Is the CD Becoming Obsolete?

mrnomas writes "What's to blame for the declining CD sales? Is it that manufacturers are putting out more and more 'safe' (read: crap) music while independent musicians are releasing online? Is it because iTunes is now the third largest music retailer in the country? Or is it just that CDs are becoming obsolete?" Quoting: "Forbes.com [ran] an article showing that CD sales are expected to be down 20% in 2008 (slightly higher than the 15% drop initially predicted). Why such a drop? What's truly happening is a gradual shift away from physical media to downloadable formats. What this indicates, so far, is that US sales of digital music will be growing at an estimated rate of 28% in 2008, however physical sales will drop even further, resulting in a net overall decline.""

Comments

Not yet

[Brad1138]

Until downloadable music isn't compressed, or they are able to compress without ANY loss, there will still be a need for CD's. I think the under 25 crowd doesn't care that much, you wouldn't notice the difference on an Ipod, but on a nice home system you do.

Re:Not yet

[bheer]

Apart from home audio systems, a LOT of people listen to music on car stereos. And on good ones, CD quality really helps for some music -- for example, Shine On You Crazy Diamond sounds a lot better on CD than an MP3 burn.

That said, yeah, a lot of new music has been so overprocessed and made loud that the they don't really benefit much from a CD. Still, people who listen to classical etc will be able to tell the difference.

Re:Not yet

[madbawa]

With more and more people listening to iPods and music on their mp3-phones or other tiny music gadgets, its no surprise that soon we'll have our next generation born partially deaf or with their ears insensitive to certain frequencies. That is to say, the ears will have a narrower frequency response band. I know many people who are already partially deaf due to listening on their iPods 24x7. People listen to music even in the noisiest conditions of construction work or a traffic snarl. This causes the volume on their headsets to be much louder than recommended. The damage to their ear drums is irreparable.

So, my point here is that the quality of audio will not matter anymore about 5-10 years down the line. Also, one point I forgot to mention, the music churned out nowadays is also more like noise rather than music. But then thats off-topic.

Re:Not yet

[pushing-robot]

You realize, of course, that CDs are not magical entities, fanciful vessels which contain the entirety of a musical performance. They lose detail just like every other means of recording sound. If you can create an alternative means of encoding sound that takes less space and sounds equally good (in a double-blind test), then it's a better method for holding music. Granted, having some overhead is good for future editing or re-encoding, but we've come up with much better ways to store MORE useful information in LESS space than CDs use.

Re:Not yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only the under 25 crowd, but the good majority of people don't care. The majority of people do not have a high enough quality system in their homes that it will really make a difference between compressed and uncompressed songs. Even if the sound system is good enough, many people simply cannot tell the difference, especially if the music is compressed at a higher bitrate/better format than the "standard" 128 kbps MP3. And if it doesn't actually sound any different, why bother?

Re:Not yet

[bladesjester]

Add to that the fact that some of us actually like the physical media and the artwork that comes with it.

The other thing is that, with most people just snagging a song or two from an album because they heard it on the radio, they will never really know if they like the rest of the band's work. I've bought cds for one or two songs and ended up liking the rest of the album.

I'm just kind of tired of the teenage crowd constantly crowing that the CD doesn't matter. Heck, I'm only in my 20's and I see the benefit to CDs, but that may also be the occasional DJ in me.

Re:Not yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Higher Bit Rate music sounds better on even poor quality sound systems. The problem is, is that most people who say they don't care just haven't heard their music in +384kbps and don't know what they're missing.

The music industry should realize the CD is a fading format. They need to start pushing 192khz audio dvds. They have almost the same manufacturing cost as CDs. And considering the number of homes that have surround sound system in the US, this is quality that could easily be appreciated.

(under 25 and appreciates good sound quality)

Re:Not yet

[wytcld]

Fully agree - but CD quality was never as good a vinyl through the right equipment. Bob Dylan had a lot to say about that a few months back. To his ears there just haven't been any CDs that have achieved what vinyl, with the right engineers handling the mix, used to.

There's a degree to which the psychoacoustic models that schemes like mp3 use actually clean up the noisy mess that all or most all CDs present. The way these schemes hollow out the back of the sound produces something clearer and more delicate - more like live music straight from the amps. Except it really sounds quite different from live music. Good vinyl, on the other hand, can be indistinguishable from live performance if your eyes are closed. CDs never had that. So it's easy to walk away from them. All the discussion of "lossless" misses the point that at the rates CDs are sampled there's already a high degree of loss. Music is inherently analog; digital has to get an order of magnitude better (at least) before it'll be so realistic that it's worth a premium.

Re:Not yet

[weteko]

You could, of course, download music compressed using FLAC. It being lossless and all.

Re:Not yet

[AeroIllini]

With more and more people listening to iPods and music on their mp3-phones or other tiny music gadgets, its no surprise that soon we'll have our next generation born partially deaf or with their ears insensitive to certain frequencies. That has nothing to do with the genetics of hearing. If a soldier gets an arm blown off in a battle, does that mean he has a higher chance of having kids with only one arm? Of course not.

Get-off-my-lawnism aside, I've found that most people who are satisfied with iPod quality music have either never been exposed to proper audio reproduction, or they just don't care that much. Not everyone wants a medium-rare filet; some people just want a cheeseburger.

Cheeseburgers and blown-off arms in the same post. Take that, mods!

Re:Not yet

[king-manic]

Fully agree - but CD quality was never as good a vinyl through the right equipment. Bob Dylan had a lot to say about that a few months back. To his ears there just haven't been any CDs that have achieved what vinyl, with the right engineers handling the mix, used to.

Ohhh. really. I have a pair of thousand dollar cables to sell you.....

Realistically most ears can't hear the distinction between new vinyl and a CD / MP3. I can't tell reasonable bitrate Mp3, CD, or vinyl. They simply are good enough for most.

Re:Not yet

[angrykeyboarder]

I agree. I've bought music online before from iTunes. And I likely will again (if it's just one song or two that I want rather than entire CD).

But 98% of the time, I will buy a CD and then rip it. I will get much better quality with my own rip than I will buying from an online store. Even worse are the files on P2P networks. Legal issues aside, most of them are ripped by 15-year olds that have no clue as to how to rip a high quality file (i.e. with high bitrates).

If the online music stores want to switch from AAC or WMA to FLAC at very high bitrates (and DRM-free), then I might stop buying CDs.

And maybe I'm old fashioned (and just old) but I guess this goes back to my days growing up with vinyl. I like liner notes (although I need a magnifying glass to read them on most CDs these days) and cover art. And perhaps even lyrics (that I know haven't been butchered by some bozo who contributed to one of the online lyric sites).

Another plus for CDs: if my hard drive crashes and takes my music collection with it, I can always rip the CDs again (been there, done that).

And you're right, it's the under-25 crowd that doesn't care about any of this stuff. Just as long as it sounds decent on their iPod or WalMart bought boombox "Stereo".

For the record, I don't own an iPod or any kind of portable music player. But my computer doubles as my home stereo (that's why I invested in decent speakers for it).

So unlike the under-25 folks, I do care about good sound and right now that's best had with CDs (or even better - SACD or DVD-Audio).

Since the under 25 crowd are the people who have always been buying the most music, it makes sense that CD sales have plummeted.

Oh and yeah, and most of what's on the radio these days sucks anyway. I generally buy music based on reviews or word of mouth.

But I digress....

Re:Not yet

[madbawa]

If a soldier gets an arm blown off in a battle, does that mean he has a higher chance of having kids with only one arm? Of course not. Thats not what I meant. I meant that the age at which people (or should I say, children) are being exposed to music gadgets is decreasing and the trash that gets labeled as music is increasing. Thats why I am saying that deafness or hearing disability will set in at a lower age than was seen in the previous gen. Got it?

Re:Not yet

[MillionthMonkey]

First of all you're starting with a weak argument: "what does Bob Dylan know about what music sounds like" is not the sort of position I would prefer to defend. And also lots of us use drugs and are not deaf. So there is that. If there is a drug that makes you deaf, please let me know what it is because I could really use it at work. But this is just too funny:

furthur more, on a technical level cd's use a lossless uncompressed format which should be a perfect reproduction of what was mixed.

Yes they do not use lossy digital compression, but that's irrelevant. The digitization of the analog signal is what destroys information, resulting in distortion when the analog is reconstructed later.

Re:Not yet

[badasscat]

Guess what retard emo-hippies, those new releases that you "buy only on vinyl" are no better sounding than the cd...why? Because the vinyl was MADE FROM THE CD YOU JACKASS. Its not like the old days where a record cutting facility will get a big 'ol tape from the mastering studio, and then there will be a guy sitting at the record cutting machine overseeing the process.

No, instead they get a data DVD, or a hard drive, or just a big file that they download. The result is the same - they're using the master.

It sounds like you saw some TV show somewhere with a guy sitting at a vinyl pressing plant who puts an optical disc into a machine and you assumed it was an audio CD. It wasn't. Music today is recorded (usually at 192khz/24 or 32 bit) by computer onto hard drives, where it can then be mastered any number of ways, including onto tape but also onto any data storage medium you like.

Re:Not yet

[false_cause]

I've only found CDs to hinder my ability to DJ now that I've experienced good software built for the purpose. The greatest single benefit is that I can choose from close to 30,000 mp3s rather than be limited by the number of CDs I can/want to carry. How many times did I scramble to cue the right track on the right machine when I was juggling CDs at the college radio station? It's a pleasure not having to worry about that in a bar or club.

Re:Not yet

[ozmanjusri]

If there is a drug that makes you deaf, please let me know what it is because I could really use it at work.

There's plenty of drugs that'll do that for you. You can Google "ototoxic drugs" or have a look at the list here:
http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/disorders/med_e ffects.htm

Re:Not yet

[badasscat]

Also, I sample tons of music, and often find that I only like 2 or 3 songs from an album. In other words, I would be fine if the rest of the ablum were deleted off my hard drive.

This is always one of the big arguments people come up with against the CD, and there is such an obvious retort to it that I just don't understand why you guys don't see it:

You need to start listening to some better artists. Good bands don't put out albums with only 2 or 3 good songs on them.

And yes, that means those 2 or 3 songs you like probably aren't very good either.

Re:Not yet

[Dephex Twin]

"what does Bob Dylan know about what music sounds like" is not the sort of position I would prefer to defend.

