc. I'm sure there are quite a few that I'm totally missing here, but you see where I'm coming from.
i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
"A one - a one zero - a one, one zero, one one, one zero zero!"
Article sez:
Yah-huh. And after that it makes the observation that:
Isn't it patently obvious? These people don't even know what freedom means. Their view of freedom must include being yoked to someone's cart.They tend to ignore the possibility of a new format all together. It seems to me that something scalable is the ultimate winner where the original can be really high res like SACD but it can "self-downconvert" depending on the media you put it on. For that matter, there really shouldn't be any difference between video and audio. Like MPEG-4 you should be able to put it on any media and play it in any device.
I'm tired of having to burn CD's if I want to play my files on my car stereo. Future systems will include wireless file transfer, so that you can seamlessly access songs from your player while in your car. Yes, the Griffin iTrip accessory sends the songs over an FM frequency to your car, but it has trouble in certain urban environments, and you have to fish for an available frequency
.
He really has a point there. I got sick of burning CD's, so I bought an MP3 player. I use a car-kit (bless those things) to listen the music from my MP3 player. I use the FM transmit sometimes, but just like the article says, I have trouble finding available frequencies. New compression methods/formats are all well and good, but I'd like to see better integration between audio devices. I want to be able to stream music from my audio unit and have my car audio system pick it up and play it
There are car MP3 players, but the ones I have seen require you to burn a CD with MP3's on them.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
How about filesize/quality, patents, protection/restriction and processor-usage?
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
One fundamental thing, though:
There's always an analog solution to a digital problem. If you can play it once, I guarantee that someone will use that one time to hook it up to their computer and record it in a non-managed format. If you can only listen with X-brand headphones with a special adapter, someone will cut the cable and make a way to record the sounds in a different format.
No copy protection is fail-safe. As such, they will all fail.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
It takes only one person to deny your statement, be carefull with that, especially on slashdot. ;-)
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Hector, I hate to break it to you, but ideas can't be copyrighted. He probably meant to say, "patented" (which would need more rewording to be really correct, but it's close enough). Maybe I'm just nitpicking, but it seems like he's not familiar with patent law terminology. Or else I'm reading it wrong - is he really afraid that somebody will implement the ideas in the article? Why would that be something to be afraid of? Is he afraid he won't get his cut? He's a journalist - he's paid to talk about his ideas. If he wanted more payment, he should be an entrepreneur.
I expected something more visionary in an article that tries to predict the future of Digital Audio.
I intended to suggest headphones that reduce unwanted ambient sounds by cancelling it out with destructive interference or something like it.
But, somewhat to my surprise, Wikipedia told me that Noise-cancelling headphones already exist.
So why haven't I heard of them? Are they disponible everywhere around the world? Are they too expensive? Are they effective?
What holes remain that can't be plugged with technology will be plugged with lawyers.
Y'know, you blow up one sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water.
for those who don't want to rtfa...
- all music companies care about DRM, and they will all continue to care about DRM
- Apple will face more competition for the ipod
- all audio players will get smaller in size
- hard drives will get cheaper, as will audio players in general
- tivo-for-audio (something that has existed for more than a year) will continue to exist
- some guy thinks players should display lyrics like a karaoke machine
- they think consumers want a single device for everything - pda, audio, phone, watch, video player - even though integrated devices are unsuccessful in many other areas of life (tv/vcr, fridge/web browser, etc.)
The above items are all written by me, and certainly omit some of the details. But I fail to see how any of this reveals anything interesting or unexpected about "the future" of digital audio.
For me, that pretty well sums up the present: everything just works, and I don't have to worry too much what format AV files are in. I don't know if it's because I don't use them much, or because the Debian packagers have done a really nifty job of getting things set up.
I suppose that if it were my hobby, I'd want to know all about those file formats, but I shouldn't have to know to have things just work.
See what I've been reading.
Gee that's too bad. I know how it feels: I recently lost about 60GB of music (and lots of other stuff too) when the mandrake 10 installer decided that it should reformat that windows partition without bothering to ask first.