If you take a look at Bob Dylan these days and claim that he appears physically to be anywhere close to where he was in his prime, you're just not being honest with yourself. I would say the OP makes a very valid point in suggesting that Bob Dylan's finer hearing ability is worth questioning. This is stuff that is hard for even a young person to hear clearly, and the guy has been out there for 40 years.

If there is a drug that makes you deaf, please let me know what it is because I could really use it at work.

Inhalants cause hearing loss, just so you know.

Yes they do not use lossy digital compression, but that's irrelevant. The digitization of the analog signal is what destroys information, resulting in distortion when the analog is reconstructed later.

This I agree with.

Re:Not yet

[MillionthMonkey]

Inhalants cause hearing loss, just so you know.

I was just noticing the other day, it gets really quiet around here after I blow the dust out of my keyboard with that canned air stuff.

Re:Not yet

[joystickgenie]

because yah know, the average end user for music own their own concert hall system.

Re:Not yet

[FlyingGuy]

Pure and simple, you don't know your subject matter.

You really need to do the math, to understand why CD based music does not accurately represent what was played in the studio, or captured at a concert.

In the standard reproduction formats, the frequency bandwidth is 20hz to 20khz.

To reproduce that sine wave after it has been digitized is a herculean task. Consider a tone that rings at 10khz, it has a periodicity .1 millisecond. To accurately digitize and then reproduce that sine wave perfectly, in 1/10th of a millisecond it needs to be sampled several thousand times. Remember, digital is either on or off, but a sine wave is an analog curve and to properly record that curve digitally it takes a huge number of data points. Consider the fact that 20hz has a periodicity of 50ms and 20khz has a periodicity of .05 milliseconds. Now as we know everything is a trade off right? To sample the low end of the spectrum at a rate fast enough to accurately sample the high end of the spectrum would grossly over sample and this is why digital bass reproduction tends to be muddy.

All sorts of algorithms have been created to compensate and interpolate the loss at the high end of the spectrum in the trade off sample rate, but interpolation will never be as accurate as the real thing in analog.

Think before you speak.

Re:Not yet

[Technician]

Ohhh. really. I have a pair of thousand dollar cables to sell you.....

Are you a Kimber cable rep? The silver low resistance cables rock!
http://www.elusivedisc.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AUD IAU24B1

The link is for those who don't believe anyone would pay a grand for a patch cord.
It is real.

Re:Not yet

[adolf]

I believe that the attitude would apply equally to blues, jazz, classical, and classic soul/funk as it would to the modern pop tripe that you seem to think it implies.

Quit being a snob! Look again at what the poster said, and then apply it to your scenario without immediately disqualifying yourself on the basis that you posess Superior Culture.

In other words:

Listen to better [blues|jazz|classical|classic soul/funk|pop tripe], and a greater percentage of what actually gets put onto a CD will actually be good.

Re:Not yet

[rtb61]

Speaking of oldies, in both music and people terms, a big reason for declining sales is because us oldies already own all the cds we are interested in, basically from the time period in our youth when we had the greatest exposure to music. In terms of recent music, why would we bother to buy crap remixes of what we already have.

This is a time related phenomena, and is bound to the survival rate of cds vs earlier media formats. Forget the BS coming out of the RIAA or the publishers they just don't want to admit to falling sales as a result of the market channel basically being flooded out and older ages groups dropping out of the buying market.

Re:Not yet

[jack455]

Even if there were nothing else wrong with the format (that is hard to describe and justify), CDs do have inherent compromises in the choice of sampling and bit rate.

CDs are sampled 44,100 times per second. This means that nothing above half of that (22.05 kHz) should be reproduced. It's inaccurate noise that is not representing the music recorded. There was probably real musical information there, although most can't hear it.

The perfect solution is to throw away evrything above 22.05kHz and leave everything else untouched. However, the filters that are used can't do it. Steep filters that cut everything sharply "smear" the sound in a harsh way. They are only used by professionals for subwoofers where the notes are further apart and easier to deal with. A more gradual filter doesn't get rid of all the noise, gets rid of some of the music, and also degrades the sound to some degree.

Also, CD's 16 bits is a much lower number than what many musicians record in. I use 24 bit recording (as a hobbyist musician) and some even use 32 bits.

I would love to be able to give friends (when requested) the actual recording I made instead of having to create a lower quality CD or mp3 version that they can use more easily.
But I freely admit that CD or mp3 versions almost always sound very similar to the original. I use 320kbps usually.

***

As far as the whole LP debate, it has always seemed silly to me. I am an audiophile. I acknowledge that some records sound better than most CDs. But I insist that a master tape (reel to reel) sounds better still. CDs are more convenient and more durable. Plus if you record in CD format you can give out or sell the actual recording.

My 2 cents.

Re:Not yet

[croddy]

Concert hall systems actually tend to be among the most troublesome. The example you were looking for was "studio reference system".

Re:Not yet

[WasterDave]

No, you're missing the point.

Vinyl mixed by the right engineers and played on the right (and not totally ludicrously expensive) kit sounds a whole shitload more like live music than CD's do. This may be because CD's lose resolution as sounds get quieter, or because they lose resolution as sounds get higher frequencies, or because there is no headroom whatsoever, or because producers these days drop shitloads of compressor on and lose dynamic range ... while simultaneously stopping me from turning the volume UP to where it BELONGS!! I don't know why it is, but it is.

Blues albums suffer the most. Something that is supposed to be played by four depressed men in a nasty looking bar in Louisiana comes out sounding like it's been played on general midi.

Like it or not, something has been lost from music. The good news is that it's still there in live gigs and with totally rampant piracy (if we're honest) and thieving bastard record industry executives it seems that the only hope for the bands themselves is to play live more often. Hurrah!

Dave

Re:Not yet

[the_weasel]

There are plenty of bands who only ever manage to come up with one or two outstanding songs. In your opinion, I should stop listening to those songs then? You said "Good bands don't put out albums with only 2 or 3 good songs on them." I strongly disagree. Good bands DO put out albums with only a few good songs. GREAT bands do better.

Re:Not yet

[Filmcell-Keyrings]

Shortly after Bob Dylan had said that, he appeared (at least in the UK) on an advert for iTunes. So while compressed digital music isn't good enough for him, he'll take the money and run.

Re:Not yet

[Weedlekin]

"If you take a look at the waveforms of an album recorded 30 years ago, and compare it to something from a similar genre today, you'll spot the difference immediately. The loud recording results in the high and low bits of the waveform getting "squashed", resulting in a very obvious sort of distortion."

This is actually due to a specific type of compression that's deliberately applied to some modern recordings before they get to a CD master. Compression was also applied to analogue recordings because some sources (especially classical music) exceeded the signal to noise ratio of even the best vinyl playback equipment, so handling the loudest passages without clipping would have meant that the quiet parts disappeared below the noise of the playback medium without compression.

"Vinyl doesn't necessarily suffer from this problem as badly, as it is an analogue medium, and doesn't have strictly defined maximum or minimum amplitudes. "

The maximum and minimum amplitudes are defined by an analogue device's signal to noise ratio, which is around 55db for the best cartridges / laser vinyl players. CD audio on the other hand has a S/N ratio well in excess of 100db, i.e. 100,000 times as much dynamic range.

"All but the very first CDs have serious amplitude problems. One of the only CDs I can think of that was mastered at fairly low levels is 'Brothers in Arms' by Dire Straits"

As was the case with vinyl when it was the dominant format (which, given the fact that I was born in 1960, was a big part of my life for many years), how well recorded something is depends on the sort of music one listens to. Most vinyl pop and rock during the 1960s and 1970s was compressed to hell and had artificially enhanced stereo because it was intended to be played on cheap record players with auto-changers, spring-balanced tone arms, and 3 watt/channel amplifiers connected to 5 inch elliptical full-range speakers that were extremely close to each other. A small number of rock albums had superior recording quality, and therefore became "reference" pieces for hi-fi retailers (e.g. Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon), but most customer demos used classical pieces because they were the only ones that didn't sound worse on a high-end rig than a cheap one. Some expensive classical releases were advertised as being "direct cut", i.e. the signal from the microphones was mixed directly onto grooves instead of being recorded to tape first because audiophiles were willing to pay a lot more for something that had fewer "lossy" stages between musicians and them, and these were commonly used to demonstrate the benefits of extremely expensive component audio systems.

"Ironically, this is one of the primary reasons for the existence of the RIAA. They did a decent job for a while with vinyl, but never established any sort of standard for CDs."

They didn't do anything with vinyl beyond selecting an existing equalisation curve (RCA Victor's New Orthographic Curve) and making it a standard. It was jothing more than recording pre-emphasis / playback de-emphasis system that reduced surface noise and groove size, while making rumble more of a problem, but there was nothing in it to ensure that the initial recording being put on vinyl had decent audio quality, hence the fact that the vast majority of records sounded very bad indeed. R.I.A.A. had no role to play with CD audio parameters, because these had already been set by the Philips / Sony "redbook" standard, which all audio CD players implement (although most modern ones also implement certain newer standards too).

Re:Not yet

[Dogtanian]

First of all you're starting with a weak argument: "what does Bob Dylan know about what music sounds like" is not the sort of position I would prefer to defend. Someone called Chefelf wrote an interesting blog entry called Bob Dylan can go to hell. With a title like that, you know it's not going to be a "Dylan is God, Maaaaaaan" fest, but in case you think I (or he/she/it) is trolling, here is the part that applies to what we were discussing. It sums up Dylan's hypocritical attitude towards digital music. (Read the article to see it properly in context).

[Dylan says that] CDs apparently have no stature, but the iPod does, particularly when Apple is giving him a sizeable check to perform a yawn-inducing "blues" track from his shitty new album which he is also able to shamelessly plug at the same tune. Or

Bob Dylan: "CDs are small. There's no stature to it."
Translation: It is the size of CDs that affect sound. Records are bigger. Bigger is better. That's just common sense. The replies are certainly worth reading too; it's not an all-out attack on Dylan- he has his defenders, but having read them all, I'm not convinced that Dylan's attitudes are worthy of attention any more than any other angry old man's.

And the guy was *never* technically brilliant. Quite the opposite. It's somewhat strange to be lectured on issues like sound quality by a guy whose sound was.... rough. I don't deny the guy's influence, and he's undeniably recorded some important stuff, but that doesn't make him God, or even stop him being a Grumpy Old Man.

Re:Not yet

[houghi]

So tnhe same engineers who are able to make vinyl sounds great, suddenly loose the ability to do so when you have a CD? Wow.

Nothing has been lost. If you want to listen to live music, just put in a second soundtrack with background noise and lower the quality a lot.

When I bought Paris from Supertramp, I first bought it on vinyl. Later I bought it on CD and I could hear tones and sounds that I could not hear before. I could hear individuals comenting in the first row, something that was not clear to hear on the album.

This was with an identical system. All I can conclude is that you LIKE the sound better of vinyl. That does not make it a lower or higher in quality.

Re:Not yet

[Yinepuhotep]

Unfortunately, the CD versions of many albums I owned when I was younger are distinctly inferior. For example, Belafonte's Carnegie Hall concert, which maxed out two LPs, is now crammed onto two CDs, by chopping out large parts of the concert - not only the introductions and talks between songs, but even sections of the songs themselves. Anyone who has not heard Belafonte on LP is missing nearly an hour of music, because some genius decided that they could make more money releasing PIECES of the concert on two CDs than by making an audio DVD or making a boxed set that would contain the WHOLE concert.

Thanks to my experience with that, I will NEVER buy a CD remake of a live LP.

Re:Not yet

[Kjella]

At least with analog equipment there might be a point. But the most hilarious audiophiles are those that think digital transmissions get better, as if the 1s and 0s are more pure instead of being 0.996 and 0.002 :D. Bits are bits, and the only things that could possibly matter is the clock and D/A circuit on the last reciever, unless the cable is really broken with unrecoverable errors.

Re:Not yet

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in a mastering studio, and it is acutally true that 99% of LP's are cut off 16-bit digital sources (CD-quality, very often directly from audio CD's). We don't have a lathe at my studio, so any albums I work on that are being released on vinyl are cut somewhere else. I recently had a client that wanted to send 24 bit, 88.2kHz (4x CD quality) sources out to get an LP cut. I called over a dozen cutting houses, and only two would accept anything but an audio CD or 16-bit DAT tape as a master, and that there would be additional charges if I sent the high def source for them to burn it to an audio CD. So yes, almost all LP masters these days are 16-bit CDs.

(BTW - if you need an LP cut, look up Paul Gold in Brooklyn. He is who we went with, and his work is excellent.)

Re:Not yet

[darkgemini]

I think you've just struck another reason for the decline of CD sales. We can't buy it if we can't find it.

Re:Not yet

[SkyDude]

Really? I am an "oldie" and I can't find some of the music I want on CD. Some of the vinyl records I have never made it to CD or are out of print. Back catalogs are just not a priority for record labels. If the everyone stopped making new music today, I could still spend years discovering great old stuff.

I suggest you try searching the newsgroups. Get a newsreader like News Rover that offers an indexing service to seek out specific mp3s. Like others have said on here, most of the CDs I've purchased in the last 15 years were to replace my vinyl, and the CD format usually makes them sound even better. But, there are a huge number of remixes and re-releases that for some reason aren't available in the states, but are available from Usenet posters in the UK or other parts of the world.

Finally, as a diehard R&B fan (Temptations, Whispers, etc) I'd be out buying new CDs if these guys or contemporary artists released this type of music. But, someone in the management chain of the record companies figures me and the other millions of baby boomers wouldn't spend the money, even though we've got plenty of it to spend and a whole lot of people over 50 people own a whole lot of iPods.

After all, we're the generation that used to buy the high end stereo systems for our dorms or apartments and countless vinyl albums. We love our music and the fact that performances by old school artists always sell out should indicate how strong the market is.

The record companies are really clueless by missing this market.

Speaking for myself

[Whuffo]

My CD purchasing is zero these days - until the music industry quits harassing their customers and treating the performers as slaves they're not getting a dime from me.

Maybe others feel the same way?

Re:Speaking for myself

[ozmanjusri]

until the music industry quits harassing their customers and treating the performers as slaves they're not getting a dime from me.

Yeah, I voted with my feet (and wallet) a few years ago.

I go see local bands, and if they have CDs on sale at the door, I'll buy there. That's the extent of my music spending now, and I used to buy half a dozen CDs a month.

Re:Speaking for myself

[mashade]

I haven't bought a CD in months, and have instead spent time rediscovering the music I already have. It takes a lot of time to rip a large collection to a digital format, and so you tend to be a bit more invested in it.

With a large collection, it's also easy to find tracks that you haven't heard in a long time, and you're more likely to stumble upon tracks you've never heard.

Just my two cents.

Re:Speaking for myself

[fretlessjazz]

I think many people make the mistake of always associating CDs with Major Labels. There are thousands of non-major labels who do not choke their musicians by collecting disproportionately large fees from CD sales. My question to you is this: if major labels ceased to exist, and The Artist collected a legitimate proportion of the profits, would you really start buying CDs again? Or has it become easier to dismiss the medium as irrelevant? It worries me that the physical transfer of music in tangible form is declining. The art that goes into album design and track arrangement is very important to the message that the artist is attempting to convene. Removing this "wrapper" is like not watching the opening montage to a movie. The songs then become sugar packets that you empty into your iced tea.

Re:Speaking for myself

[russellh]

It worries me that the physical transfer of music in tangible form is declining. The art that goes into album design and track arrangement is very important to the message that the artist is attempting to convene.

As someone who, in the old days, would spend days poring over every detail of each album I'd purchase when I gathered money together, I hear you. But I think the album is largely over except as a kind of convenience package. Just a thought - how does the fact of Dylan's ever changing versions of his songs affect the cohesiveness of the original album on which each one was recorded? To me it diminishes the album because you realize that the one originally recorded version is only a tiny slice of the continuum that is a Dylan song. The internet blows this wide open to the world outside the cult tour followers. I'd say except for purely recorded art, the artist is the source and the purveyor of the message, and the recording is simply one instance of that message. The idea of a "master" version of a song is simply an artifact of the distribution system. The internet, one would hope, enables a kind of return to the pre-mass media artistry in music, ie, performance-centric.

It's the bands

[OECD]

Personally, I find myself more interested in bands that put their music out on the net and/or sell CD-Rs themselves. (Nerdcore, Wizard Rock, etc.) I can't remember the last time I bought music from someone who the RIAA 'represents.'

This seems to parallel the increasing niche-ification of magazines and their cannibalization by the web. Not at all suprising, really.

inevitable

[wizardforce]

Cds did a lot better when people didnt have as much access to online sources of music and when 56k was the rule not the exception. Now that any library, office and a large number of homes have high speed of some sort and more tech savvy people than ever it is no surprise that people are less willing to shell out 15 to 20 dollars on a cd that has a lot of music they didnt personally choose to have. People can go online, download the songs they want and do whatever they want [especially on p22p where DRM just doesnt have a foothold] with their music.

A Silly Thing About Vinyl

[tjstork]

All the miniaturization is nice, but one thing that has been missing from the music industry since the 1980s is the physical size of the record. A record album was a fairly large thing, and, covers were small posters in their own right. Nowadays, you get a little picture in a plastic case with the CD, which is nice and transportable, for sure, but it is not as effective as a total package visually as a big record used to be.

Re:A Silly Thing About Vinyl

[TheSHAD0W]

Heh.

Back in, um, '92? I went to my favorite used music store, and they had set out a milk crate filled w/ abandoned albums that had scratches and the people who brought them in weren't able to sell. I bought the whole crate for $3 and covered a wall with them.

Re:A Silly Thing About Vinyl

[OECD]

A record album was a fairly large thing, and, covers were small posters in their own right.

Yeah, I grew up with them, loved them, and I remember people bitching about the small size of CDs when they came out, but I never missed it. Probably because I got a booklet with the CD (probably same total area, so it was a push.)

Then the booklets got smaller and I never missed it. Probably because by then I had the web and didn't need to stare at physical liner notes while listening to an album.

Now I've got D/Ls and iTunes and cetera, and any 'album' I listen to I've probably created myself, so I know why each song is there.

Re:A Silly Thing About Vinyl

[halcyon1234]

This just means that artists have a different canvas in which to be creative. Just take a look at any Tool CD. There's no arguing that, even on a small square, it's a work of art.

I still buy CDs, and here is why

[Anonymous Coward]

1. It's a high-quality, DRM-free copy of the music which I can convert into FLAC and other digital formats I choose. (Yes, there are exceptions, but it's much better than most online stores).

2. I have a semi-permanent copy which I can re-rip as many times as I want.

3. Shiny.

Not Just Away From CDs

[FreezerJam]

...but away from albums, too.

People are finally able to buy singles again. How much of this drop is due simply to people only buying the two good tracks from an album and leaving the other eight behind?

Re:Not Just Away From CDs

[suv4x4]

People are finally able to buy singles again. How much of this drop is due simply to people only buying the two good tracks from an album and leaving the other eight behind?

Agreed, the irony of this is their own marketing tactics have made this possible. It's not as much the rest of the tracks are crap, but they're just not marketed, if you don't listen to them enough, you don't like them, and think they're worse, and hence not buy 'em.

And hence the "one good single and the rest is filler" talk.

To confirm this, just try to listen to a new "super album" without ever hearing the marketed single (hard, I admit). You'll never guess which is the song marketed on 80% of the albums. It's actually often decided post factum after the album has been recorded.

Forbes.com [ran] an article showing that CD sales are expected to be down 20% in 2008 (slightly higher than the 15% drop initially predicted). Why such a drop? What's truly happening is a gradual shift away from physical media to downloadable formats.

Exactly right, and this is why I'm pissing my pants laughing here watching the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray race. They seem to genuiely don't understand, that whoever wins, they both lose in the end. Just consider the amoutn of money spent on technology, production and marketing on those duds. That's funny, right.

Re:Not Just Away From CDs

[moosesocks]

I wouldn't say that the music has changed at all. Some musicians work best in the medium of the album (Pink Floyd, The Beatles, etc..), whereas some musicians work best in the context of individual songs (one-hit-wonders, and 90% of the "top 40" artists).

I would say that (for the past few years at least), good solid albums have stuck out more in my mind than individual singles have. This is especially true among independent artists.