Funny thing is, the stuff I bought online I just went and downlaoded again. All I had to do was put my email address in a form and Magnatune sent me a list of every selection I bought from them and provided a link and password for me to grab them again.
Huh. Maybe the problem isn't that the music is fragile, only that your rights are. Maybe the solution isn't worrying so much about "backups," but making sure that you give your money to someone who respects their customers.
Have some, they're not terribly effective (but I bought the under $100 ones). They do reduce sound a lot better than normal headphones, but not enough to warrent the additional cost, at least to me. They also require additional power (batteries). I'm assuming that the $300+ varieties are significantly better.
Too many players out there that only support mp3. Less suppoert wma and aac, and way less support ogg.
Unless you come up with a format that will play on existing hardware players, it'll be extremely slow to adopt.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
"What more could one ask?"
Some more time, maybe?
My time is not worthless enough to re-rip my entire collection.
I rather put that time in something else.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Andru: The thing that I see as being the biggest issue going forward is DRM (digital rights management). iTunes has their DRM for their AAC files, while Microsoft has another for WMA. Of course, they are trying to make it easy with their PlaysForSure initiative. Sony has yet another for it's ATRAC files, and MP3 has none. Therefore, an iPod cannot play any WMA files, and nothing but an iPod can play Apple AAC files. Music purchased from Sony Connect can only be played on Sony digital audio players. Why all the confusion? Fine, we understand that the RIAA wants to protect it's property, but do they have to do it at the expense of causing mass confusion amongst casual music buyers? Even better, why can't these protected files just work across platforms? If you look at DVD's, there is one protection standard. We should have the same thing for our digital music. If there was an effective DRM solution out there, it would seem that the music stores would have no choice but to support it as it would ease the minds of the purchasers, thus bringing in more cash.
That's where it all hits the fan - DRM. If the RIAA wasn't such a greedy bunch of pigfuckers, we could all trade MP3s and get dinged for each trade (say, a dime per trade), and everyone would be happy. Napster had a system like that under works, and were ready to roll it out, then it was reduced to a smoke hole in the ground over in Redwood Shores.
Dime a Trade? I'd do it. Especially if a source got a rating (this way asshats who rip stuff at 64 mono, have clicky messy files, or are shills for the RIAA, can be avoided) like in EBay. You would have to use a specific client, and that client would be wired to your bank account. Everybody happy, and we could all use plain vanilla MP3s - no muss no fuss no chocolate mess.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Hector: I'm almost afraid to comment on what we'll see in the future because some of these ideas aren't copyrighted, and may show up on the next batch of digital players.
"Copyrighted ideas?"
Who the fuck are these people? A bunch of jr. high students? I would call this article a circle jerk, but it's too self indugent for that...
Nah.
You just put very quiet warbly tones into the audio with a binary message encoded in them... When you play it back, the playback machine hears the tones and refuses to play any further.
There is no way of filtering them out as they do a random walk, and you trash audio if you try to remove them with hi-q notch filters anyway.
This system was mooted a few years ago, and got a lot of complaints from 'audiophiles', but it was quickly realised that if you did not tell people the tones were there, they cannot hear them.
So, the tones came back, and are on a large number of CDs released in the last few years, waiting for the DRM tech to catch up to make use of them. They survive analog copying very well.
I haven't been able to find anything like this (yet).
So we have portable CD players that play mp3's. That's nice. Plop in a CD-R with mp3's into your portable CD-Walkman-type device, and you are good to go. Who needs hard-drive players that cost much much more and that you have to keep plugging into your USB or firewire port?
CD-Audio is silly. DVD-audio is silly. If you can have a portable device that plays FLAC, which there are (they are hard-drive based) from Rio, I think - then what's the point of having huge uncompressed audio files if you can cut the size in half and still have the same sound quality?
Flac does support 24+ bit audio, so instead of using up tons of storage space with that 24bit 96khz quality, just compress it losslessly.
What we need - and I don't know if there are issues with CSS, etc... but we need a Walkman-type device, not much larger than a CD (you know, those round-type things you can get for $50) - that supports DVD data disks.