A few somewhat recent albums that I've enjoyed as a whole (in no particular order)

• The Crane Wife by The Decemberists
  
• Boxer by The National
  
• Plans by Death Cab For Cutie
  
• Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer by Of Montreal
  
• The Magic Position by Patrick Wolf
  
• Funeral by The Arcade Fire
  
• Cassadaga by Bright Eyes
  
• "Cross" by Justice
  
• A Weekend in the City by Bloc Party
  
• Illinois by Sufjan Stevens
  
• Armchair Apocrypha by Andrew Bird
  
• Like the Linen by Thao Nugyen
  
• In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel (10 years old, but arguably one of the most influential albums of those 10 years)
  

and the list goes on.... There have been quite a few high-profile "popular" albums released by popular artists such as Green Day, My Chemical Romance, Justin Timberlake, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, all of which are very much intended to be played as an entire album.

At a show I recently went to, I bought the band's CD on a whim because I enjoyed the show. As the guy handed it to me (he was the band's bassist), he encouraged me to copy it, share it, email it, or "do whatever you want to get the word out." The side you don't hear is that most small artists owe much their very existence to the internet.

So, no. The album is far from dead. Even though popular music has almost completely gone to shit in the US, the independent music scene is arguably the best it's ever been.

I hope not...

[spoco2]

At least, I hope a physical medium for purchasing and keeping your music is not on the way out.

I hate downloaded music, I hate having nothing but some files and a printed out cover to show for my money (or no cover etc. if I'm not going to back them up individually).

I love having shelves of cds, with their cover art, their liner notes etc. I love the hard, physical format of them.

I'm forever worried that I'll lose or misplace, erase or whatever the tracks I've legally downloaded...

I want physical music delivery to remain dammit!

I won't buy downloadable music...

[stubear]

...until it's uncompressed CD quality audio, I don't care if it's protected by DRM to disallow sharing, as long as I can rip the files to AAC, WMA, or whatever other format I choose and copy them to digital audio players I have authorized for my personal use. Until then I'll only buy CDs.

None of the Above

[bill_mcgonigle]

People don't have a fixed budget for CD's and now they're hoarding it now because the music sucks - they have a certain amount of disposable income that they allot to entertainment, and they're not spending it on CD's as much as they used to. DVD sales only peaked last year - does it surprise the heck out of everybody that just as DVD players became affordable CD sales started to tank? People are also buying hi-def screens and home theaters in record numbers. Back in 1986 lots of people weren't used to buying VHS tapes, and they still bought records and then CD's and spent time sitting around listening to music. Most people don't do this anymore, they watch movies or premium cable or shows on their DVR's.

RIAA, meet MPAA. Sony, Universal, Warner - you're competing with yourselves.

Re:None of the Above

[Technician]

RIAA, meet MPAA. Sony, Universal, Warner - you're competing with yourselves

Excellent point. The CD is generaly compressed to sound loud. The DVD has THX cert in most cases. In most cases a 5 year old film is marked down while a 5 year old CD is still at full retail. I buy DVD's pre-viewed for either 2,3, or 4 for $20. CD's are lower quality, have higher prices, have dropped technical standards for quality and the industry is attacking their best customers.

I bought more DVD's last week than I bought CD's all of last year. Guess why?
The music cartel has failed to compete for the entertainment dollar.

How about some new permissions given in the legal copies of their product? Say a public performance license? I have a good sound system. The CD's come with a license which prohibits taking my CD's and DJ'ing a school dance or other performance. I used to do some DJ type stuff at a hobby level until I found out it was in violation of the terms. To get legal was way too expensive for 3-6 gigs a year, so I simply folded. Needless to say this reduces the need to buy CD's by reducing their value simply because their use is restricted.

That one item is one of many restricting the usefuleness of CD's and reduces their value. Inspite of the reduced value, the price remains quite high. Then they wonder why sales are poor. They need a cluestick. I'm watching u-tube at the moment watching Pink Floyd Live. I don't need the shiny disc to enjoy music anymore. Give me a valid reason to part with lots of hard earned cash for a restricted use item. I find more value elsewhere. I spend more on monthly internet than I ever used to spend on LP's and cassettes.

Money I used to spend on music is spent on better values elsewhere.

Shopping for CDs is shopping blind.

[damacus]

Buying music without being able to sample each track is a hard sell these days. People are now used to being able to take an albeit brief listen to nearly every track on a CD before making a decision to buy. You can do that of course on either online CD purchase sites like Amazon, or iTunes. One of those will give you the music immediately, and generally for less than a new CD.

Buying music at a Brick & Mortar is buying blind. Usually they only have a small selection available on preview machines.. if they have one. "Gee, I hope the other tracks on this thing don't suck," is not a good thing to have going through customers' heads when they're shopping.

The last time I bought music CD at a store was fathers day, when I just wanted to get my dad some CDs that I knew were really good compilations. That's about the only use I have for B&M.

FWIW, I generally buy my music using amazon's marketplace. Better quality, I can rip my purchase legally to my specification, and it's dirt cheap.

I bought one Saturday

[Nyeerrmm]

I bought a CD on saturday, and I'm enjoying listening to it. There are quite a few reasons I bought it in a CD format.

1. I like it uncompressed, I probably couldn't hear the difference with the new iTunes DRM-free tracks, but I don't have to worry about recompressing them later and having the flaws come popping out.
2. I run linux and it's really a PITA to boot over to windows to use iTunes, and eMusic doesn't have some of the artist I enjoy.
3. The cover art and the convenience of having a disk for the car premade with a nice pressing is enjoyable.
4. I want to buy from artists I enjoy so they can keep making music

I don't see online distribution quite solving these things yet. ALthough, I will admit, most consumers are a lot more apathetic about these issues than me.

Classic responses

[Gothmolly]

1) the Indie Douchebag. This Slashdotter will claim he only buys from 'local' or 'indie' bands, namely, his friends' garage band.

2) the Audiophile Loudmouth. This one buys 24k gold plated CDs, listened to on a 20bit DAC feeding monster-cabled speakers that he bought at Best Buy.

3) the Pirate. You all suck, Gnutella FTW!

Face it, none of the dorkwads on here, myself included, is representative of the mouthbreathers at Walmart whose choices power the economy.

was the movie Memento based on all of you?

[nomadic]

Is it that manufacturers are putting out more and more 'safe' (read: crap) music

Where on earth did so many people on slashdot get the bizarre misapprehension that pop, lowest-common-denominator music is somehow more prevalent now than it's been in the past? It's always been there, at least since the 50's, and if you weren't conscious during the 80's and 90's, I assure you that the majority of music released during the decades was "safe" bubble gum pop. Think back, do you remember that music? No? Of course you don't, it was immensely forgettable and put out for a quick buck.

And I know that 10 years from now the same people who try to paint this phenomenon as new will be repeating the same mantra again and again, "remember back in the early 2000s when music was good, before they started releasing commercialized garbage?".

Re:was the movie Memento based on all of you?

[jmyers]

A lot of people long for that short period of time in the 70s when FM radio was in its infancy. That is when a lot of good music was on the radio because a lot of DJs at the time were given the freedom to play what they wanted. They played the artists they thought were good and played deep tracks off albums and made them popular rather than a single being pushed by a record company. This created the entire catalog of music known as "classic rock".

Once FM radio listeners started to match or exceed the numbers of AM listeners the days of the freewheeling DJ was over. FM became the same systematic crap programming as AM. The last decent radio station in these parts died around 1981.

The music being made then was not any better than music being made today, you just had a reliable source to hear some of it. Now there are so many outlets for music; radio, tv , xm/sirus radio, internet, etc that no new music can reach any real level of popularity unless it can be mass marketed via the pop or country formats.

Re:I miss vinyl

[xs650]

No worry, there will always be a market for vinyl.

Not obsolete. Too #!@$# expensive.

[SCHecklerX]

Sell for $5-$10. Music sales will go way up. "piracy" will still be around, but more people who like what they download will actually go out and buy the CD and encode themselves. Compressed music should really just be an advertisement for the real product. While at it, get rid of the stupid DRM schemes, ok?

Kind of offtopic....

WTF don't companies who make boomboxes that can read mp3 CDs put DVD drives in instead? It sure would be nice to have a 4GB fully integrated solution for weekend camping. Oh well. I'll just stick to the sansa with a boomtube, I guess.

Why CDs are good

[geophile]

I listen to MP3s exclusively, but buy only CDs because:

• CDs are higher quality than MP3s.
• They serve as another layer of backups.
• I can rip them to whatever level of quality I want and get DRM-free music.
• Buying individual tracks, I'd miss some great music. CDs are full of unappreciated gems. There's often a lot of filler, of course, but the obscure tracks make it worthwhile.

It's not just music competition

[EmbeddedJanitor]

CD, and all music sales, must compete against all other discretionary/disposable income (depending which definition you choose to use). Ten years back there were far fewer ways to blow your money.

Of course, the 1960s, 70s and 80s had decade-defining music. There's no such music for the 2000's. Not really that much worth buying.

Re:I miss vinyl

[the_other_one]

Wow, talk about market penetration!

Simple explanation: gifts

[goombah99]

First I agree, music quality has nothing to do with it. That accounts for a negligible market size. The real reason is gifts. How many CDs did you used to buy and how many did you used to give as gifts. I'd wager about 10% of the CDs you bought was the number you gave as gifts at christmas or other times. Possibly more. Nowadays I still give CDs as gifts. But I don't buy two of it. I buy one, make a copy for myself, and give the original media as the gift. The original media is a much better gift than a burned CD or a pile of itunes gift certificates. It's not like the days of audi tapes where a Mix CD took time and effort and could only be made one at a time. THere the mix tapes were more valuable than the original media. With Cds its the reverse. I have no problems owning a copy but I prefer to give the original as a gift. It's the tangible media that is satsifying to the recpient. I'd say that could easily account for 15% of the market.

Re:Simple explanation: gifts

[ewhac]

Nowadays I still give CDs as gifts. But I don't buy two of it. I buy one, make a copy for myself, and give the original media as the gift.

Ardent readers of my writings (both of you) will know that I am no great friend of existing copyright laws, that copying is an inevitability of advancing technology, and believe the regime should re-engineered and replaced with a system that preserves reputations rather than proscribes copying and/or who can manufacture things.

...But even so, I still think what you're doing is really, really cheesy.

Schwab

Re:Simple explanation: gifts

[TrinSF]

I'm sorry, that's tacky. What you're doing is giving a *used* CD as a gift -- used in the sense that you have first used it. That's fine in and of itself, but buying someone a gift so that you can benefit from it is, well, tacky. It's like buying your mom a frying pan so that she'll make you pancakes. It's like buying someone a sweater but wearing it holiday office party before you wrap it and put it under the tree.

If you want to do this, the proper way to do so is to give the person the (wrapped, unopened) CD as a gift, and then, some days later -- not when you give it, you dolt -- when the person says they enjoyed the CD, ask if they would lend it to you. Don't say, "...so that I can rip it, because I bought it for you thinking I'd be able to make a copy for myself..." because that's tacky, too.

They say it's the thought that counts, and your thought is "What's in this gift for me?"

Re:Simple explanation: gifts

[mr_matticus]

So wait. You give people opened CDs as gifts? I hope for the recipient's sake that they're used to begin with. Talk about bad form, to say nothing of the copying.

That's like giving someone a six pack of beer with one missing. Sure, it could be really good beer and the six pack might exceed some arbitrary spending limit, but how tacky can you get?

I get that the gift market point is why you got modded up, but I still think that's a stretch at best. I can't think of anyone who cares about getting the actual disc vs. getting identical data via download (I realize that this is not offered at present by any major store). In fact, not having something to worry about losing or storing cases is a godsend in our smaller, urban dwellings. iTunes does a pretty good job of displaying cover art in much the same way as a full CD tower gives some bragging rights. I can look all the lyrics up online and store it as metadata with the file itself. Between that and the cover art, I'm not missing anything from the physical medium that I care about. Fun anecdotes I can read on the group's website; posters I can buy or print from a high-quality PDF (without the permanent folds in mini-posters imposed by the CD case dimensions). I'm approaching 30, so maybe I'm part of some contaminated younger generation lacking in appreciation for bits of plastic and delicate paper slips.

Re:Simple explanation: gifts

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like buying your mom a frying pan so that she'll make you pancakes.
Yeah, but come on. I like pancakes.

It's just enabling her to give you a gift. A gift of pancakes.

I Still Buy CDs

[xdc]

Amen to no compression / lossless compression. I just bought like 5 CDs today. Not only is sound quality a huge factor, but I perceive some benefit to owning tangible, non-DRMed media rather than something that's filling up a hard drive which can go bad, or home-burned CD-Rs collecting dust in a closet. If I want to make car listening copies or custom compilations, I can rip the CDs onto the computer. From there I can also copy to an iPod-type device. But I don't have to. For my money I already have a plastic disc with printed liner notes which I don't need to fool around with if all I want is a quick listen.

With downloaded music, not only is the audio lossy, but then I also have to spend my precious time producing archival or car listening CD-Rs on my own separately-purchased, questionably-durable media, labeled with a Sharpie or some mediocre inkjet-printed sticker.

And what about rare music? When some remix/promo single or obscure album/12" is long out of print and not carried by places like the iTunes Store, and the torrents have all died down, I may still be able to track down an authentic, full-quality release at a used/collectible shop. I doubt I could be so lucky with old download-only releases, where any company hosting them would likely be sued out of business.

Re:I Still Buy CDs

[phrasebook]

I think he was trying to imply that he often buys CDs, so much so that he can't always remember how many or what they were - just a stack of 'em, like 5 or so.

If you had a sleazy friend he might say to you: "I had sex with like 5 women today!". Make of it what you will.

Re:I Still Buy CDs

[Gazzonyx]

I buy CDs, too. The physical medium is great; the first thing I do is import the CD to my computer (MP3 or AAC), then I take the CD to my shop bench. I then procede to sharpen the edges with a grinder and cut it into the shape of a ninja star.

The bent appeal of this is the irony of me launching my own personal CDs at the RIAA when they come 'a knockin', Tony Montana style, from a custom CD launcher. I was going to only download MP3s, but the mental image of me on the balcony shouting, "Say 'ello to my little friend!", and then throwing ipods just didn't quite capture the effect I was going for and was overwhelmingly more expensive.

Re:I Still Buy CDs

[xdc]

I bought around 5 CDs. In American slang, one common use of the word "like" is to qualify a statement as being an approximation, guess, or exaggerated perception. ("It's like a hundred degrees outside!" [Fahrenheit])

I prefer CDs.

[MaWeiTao]

I still prefer CDs over MP3s. First, I don't like paying for something that I consider ephemeral. I still like to have something physical. It's convenient to purchase music online. Then I have the hassle of backing up this music if I reinstall my OS, or get a new machine. And that's assuming I'm allowed to make copies.

Second, it seems like I'm more restricted in how I can use my music when purchasing online. It seems easier for a company to control content that way. Sure, there are ways to defeat any copy-protection, but sometimes it's a hassle.

I'd rather buy a CD, convert the songs I want into MP3s and be done with it. That way I have the comfort of knowing I have a reliable, high quality backup which I can even stick in my sound system when I'm so inclined.

So going online I'd spending as much as I have with CDs, but I end with with nothing physical to show for it. No album art, no booklet, not CD, nothing. Just some crappy 600x600 jpg if I'm lucky and an MP3. Maybe I'll embrace that medium some day, but only when it's evolve far beyond its current form.

Re:And here is why you shouldn't:

[Planesdragon]

1) Aganist Copyright Law, you are not allowed to convert to other formats. Wrong. Media-shifting a disk that doesn't remove DRM has long been recognized as Fair Use. If it wasn't, the iPod would never have been sold in the first place.

2) Aganist Copyright Law, you are not allowed to backup your music. Also wrong. An actual backup is well within the realm of Fair Use. Buy your CD, copy it to a CD-R, and let the copy go to crap in your automobile.

3) Agreed. Shiny. Meh.

It's obvious who's to blame...

[Xelios]

The RIAA. They've made the situation worse for themselves at just about every opportunity with their "this is the way it has been, this is the way it always will be" attitude. All things change in a dynamic environment, only the short sighted and naive believe the status quo can be maintained indefinately. Instead of accepting the coming changes they faught them every step of the way.

Recently I bought the new Nine Inch Nails album. Not because I felt the need to support their label, not because I prefer my music on CD's (I don't), and not because it was a good album (though it was). I bought it because a glimmer of imagination and creativity went into its production. The CD appears black until it's played, once it's been heated up by the laser it turns white and reveals previously hidden writing on the CD itself, along with a bit of binary code that can be translated into a URL. Finally, a reason (albeit a small one) to own the physical media again. A little something extra that's pretty interesting and can't be owned without buying the album. This is adaptation, and it's a trend the rest of the music industry should be following. It's time to offer more than just 12 tracks burned to a CD in a cheap plastic case, it's time to justify the $20 price tag in an age where the same music can and is being distributed globally for free. And for god's sake it's time to let some good music through, instead of this constant stream of generic crap.

Most of all, it's time for the RIAA to go away and make room for a new generation of music entertainment, one that isn't terrified by change.

Top 5 reasons why I like CDs

[core_dump_0]

1. (99% of the time) No DRM
2. Better quality sound than lossy formats like MP3
3. Album art
4. Out of print, import, and rare CDs (which most of my CD purchases are) may become collector's items down the road
5. Convenient backup if you lose the ripped FLACs

Need storage-independent format

[Tablizer]

I've said this before and I'll say it again. We need a format that does not depend on the storage technology used. The pen-drive (aka flash drive) is perhaps the closest we have to such because the computer only cares about the interface, not the storage surface. Time to dump disks altogether for anything we want to last. (Pen-drive storage bits as they currently are may not last, but at least the interface is the same such that if they come up with a longer-lasting storage method inside, it would still work in old pen-drive slots.) In software-engineering speak, we need to separate the interface from the implementation.

Becuase the studios are retarded...

[jigjigga]

99% of under 25 are not buying cds or singles, they are downloading for free (or swapping via itunes in colleges). Those older than 25 are not buying cds because cds sound like sh!t because of compressed dynamics and digital clipping introduced as a result of the loudness wars. The audiophiles if you want to call them, I think of them more as those that still actually listen to music (as opposed to hear it like most people these days), are buying used 15 year old cd's for 50-150 bucks on ebay because you cannot buy a lot of it or what you can buy sounds worse than a cassette tape! Every possible bad decision the studios could have made have been made. It is pathetic, there are mental defects in the organizations. Oh... And lets review how we can get music today....if I wanted a cd I would have to pay lots for special shipping and wait days or weeks because there aren't any physical cd stores anymore... or I could pay the same or more for a sh!tty low quality mp3 most likely with DRM and no album art and nothing... or I could download any quality of any album with album art and everything for free this instant... Which route would one most likely take? PATHETIC.

FLAC

[BillGatesLoveChild]

FLAC is a loseless audio compression technology doing the rounds. Winamp and VLC support it out of the box. Sizes are reasonable: 40 to 50% bears out with experiences mein:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC

Microsoft Media Player doesn't support it, but who uses that anyway (besides ET and n00bz)?

Loudness War

[joaod]

As far as i'm concerned, i seldom buy pop/rock CD's because of the quality of the sound. I don't know it this is the reason why people in general are abandoning CD's, but it's my own reason. As some ppl here said, CD's are being badly masterized resulting in hyper-compressed, clipped music with no dynamic range whatsoever. The great advantage of the CD medium is it's enormous dynamic range (90db,) compared to other mainstream mediums like the vinyl, but instead of taking advantage of this, sound engineers follow the trend and prefer to push things all way up. Well it happens that they can't do this compreesion mess in vinyl because the needle would jump off tracks, so, in many cases, we end up having much better quality sound on vinyl. When i really like an album but i hate the way it sounds, i'll end up buying the vinyl version. If there's no vinyl available i'll put in in a list for a future buy, when this loudness war will be over and i will have the chance to get a proper remastered CD version. Red Hot Chilli Peppers are a good example of this: they asked another sound engineer to remaster Stadium Arcadium in vinyl (unfortunately not on CD) and surely anyone can tell the diference from the bad, loud, and clipped sound (CD) and the a very well crafed masterization in the vinyl version. For a better explanation about this subject i recommend everyone to watch this video. And talking about mp3, as CD's are kept to maximum average loudness we can less ear the subtilities of each instrument so there's no point in talking about quality and there isn't a great difference between a CD and a MP3. We are using very few of the extent capabilities of the CD medium with actual pop/rock rules of "hot" masterizing.

track arrangement

[r00t]

That sounds like a playlist to me. I think we could share these on the internet. We wouldn't be limited to 74 minutes. We wouldn't be limited to one single band.

Say, aren't people doing this right now?

what does Bob Dylan know?