A DVD data disk is the same size as a CD data disk, and it can hold about 12 lossless - CD Audio quality albums (give or take). Plop in a data DVD that has flac files on it - I think this is much easier in terms of storage space, backups, and not having to connect to some USB or Firewire port all the time every time you want to change the disk.
What I want is a portable FLAC player that accepts DVD data disks - as our embedded processors get more powerful, the need for uncompressed streams like CD audio or DVD audio will be unnecessary.
A portable DVD data player that plays FLAC. That's where it's at, man. Just like the $50 CD Walkmans that play mp3s, except one that plays FLAC and accepts data DVD disks.
I too am curious what the Next Big Thing(tm) in digital audio formats will be, but how much smaller/better quality is any new/evolved format going to be -- and with storage getting so much larger and cheaper, will it even matter?
For audio, I think the eventual winner will be the format not with the best quality per se, but the best lock-down ability (DRM) to get the major commercial people behind it. In terms of pure audio, I think OGG might be the best quality format for now, but has nobody built an *optional* framework for allowing content creators to protect their work? Is it any wonder M$ is ready to eat everyone's lunch in this regard with WMA/V? (On that point, is there not some OSS encryption/rights management project that could be joined to OGG and/or FLAC to enhance the commercial viability of high quality open audio formats?)
Video, on the other hand, is so different from audio I don't think it has a place in this discussion, but to your point of having it play everywhere, I have wondered why there isn't some open technology platform for packaged video (VCD, DVD, whatever is next and then after that). How hard would it be to define a menuing system on something flash-like, that the video files must be of format X (or any number of acceptable formats), and the acceptable DRM schemes will be "___", and then sit back watch the Chinese and Koreans compete on who can build it cheaper? Just my $0.02 on that slightly OT point...
You're right, you won't ever notice the difference with your iPod, certainly with those ear bud headphones but don't insinuate that more resolution doesn't sound better. The truth is that DVD-A and SACD do sound quite a bit better than CD as a format. The actual amount is dependent on how much you want to spend on hardware to play it back. If you play a great SACD on a $20 ghetto blaster, don't expect it to sound any better than an 8-track. But, spend as little as $1000 on a stereo and you will be able to hear the difference. Then you'll start to get out from under the limits of the hardware.
there's no need to read this article!
Though it would be fun to try.
sulli
RTFJ.
I have been predicting for several years that the ultimate file format that everybody may eventually adopt is a compressed, non-lossy copy of the masters used for a given song, plus a fader moves script and an effects script.
Think about it, the stones have introduced their remastered collection on the new 5.1 CD format. Beyond that home theater has 6.1 and 7.1, and a few other formats that I'm sure I have never heard of. The trend is toward more data being given to the listener in a recording. The logical conclusion is a copy of the master. By including a fader move script and effects script, I can play the recording as it was created by the studio engineer. Or, perhaps I am a fan of the band's bassist, so I push the bass to the front of the mix. Mabey I like the bootygrove music, so I dump the drumline and dub in a drum machine backing track. Perhaps I like to have my rap music with disgusting bass, so I crank all the bass in my favorite gangsta ditty. I can also fool with the balance, effects, etc. as much as I want.
As digital processing power gets cheaper, doing real-time remixing with 24 tracks in realtime becomes a viable option. You already have something similar going on in video games.
Personally, I hope this happens in my lifetime. I can think of several albums that I love that I would spend $100 to have a high quality copy of the master, just to be able to fool with them and listen to the results.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
ROFLMAO...gramatical mistake lol.
And this speaks loads for the credibility of, well, you.
should have been named: The Future of the IPod. Nothing there very visionary about the future of music.
Quoth the article:
We want to lose ourselves in the music during those long commutes, and digital players will eventually take us there.
I don't know about you, but the last thing I want is the asshat behind me "getting lost" in the latest Britney song and putting a thousand-dollar dent in my fender.
Keep your immersion crap away from people operating heavy machinery, mmkay?
Yesterday, there was an article looking at Spam filters. It covered a number of the proprietary ones but NOTHING in the OSS even though it is OSS filters that are doing the real work. It is like covering web servers without mentioning Apache, or talking about web browsers without doing MSIE. But who knows? may be it is not BG or clueless reporters. Perhaps it it the illuminati.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think ripping to ogg is algorithmically more complex, based on the performance of the ogg rippers I've used. So, yeah, it is slower than ripping to mp3. But it doesn't take that long, and I only have to do it once. My hope is that my high quality ogg collection will be useful for the duration of my digital music future. I wouldn't recommend going from one compressed format directly to another, though, one should always go back to the source data if at all possible.
Never eat anything bigger than your head.
> Article seemed near sighted.
All I see is yet another attitude that music is something to be consumed, and not produced.
I wish for a very low cost digital format (like sony minidisc) but without consumer drm crap that serves to lock ME out of my own music that I create.
If I use a Sony portable MD to record music that I wrote and performed, and the MD does not permit me to extract my recording fully in the digital domain, my rights have been abridged, because Sony has leveraged copy control over my creative works.
I'm sure the argument ends with the fact that I *chose* to use the crippled medium, (so I choose not to) but I still wish for such a format. A buck or two per hunderd minutes of audio that can be extracted without the noise and aberrations of an extra DAC. Compression like ATRAC doesn't really bother me, but an extra set of conversions certainly does.
Yeah, I know that some nonportable MD *decks* don't have this problem (but they won't let you extract from MD's recorded on portables!), and I know that the new Hi-MD portables sort-of let you extract in the digital domain, but require you to use horrible software to do it, and it's still not a fully unencumbered solution.
Nomad and I-River both have solid-state solutions, but it doesn't solve the problem of cheap interchangeable media like MD would, if only it did.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I respectfully disagee with the idea that the format with the strongest DRM will be the most widely used in the future. I believe that the MP3 revolution has created an entire new way of thinking about recordings, copyright, and who owns music. MP3 caused the control of music recordings to shift from the corporate producers of the recordings to the consumers who listen to them. It will never shift back because corporate control depended upon having the music tied totally to the distribution media (the disk). Once digital technology seperated the content from the medium, it changed the financial equation for the entire music industry. The record companies remind me of the makers of typewriter ribbons, who really, really wish that all these word-processing computers would 'just...fucking...go...away!' In the long run, adding bulletproof DRM to a recording will only guarantee that the recording will only reach a tiny percentage of its possible audience. Just because the global music corporations are so big now doesn't mean that they can halt or turn back the MP3 revolution.
In the future the format that provides the easiest,fastest, and most reliable way to copy whole libraries of thousands of albums at one time will be the most widely used format, regardless of any copyright law.
Companies will try harder and harder to make sure DRM exists in all these formats and is ever more restrictive ("Oh, well with our new Super-Duper Audio Discs, you can only play it 5 times on one single device.")
All the while, prices for these new formats will either stay the same, or go up, due to "increasing costs of production" and stay that way.
Precisely why I will not buy this "new" technology. It is just a money grab. I never did buy the CDs available that I used to have in record and tape media. Heck, it is only now I plan on getting a TV-DVD now that the prices are down below $100.
They will do whatever the conumer will let them do. If we all banded together and didn't buy a CD or DVD for a minth we would make them shake.
And if they put copy protection against the owner, I will not buy it.
Bought a VCR the other day, might be hard to get soon and they do record the shows well so you can skip the 30 minutes of adds in a 60 minute show. Tapes are almost free at Costco and reusable.
They just don't get it, a DVD aught to be sold for $6 and most would buy them like popcorn. In essence people are downloading the movies because the pricing is stupid.
one of two: a. we already know how to play mp3's - are they going to build soundcards? are they going to make homemade soundcards illegal? b. if we can learn how to make the tones we can learn how to unmake them. or maybe i'm a dork who should've stayed lurking.
Wow an article on the FUTURE of Digital audio. MP3 phones! Will the miracles of early 2001 never cease?
Andru: [...] I am not expecting huge storage on these phones either, otherwise they become indirect competition to the iPod. Instead, I think we will see the phones able to port about 50 tracks.