[weighn]

"what does Bob Dylan know about what music sounds like" is not the sort of position I would prefer to defend. Allow me. Bob Dylan is 66 years old. Rather than the gp stating in the terms that you use to paraphrase, the intent was that Dylan's perception of sound may have changed. Being a lifelong career musician he would have a higher internal sense of psychoacoustics than the average Joe. Perhaps his power of recall is also advanced. The thing is, his hearing will no doubt have changed quite a deal over the past 40 years. In his mind, he may be recalling the aural sense he experienced from those old recordings, but this can't be stacked against hearing modern recordings on cds with his no doubt degraded hearing. Just a thought.

Re:what does Bob Dylan know?

[MillionthMonkey]

But the past 40 years are irrelevant. The CD audio standard dates back to 1980. I would have just assumed Bob Dylan first heard a CD at about the same time I did sometime in the early 80s, and that he made up his mind back then.

Re:what does Bob Dylan know?

[supersnail]

This "Bob Dylan hates digital" stuff is a very commion mis-quote.
Whate his Bobness was complaining about was the cheapo pc based mixing software and
associated hardware which young musicians were using instead of analog mixers tape decks etc.

And he definately had a point. A combination of low quality hardware, poor digitising algorithms
and sloppy mixing does produce audibly awful results compared with say an inexpensive 12 track mixer
and a good old tape recorder.

Re:what does Bob Dylan know?

[viracochas]

In addition to the changes in technology, the ear's sensitivity and pitch perception changes with age. I remember hearing a story about a musician with perfect pitch who was also highly synaesthetic describing music throughout his life. With Mahler's Symphony No.5, he heard it in the C-sharp minor key it is written in as a young man, with all the associated pitches and tone colors. Six decades later he perceived the piece to be in D-minor and could barely listen to it, such was the unfamiliarity of the familiar piece. Imagine how Dylan might feel if he is playing a song he wrote in the mid-60s, performing it exactly how he did then and it still doesn't 'feel' right. And as the GP states Dylan's hearing is likely highly degraded since his youth, especially once he went electric.

Hmmm, move up market... nah...

[alexhmit01]

Moving to better audio would have been one approach... Movie industry figured that one out. However, they are so scared of their own shadow that the idea of a better product scares them. They are more interested in trying to preserve the status quo and release best-of CDs to milk cash.

SA-CD or DVD-A could have been their salvation, but that would have required pushing the format (all new releases in SA-CD/CD Hybrid discs, so you can use your old CD player and play the material). Houses have LOTS of CD players, 2 cars, home stereo, maybe the master bedroom and a teenagers room. Nobody is putting SA-CD players EVERYWHERE, but they might have bought 1-2 of them if all new CDs supported the new format.

Teenagers like to listen to music... SA-CD boomboxes would have helped make that a reality. But they decided that hey, let's try to collect $30 a SA-CD, and crushed the market. If they had moved up market, and included AAC/WMA/MP3 files ON THE DISC, people might have traded the MP3s online (but they can do that now with a simple CD purchase) and preserved/grew the market.

However, they decided to focus on "plugging the analog hole" and "preventing piracy," making the formats more complicated, players more expensive, and didn't release Hybrids... who the hell was going to buy a SA-CD that they couldn't play in their car. I remember my dad diligents copying every new CD, that went in the stereo case, to a cassette deck for the car for a while... that's unnecessary when Hybrid tech exists, and impossible when you don't make it easy to copy the new SA-CD to CD.

The desire to listen to music on the iPod in no way endangered CD sales inherently, but that would have required more effort to release good CDs, not overcompress the music by making everything LOUD, and encouraged better quality hardware... companies like Sony that do hardware and software could have raised the bar with inexpensive SA-CD bedroom stereos that sounded okay...

However, CDs sound better on a decent system than MP3s, and SA-CDs no doubt sound better, but the refusal to support SA-CD killed it. Digital audio is damned convenient, busy moving my old CD-Jukebox (400 disc, takes forever to change CDs if you want to mix up tracks) to a lossless media server, but there was no reason for the studios not to make that a reality, other than laziness and a fear of change.

Alex

Re:Hmmm, move up market... nah...

[KlaymenDK]

I hear what you're saying. I really do.

But as insightful as your post is, why do you say

If they had moved up market, and included AAC/WMA/MP3 files ON THE DISC and not a single lossless format among them?

I'd say FLAC+WMA would be the premier choice, the one being high-end for audiophiles, the other being playable on dang near any modern (car) stereo. (And yes I could have said MP3 instead of WMA, but Fraunhofer's licensing is even more bonkers than Microsoft's.)

Re:Hmmm, move up market... nah...

[alexhmit01]

Exactly, when I listen to my copy of Desperado on a CD with a good set of Sennheisers, I can really hear the quality of the recording. It probably isn't as good as the original vinyl was, but the quality is just so far beyond what an MP3 or some of the incredibly compressed 90s albums sound like. Granted, it can be an artistic statement, like with grunge, but most of the time it is just ignorance. Same goes from my old Jazz CDs or 70s era Funk, the sound quality is so much better when the compression is just enough to get it onto the disc

Vinyl has certain properties that limit acoustics. It is a physical process, so if you go to heavy/light on one part of the range, the needle would skip. That physical limitation means that if one is is releasing a Vinyl version, someone that knows how to master vinyl does the process. Often the CD and Vinyl releases have separate mastering processes.

CDs, being digital, can send whatever you want. Years ago, companies would send out masters to a few mastering engineers to get back their version. Every time, the contract went to whoever made it sound loudest, because on a single listening, especially an A/B comparison, the louder track sounded better. As a result, the only mastering engineers that stayed in business were those that learned to sound "loud." As a result, there is less interesting sounds, and only a fraction of the 16-bit range was used.

This had three effects... 1) MP3s sound almost as good, who cares if you drop the low-bit range if it is over-powered by the rest. 2) synthetic instruments and drum machines, which were improving with cheap processors anyway, sound closer and closer to the real thing as you compress the range that people listen to. 3) the need for a perfect studio environment/mixing environment went away as you just weren't releasing stuff as good.

This slit the throats of CD sales, as nobody cared that the MP3 "lost acoustic range," because Pop/Rock doesn't use that range anymore. The need for a band was lessoned, and studios focused on solo vocalists which was cheaper, and used drum machines instead of drummers and the occasional work-for-hire musician for instruments as needed. In addition, the explosion of independent labels in the 90s (that were bought up by the majors) benefited from the studios destroying the need for expensive studios... Sure the independents were mostly bought up, but if you think that letting competitors enter the market so you can buy them up at a premium is good for shareholder value... well then you'd be a corporate executive.

Loud sounds better as background music (but all my stereos have a volume knob), and on the radio when people listen over FM which nukes detail anyway and cars are noisy... but there was no reason not to "do things right," and master for vinyl, transfer that master to CD, and take singles you want radio play for and do a radio master, over-compressed and loud.. It would have cost "more," but mastering engineers are NOT the expensive part of music production.

That would have preserved the oligopoly's hegemony, and not alienated DJs from the record industry as the vinyl releases were few and far between (and CDs/MP3s can be beat matched, but it takes the skill out and limited DJ expression). It's easy to say that teenagers don't care about audio quality, but I don't know that it's so true... crap sounds like crap... whenever an actually talented musician succeeds in pop, the other labels find knockoffs, who normally lack the talent, and don't become huge. Marketing people try to turn things into metrics that they can analyze, but if you don't have a good product, it shows in the end... the music industry stopped putting out good product. The teenagers that I encounter (friend with their parents), are not NEARLY as into music as we were 10 years ago, and we weren't nearly as into music as those whose teen years were in the 60s, 70s, or 80s... I don't think its the commercialization, that's been pretty constant since the 50s, I think it's the lousy quality.

Serves em right

[realityfighter]

I said it back then, and I'll say it again now: the recording industry should have been making huge inroads into digital delivery way back in the Napster era. Now sales for their main medium are collapsing and they don't have enough control over the new delivery system to milk it for enough of a profit. (They did try to control the new system - pity they didn't realize that the best way to control it was to provide the best digital delivery system on the planet and make it ubiquitous. The solution was not to try to rein in the technology, and certainly NOT to haunt their potential buyers with the constant threat of lawsuit.)

I'm not making a defense of piracy here, I'm just saying that RIAA members made some really BAD business decisions back in the day, the main result being that they now have to rely on a computer manufacturer to give them the digital release portal they should have built for themselves. Serves the idiots right.

CDs are not obsolete

[SpryGuy]

Who are these idiots who only buy downloaded tracks? I cannot fathom that.

I want to OWN my music. I want it to be uncompressed, un-DRMed, and I don't want to have to pay for it all again should my MP3 player die, or my hard disk bite the big one. If I change MP3 player brands, I want my music to be compatable, and to not have to rebuy it.

CDs are great. They play everywhere. There's a CD player in my car. My car does not have an MP3 player that I can "sync" with my music library, nor does it have a way to connect my MP3 player to my Car's audio system.

The notion that CDs are becoming obsolete is absurd.

I don't pay a cent for any downloadable music that isn't the free and open and universal MP3, and even then I burn it to a CD so I can play it anywhere I want.

Besides, when you download, you don't get anything PHYSICAL. You don't get liner notes, lyrics, artwork, or even "track order". Music and albums are so much more than just collections of "singles". You lose all that on many MP3 players that you have to go out of your way to get the tracks to play in "album/CD order". And it's ridiculous to pay the same for a 20 second "interlude" track as you do for a 15 minute opus track (whether classic, pop, or rock). And finally, being forced to buy the whole CD to get a single song I liked has opened up my eyes and my tastes to lots of music I never, ever, would have heard on the radio. Generally my favorite tracks are not the singles.

So no, CDs are not obsolete. Not by a long shot.

Re:CDs are not obsolete

[pandrijeczko]

I agree with you 100%.

And in addition to what you've said, there is no feeling as good as walking into a shop, whether a new or used CD one, and finding an elusive CD or one that you've wanted for a while at a bargain price.

My view on people who say CDs are overpriced is that they probably are not buying the right music. When you've got a reasonable hifi (not necessarily hugely expensive) there is nothing quite like turning up a really good piece of music up really loud on it. And if you research your music really well, you only buy CDs that you know you'll enjoy - therefore they're great value for money, especially after hunting down the best prices.

Yep, maybe it's old fashioned now, but like you, I need sleeve notes, a shiny disc and a plastic case to put them in.

To me, music downloads have to be free and I will never pay to download music as the only reason I do it in the first place is to preview an album before I intend buying it - if I like it, I buy the CD and if I don't, I delete it because it's not even worth the hard disk space.

Re:CDs are not obsolete

[Riquez]

Who are these idiots who only buy downloaded tracks? I cannot fathom that.

...erm, that'd be me then.

I want to OWN my music. I want it to be uncompressed, un-DRMed, and I don't want to have to pay for it all again should my MP3 player die, or my hard disk bite the big one. If I change MP3 player brands, I want my music to be compatable, and to not have to rebuy it.

You still OWN digital files & modern compression is the same as CD quality. non-DRM is here.
My music is on my iPod, my computer & my backup drive. If all 3 die on the same day, ill be screwed. If your house burns down, or gets burgled your screwed - same as me. Except I'll probably be out when that happens & have my iPod with me, so I still have it all.

CDs are great. They play everywhere. There's a CD player in my car. My car does not have an MP3 player that I can "sync" with my music library, nor does it have a way to connect my MP3 player to my Car's audio system.

How many CD's do you have in your car? 'Cause I just have this iPod with 4000 songs & it works in the car fine because you can transmit the signal & pick it up on your car radio.

The notion that CDs are becoming obsolete is absurd.

Not really. I have bought maybe 5 CD's in the last 2 years & I listen to more music now than I did because it's more accessible. In the 'olden days' I would buy 2-3 CD's / month & now they are all in attic boxes because they take up 8000% more space.

I don't pay a cent for any downloadable music that isn't the free and open and universal MP3, and even then I burn it to a CD so I can play it anywhere I want.

Umm, so if you burn it to CD anyway, why is DRM music an issue - you can still burn it & then you have the CD you always wanted.

Besides, when you download, you don't get anything PHYSICAL. You don't get liner notes, lyrics, artwork, or even "track order". Music and albums are so much more than just collections of "singles". You lose all that on many MP3 players that you have to go out of your way to get the tracks to play in "album/CD order". And it's ridiculous to pay the same for a 20 second "interlude" track as you do for a 15 minute opus track (whether classic, pop, or rock). And finally, being forced to buy the whole CD to get a single song I liked has opened up my eyes and my tastes to lots of music I never, ever, would have heard on the radio. Generally my favorite tracks are not the singles.

You DO get Cover Artwork & Track order. You don't get lyrics, but typing "slow train to dawn lyrics" into google brings it up pretty fast. It's true you don't get the physical object. I agree here. I used to enjoy paging through the booklet or looking over the album cover while listening to the album - in a way, indeed, something has been lost in the experience.
In fact, as a previous record collector, I should agree with you 100%. I spent 1000's of hours & cash on collecting vinyl. Time's change.
It would be nice if this kind of thing was provided in video clips, pdf's or whatever. Let's hope some of that extra value makes it's way into the digital music, there's no reason why it can't.
If you buy an album track-by-track online you normally pay more, no one would do this - if you buy the whole album as one, then it works out cheaper.

So no, CDs are not obsolete. Not by a long shot.

Not obsolete yet, but getting there. Thinking into the future, there is no doubt that there will be a new format for music/video. Be it Blu-Ray or Krypton Crystals, either way I'm optimistic.

The way I see it, as the world becomes more virtual: you pay for something & it's accessible to you - wherever you are. Actually, you don't get anything physical at all - but magically your TV can watch it, your player play it, your brain imagine it.

PS: Even though I have disagreed with mostly all your post, it was interesting & well put. I wouldn't have replied otherwise - Thanks for posting!

Are you honestly claiming...

[GrahamCox]

The digitization of the analog signal is what destroys information, resulting in distortion when the analog is reconstructed later.

Are you honestly claiming that you can hear frequencies higher than 22.050 kHz? Or noise components below -96dB? CDs may have poor sound in practice for all sorts of reasons, but the basic sampling of the analogue original is not one of them. Careless, thoughtless production and over-processing I can all too readily believe in, but not problems with the essential theory at the heart of it.

Re:Are you honestly claiming...

[MillionthMonkey]

Actually what I think most people are really objecting to is the way that record companies pump up the volume and saturate the band. Everything sounds like a car commercial the way they use it.

Re:Are you honestly claiming...

[poopdeville]

Are you honestly claiming that you can hear frequencies higher than 22.050 kHz?

Actually, yes. I can. Last time I had my hearing tested, I heard frequencies up to 24.5kHz.

Careless, thoughtless production and over-processing I can all too readily believe in, but not problems with the essential theory at the heart of it.

The trouble with the theory is that it is just that. The theory of using low pass filters to smooth out quantized signals works very well. In practice, however, low pass filters have to be matched to a proper power output stage, or else you get slewing, and a corresponding spectral shift.

Seriously, get your hands on an oscilloscope and a cheap CD player. You'll be able to measure frequencies into the 25kHz range coming out of the power output, despite Nysquist's sampling theorem. This directly corresponds to information loss in the audible range.

2 inch tape is still the best recording medium ever made.

Re:Are you honestly claiming...

[austexmonkey]

> Are you honestly claiming that you can hear frequencies higher than 22.050 kHz?

Its possible. Are you completely sure that the grandparent poster isn't a cat?

Re:Are you honestly claiming...

[PainKilleR-CE]

Honestly, compression is only an issue with a small subset of music anyway (though it may be a large portion of the high-volume sales). The real issue with the whole CD vs. LP debate is that most music hasn't even been recorded in analog in almost 20 years anyway, and hasn't been mastered in analog in 15 years or more. I don't even think most modern CDs include the 3 letter SPARS code to tell you whether it was recorded, mixed, and mastered in analog or digital. Most of the LPs I own were recorded in digital and converted to analog, not the other way around (for the CD version).

On the other hand, some people still use analog for various parts of the recording chain because they like a certain sound they get from a particular piece of equipment, and attribute this strictly to an analog/digital difference, even though digital components could reproduce the analog sound if someone took the time to make it do so (usually by analyzing the modifications made to the sound by the analog equipment and then reproducing them on the digital).

Re:Are you honestly claiming...

[Bloke down the pub]

Actually, yes. I can. Last time I had my hearing tested, I heard frequencies up to 24.5kHz.

How did the test work - if you barked when the signal sounded you got a bone as a reward?

Re:Are you honestly claiming...

[SomeGuyTyping]

The problem isn't with frequencies higher than 22K, but 44.1K sampling can screw up a sine wave as low as 6k signifcantly. Check out http://www.mother-of-tone.com/cd.htm for some good graphics describing this.

Re:Are you honestly claiming...

[cayenne8]

"On the other hand, some people still use analog for various parts of the recording chain because they like a certain sound they get from a particular piece of equipment, and attribute this strictly to an analog/digital difference, even though digital components could reproduce the analog sound if someone took the time to make it do so (usually by analyzing the modifications made to the sound by the analog equipment and then reproducing them on the digital)."

Yeah...but, why do it? I mean, it is 'fun' to plug into an old tube guitar amp, and crank it up.

Tube amps are fun to use at home too...stereos the glow are cool.

:-)

Digitization destroys information?

[Aehgts]

Yes they do not use lossy digital compression, but that's irrelevant. The digitization of the analog signal is what destroys information, resulting in distortion when the analog is reconstructed later.

Destroys information? What is it about a 44.1KHz sampling rate that can possibly destroy any of the waveform information that our ears can perceive? By the NyquistShannon sampling theorem this rate could allow for perfect reproduction of up to 22.05KHz. So, provided there's a decent low pass filter before the sampling takes place the ADC-DAC process itself shouldn't destroy any information.

Re:Digitization destroys information?

[ogmundur]

Not quite correct - the Shannon theorem states that 44.1 KHz is the bare minimum required to sample a 22.05 KHz wave without aliasing; not that a 22.05 KHz wave will be sampled perfectly. This becomes obvious when you consider that when sampling at 44.1 KHz we are only sampling 2 points on each 22.05 KHz wave. Not sufficient to reproduce the wave perfectly, but enough to make sure that we do not misinterperet the wave as one of a lower frequency - aliasing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing

Not obsolete, but diminished... and inevitably so.

[hazydave]

For those who like album-oriented music AND the option to rip said music, losslessly, to hard drive, the CD is a very good distribution medium. There are potentially better sounding formats (no, not vinyl, but DVD-Audio or SACD), but neither is normally rippable in full quality via digital means. Downloads are these days generally in fine consumer quality for one's MP3 player, but at a lower quality than a CD.

The problem with CDs is one largely created by the recording industry themselves, in particular, the major labels. In their continual efforts to marginalize artists and own an increasingly large portion of the market, they have drastically cut artist rosters, and increasingly relied on Big Hit Records to maintain their profit levels.

So a funny thing happened... they replaced "real" artists with those manufactured by the labels; not 100% across the board, but enough to make the hits extremely mandatory, every year.... there were no longer enough established artists with a long-term fan base to fill in the holes between hits. And art has never been something you could put on a production line.

In addition, most people have a fixed entertainment budget. When I was a kid, you could buy a record or a book, or go see a film, that was pretty much the extent of consumer media. These days, there's music (purchase or download), DVD, videogames, rentals, online subscriptions, etc. All competes for the same buck.

Legal downloads have become a kind of pressure release valve for much of the listening public. Rather than add to sales, they've reduced them.. the same people who might have chose "CD" over "Game" this month can now just download that hit or two, they only songs they really wanted anyway, and still spend most of their cash on the DVD or game or whatever. I grew up with album-oriented rock radio... I still listen to whole albums, still buy them. But the recording industry destroyed this model with their push to Hit oriented radio... sure, they'd like a CD with multiple hits, but in the downloading model, you have to win each hit purchase, not simply that first one that bags the CD. Most kids don't think in terms of albums, period. This is the same culture that took compilation CDs away from bad K-Tel TV ads and put them (the "Now that's what I call music!" series, for example) into the top 10... that's just another form of single.

I don't think CDs are necessary anymore, but until there's a lossless download available, with similar pricing, I won't be buying downloads. I did subscribe to eMusic.com sometime back, when they offered unlimited downloads (128kb/s MP3, yeah, but DRM-free), but I dropped it when they went to a limited model... which was single-oriented, even on an "indie" oriented service like eMusic. I can't see spending the same money for a lesser product. The CD is still superior to downloads, but doesn't necessarily remain so forever...