ME: Bah! The phones will certainly be strongly branded as iPod phones, and Apple will certainly recieve licensing fees. That's not competition in any meaningful sense. In addition, time has shown that any attempt to limit a music player's usefulness arbitrarily (like a stupid 50-track limit) will certainly backfire. They say themselves later on that hard drives are great because you can store your entire music collection. If musicphones are limited to 50 tracks, I predict abject failure, and I bet the cell phone manufacturers are right with me.
Hector: With the players of the future, we will be able to schedule personal recordings of incoming broadcast music on a given hour, and play it back when we have the free time.
ME: Bah! There's already products that do this, and although they are popular in a small part of the population, Pogo is not going to upset the iPod any time soon. If you really want to see a model of the future, I'm pretty confident it's to be found in Podcasting. As traditional media middlemen grow increasingly desperate to preserve their vanishing way of life, more ways are found to completely bypass them. Podcasters are individuals who make their own audio content, and provide it for download. Why cling tenaciously to traditional audio delivery methods such as radio with its primitive 1-second-of-audio/sec transmit rate when there are better methods available? Imagine instead a few aggregation service providers and recommendation engines with links and software to help find and download the freshest Podcasts you're interested in!
Hector: I'm tired of having to burn CD's if I want to play my files on my car stereo.
ME: I've been using my Nomad Zen in my car for two years. What's your problem, Hector? I'm not disagreeing with your desire to have a nice wireless way to hook up my Zen to my car stereo, but, dude, BO-RING. Think about this instead: When you pull your car into your garage, it uploads information about what you've been skipping over and what you like to listen to during various times and various driving styles to your home media center, which then, next time you log on to shop for music, makes recommendations, which your car stereo downloads wirelessly across your 802.11 net.
ME: Or heck, 802.11 is so ubiquitous nowadays, your car could download a track or two while you're in the supermarket parking lot (because it's a relatively big download) and store it encrypted. When you get back to the car, your heads-up display could ask if you want to buy the song. A quick purchase transaction later, you get the unencryption key, and away you go. New music on the fly.
Andru: One thing I do expect in the future, is to see flash MP3 players slowly diminish from the market. While it is more shock absorbent, I just don't see the cost of the medium as being feasible going forward, especially with hard drive prices plummetting.
ME: Buh? Maybe they haven't noticed that Flash prices are also on the move. Assuming the same size, speed, and reliability, I consider it a non-issue really.
Andru: With convergence coming into play, people are wanting to start putting pictures and video on their portable devices as well.
ME: Yes, just as Sony's Photo Walkman and Video Walkman were follow-on smash successes after the breakthrough cassette player. Oh wait. No, sorry, I was just smoking cr
Hate to rain on the parade, but any pattern a computer/chip can detect, it can also modify. Instead of thinking of filtering them, just introduce a secondary harmonic that alters the binary message. Since it has to be outside the human threshold of hearing, then the range available to encode the data is limited. Fill that range with additional 'noise' like the messages, change the messages.
Aside from which, I could just use the always open legacy analog hole, play it back in a sound booth with multiple mics for pickups. Isolate speakers, 2 mics cross matched to each, recreate without wiring. Filter inaudibles out, no message left.
Data cannot be configured to protect itself. It must necessarily be accesible to the user, and there are suffiecient of us in the 6 billion plus population to figure out a way around it. If the data can be accessed, it can also be changed.
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
I got as far as Apple/iPod/iTunes is a contender. At 128kbs??? Yeah, this is an article I'm going to put my future in. I'm old and on the way out, but I still can hear how crappy 128kbs files are, no matter what the format. Somebody let me know when they write an article for people who know, or at least remember, what decent music actually sounds like. Way too funny is the BMW thingie that plays iTunes on a 75 grand (or whatever) car stereo. Are there any others out there who actually listen to the music--not just have it making noise in the background?
Sig not available, please try again later. If the problem persists, then the submitter is an idiot.
Remember Princeton professor Ed Felton? Remember SDMI?? It's been done, and it was cracked thoroughly.
Mobiles will transform into the all-in-one devices the article talks about.
.ogg. You can't do that with an iPod (without hacking). You don't worry that your PC won't play a certain video file, you just download the codec, same with a mobile. People have to beg apple to extend the iPod with .ogg playback support, and they STILL won't add it!
Mobiles will get harddrives. The first one of these is already announced.
Once those micro HDs get cheaper and implemented in more mobiles, mobiles will be at least as functional as an iPod mini.
The reason mobiles will win over all other devices:
1. You might leave home without your music player, but you will always take your mobile. Mobiles far outsell mp3 players. The mobile is the primary gadget, others are secondary. This means mobiles will get more upgrades and get them faster because there's just more money in it.
2. Smartphones are much more flexible than consumer devices like an iPod. They're basically pocket computers. You can just install a java program to teach a mobile how to play
3. Because of Java Micro Edition (J2ME) MIDP2.0 and higher, the mobile is a universal platform. Unlike the iPod, Creative, iRiver, Rio, PC, Mac, Linux which all need a platform specific program. You can just create one type of program, J2ME, and it will run on all mobiles regardless of processor or operating system. And unlike the PC where Java is held back because of Microsoft's opposition and Sun's mistakes. Java on mobiles is pre-installed. You just cannot easily program/extend consumer (mp3) gadgets like you can a mobile.
In my opinion geeks should go for mobiles because of these reasons. In addition, mobiles will give you the same way to escape DRM hell like you're escaping it on your PC. You just use non-DRM playback software and content sources because you're able to. The cool futuristic features the article is talking about like: "we should be able to share songs from one person's player to another. How cool is that?" Are already possible with a bluetooth mobile, Java MIDP2.0 and the bluetooth API for MIDP2.0
At the moment, mobile manufacturers and network operators are often putting up barriers to freely use them any way you like, as you are using your PC. This is because the phone network operators are afraid people will not download their DRM content. However, as people discover their mobiles can be their mobile PCs, phonemakers who don't free up their products from restrictions will lose market share because in the end, the public is the customer. I also think operators will win bigger by a free mobile market than with a restricted one.
Am I missing something important? I don't think so, and so mobiles will be the future all-in-one gadgets.
My next phone/music player/organizer/whatever will be a Nokia 7710. If it's not hobbled.
By the way, for the "I just want a simple phone" naggers:
1. What are you doing on Slashdot?
2. Powerful doesn't automatically mean difficult to use.
3. There ARE simple phones so buy those and don't try to force your view on mobiles on us. Be happy we love our gadgets.
- -- Truth addict for life.
Wasn't it the other way arround? I was pretty positive that vinyls had lousy freq. response (and noise, fragility, and so), but they blew away digital media concerning dynamic range, which might be one of the reasons they're reputed to "sound better" for certain music styles (like classical, where poor dynamic range can kill a recording)
No, vinyl has decent (but non-linear) frequency range and relatively poor dynamic range and stereo separation when compared to CD. Back in the days of vinyl, mastering engineers had to be careful about limiting the dynamic range to avoid either clipping the high frequencies or causing the needle to jump out of the groove from the bass. There was also the issue of space available on the record, because too much dynamic range causes the grooves to be cut too far apart, which reduces the time available on the record disk. Ever wonder how those old K-Tel compilation LP's were able to contain 20 or so songs? Compressed dynamic range!
However, (call me pretentious prick if you must) I still enjoy listening to my vinyl records because I do like the way they color the sound on certain material, particularly with rock and jazz.
An interesting thing that I notice on CD's lately, is that despite all of that dynamic range available, it seems that the engineers don't take advantage of it anymore, and instead they just try to record everything as loud as possible because they don't have to worry about the headroom limitations as much with digital as they did with analog. The end result is compressed dynamic range anyway. That may be one reason why some people still think that vinyl is superior to CD in the area of dynamic range. It's just the simple fact that earlier analog material was recorded and mastered more carefully.
It's the way to go.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
its MP3.
Seriously, what other format even comes close to being supported by _all_ digital music players (ie 'mp3' players) and all players of the past (mine is 5 years old). What format works on just about every platform and most DVD players? what format do millions of people have entire music collections stored in? Switching to another format is going to take a long time and mp3 will be sticking around like VHS for allot longer. People will still be calling any new format an 'MP3' for decades because this is the winning format.
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