"Mixed by the right engineers" is the key

[billstewart]

The big issue isn't whether it's CD vs. vinyl - it's how the sound gets mixed and warped and produced. Digital gives you more tools to adjust that, which not only means that good sound guys can do good things with it, but band sound guys can do bad things to it. These days just about the only people producing vinyl are going for the audiophile market (ahem.. snobs... ahem.. :-) which wants the sound to get managed in ways that sound better than the sound that gets produced for the Britney Spears Clone market. In the early days of rock&roll, nobody had a clue how to engineer the sound - the vinyl from those days is often produced just as badly as bad CDs today, with worse equipment and badly placed mikes.

Vinyl is a lot of fun!!

[windside]

Guess what retard emo-hippies, those new releases that you "buy only on vinyl" are no better sounding than the cd...

This is totally flamebait. As another poster pointed out, you're wrong about the master-to-vinyl vs. master-to-cd process. But that's not why I'm replying...

I buy a lot of vinyl. Not because I think it sounds better, just because I like it better. Here's why:

• Most of the bands I like press vinyl. The records don't usually cost more than the CDs to buy, even though they're more expensive to make. I don't listen to a lot of really super-weird bands or anything. A lot of independent labels (Merge, Matador, Killrockstars, Constellation, etc.) press vinyl for their artists. and even some major labels are getting into it.
• You get a bigger, nicer version of the cover art.
• It looks better on the shelf in my front room than a bunch of CDs (seriously, it does)
• Frequently, the record will come with a slip of paper with a link and a download code to grab reasonable-quality MP3s from the label's website (again, see Matador). If that's not the case, I can always download the MP3s from a more dubious source. Either way, I can burn them onto a CD if I need to (roadtrips, mix CDs, etc.) and I've still got that sexy piece of wax sitting in my living room.
• A lot of bands will release vinyl-only albums or include "bonus" tracks on the vinyl pressings of their LPs.
• Very rarely, a band or label will commission an "audiophile" re-master of an album on heavy vinyl. The most recent example of this is the new White Stripes album, Icky Thump. The retail CD & LP are mastered terribly--they clip constantly as a result of over-zealous compression. (Remember? That's the part you got wrong in your post...) But discerning listeners can seek out the Steve Hoffman re-master. That's right: it came out last week and it's already been re-mastered. And you can only buy it on vinyl. How's that for a counter-example?
• This is kind of a fluff reason, but it just feels better to buy vinyl. And since I started collecting the stuff, I've received no less than half a dozen hand-written notes from record labels I've bought from, thanking me for supporting their businesses. So apparently, it feels better to sell the stuff too :P

As far as the sound goes... my LPs sound every bit as good as your CDs. Yeah, my turntable is an ornery pig sometimes, but it's usually just a loose cable or something. So, are CDs obsolete? I think so. Especially in the retail world. Every now and then, an album comes out that I want that isn't available on vinyl--in that case, I usually cave and buy the CD. Like I said, though, it's becoming more and more common to find every new release I'm interested in on wax.

PS: Between the time I started typing this and the time I pressed preview, your post got moderated down by 2. BONUS!!

Re:Vinyl is a lot of fun!!

[Yoozer]

As far as the sound goes... my LPs sound every bit as good as your CDs

Yes. The first n times where n depends on the quality of the original vinyl. After that, inevitable degradation kicks in.

Local Bands & Indy Labels selling directly

[billstewart]

Most of the music I buy is also from local bands (or self-employed gypsies), or at most small indy labels that probably aren't counted by the big music-industry conglomerates or handled by the big distributors. Bands and individuals can sell CDs directly on the web without going through the big commercial channels - it's not just selling downloadable tracks.

Also, it's gotten to be much easier for performers to put together their own CDs, and for small music producers to build garage studios for when performers do want professional production help. That means that you no longer need a record label to front the cost of production, and bands that don't need a label to fund tours and can do their own promotion don't need to be in hock to a label to do that, although sometimes it can be a good deal depending on what kinds of business skills the band members have.

Re:maybe the FIRST time you play the vinyl

[Tim Browse]

I play my vinyl records all day with no damage using my ELP Laser Turntable. Now that optical players are available, only a Philistine would actually drop a goddamn needle into an analog track these days.

Or someone who doesn't have TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS to drop on a record player, perhaps.

Re:maybe the FIRST time you play the vinyl

[MillionthMonkey]

I bet you don't even have bubblewrap around your speaker wires.

Albums

[H0D_G]

The advantage of CDS, or at least full album's worth of mp3s as opposed to singles is the sense of the album itself- an album is something constructed, not a bunch of tracks thrown together. I still buy CDs (not new releases) because I like the feeling of an abum as a whole, even If the first thing I do is rip it for my iPod

Re:22KHz

[Mprx]

The difference is only relevant to dolphins and dogs. To a human they will all sound identical. The first harmonic is at *double* the fundamental frequency, well beyond what any human can hear.

Aliasing

[DrYak]

These sample rates are very high. when you find a human who can hear a 40KHz tone (let alone the 80KHz), you might have better luck convincing me that high sample rates are important. Until then, these tones can continue to be filtered out before sampling.

The point of using 96Khz or 192Khz isn't to have a higher max freq (due to Nyquist), but having a better resolution in the audible range to avoid aliasing. A 12Khz sound played on a digital system running @ 48Hz will be nice (at least, unless you suffer from presbyaccousia). A 12010 Hz sound on the same system may suffer some aliasing (a full wave doesn't quite exactly take 4 sample to produce and the maxima could be missed, giving some kind of beating in the sound). On a 192Khz system, sound in the 12Khz range all take some 16 samples and even if they aren't quite exactly aligned with the sample rate, there's much less risk of distorting the waveform.

Nyquist theorem gives us information about the highest frequency that *could* be recorder/reproduced using a given sample frequency, *if all condition are optimal*. It does not guarantee us that all sound will be perfectly reproduced up to this frequency. In fact, the recording of a N/2 sound on a N frequency sample could also completly fail if, by chance, the dephasing was such that the sampler did measure at the exact moment when the source cross (either rising or falling) the 0. What the proponent of 96 or 192Khz are saying is, if the sampling frequency is an order of magnitute high (say N * 16 for the sampler) this is much less likely to happen, and you *mostly* have optimal conditions for *any* sound up to your target frequency, even if the sound has funny dephasing.

Re:22KHz

[GrahamCox]

There's a difference between a 22KHz sine wave, square wave, sawtooth wave, etc. which you're not going to capture by sampling at the Nyquist frequency (Personally: I think this is the reason why vinyl sounds better than digital).

Personally, you're wrong. The SHAPE of a waveform is caused by the frequency components it comprises. That's called Fourier's Theorem. If you strip away all of the higher harmonics that cause a waveform to look square in the time domain, you get a sinewave at the fundamental frequency. All periodic waveforms are built up from sinewaves of various frequencies (harmonics) and amplitudes, but all of these components are at a higher frequency than the fundamental. So a 22kHz sinewave is the same as a 22kHz squarewave that has been filtered to remove all the higher components. And the next highest component of a squarewave is at twice the fundamental, or 44kHz.

I will concede is that practical real-world filters can be poor, and any harmonic that leaks through to the A to D conversion stage produces aliasing artifacts well down in the audible range that do sound terrible. So the filter ahead of the A to D is the most important thing in the system in most respects. Making a really good filter in the analogue domain is hard, which is why oversampling to 96kHz is a popular solution - not because there are any genuine audio components above 22kHz that really matter, but because it allows a simpler/more effective filter to be used (after all, it has so much more space to work with between 22 kHz and 96 kHz as opposed to 22 kHz and 44 kHz, and more space means it can be less steep and therefore has less phase distortion and 'smearing') and the resulting digitised audio will sound a lot better. The problem with this argument is that professional audio equipment does this as a matter of course, so the aliasing isn't (or shouldn't be) there on the CD, even though it is subsequently downsampled to 16 bits and 44.1 kHz. And the reason that professional gear uses 24 bits or more for the amplitude is both to give it headroom and to provide enough resolution to preserve quality while doing mathematical processing on the samples. Same reason you use long integers instead of shorts when you know you'll be multiplying them together, even though the eventual result will still fit in a short. By the time it's finally mastered to a CD, 16 bits and 44.1 kHz should be adequate for excellent fidelity PLAYBACK. So those claiming that CDs sound worse than LPs are either deluding themselves, or are really hearing the result of poor workmanship in the mastering.

On that last point, if you listen to a very high quality label CD like, e.g. Deutsche Gramophon, and the lastest poptart commodity release, I think you'll hear a difference. The theory and best practice of CD technology is sound; what isn't is the actual practice in many cases (i.e over-compression, excessive effects processing, way too many downmixes that stretch even 24-bit resolution beyond what it can reasonably do). In other words maybe what you're hearing on a bad CD are rounding errors in the processing, and nothing to do with the original sampling. It's another case of where the music machine doesn't really care about the "consumer" of the "product", they just want your money.

High retail costs are to blame...

[Targon]

Out where I am, a new CD costs in the neighborhood of $18-$22. Considering that most CDs have perhaps one or two songs that people know about, and even after purchase it may go as high as 5 songs on a CD, that $18 price seems very high. A large part of this price comes from the high costs of distribution, and also needs to cover the need for the retailers to make some profit on each sale, but in general, that is a huge part of the reason there are fewer sales.

That really is the problem with the industry, higher and higher costs due to inflation and gas/energy prices(gas for distribution, and energy prices causing the price of everything to go up). When you can download tracks legally, and get only the tracks you want without paying for songs you don't want, you end up better off with a music download. The quality of a CD will be higher in most cases, but why pay $18 for what may be one good track on a CD that you otherwise don't know anything about. As a result of this, you have the people who will download the CD illegally to see if it's worth buying in the first place, but in sampling the music, they find the quality is acceptable, and may not go out to buy the CD.

Perhaps a better model for the record companies to go into is to push for a change, where customers can walk into a "record" store, and request a bunch of different tracks, which can then be burned to a legal CD for the price. You may end up paying the same $18 for 8-10 tracks, but at least you get a set of songs you actually want, so don't feel ripped off. In addition to this, the store is providing a service(making a mix CD for you), so you feel you get your money's worth.

DVD-A has been ruined...

[Twisted64]

DVD-A can never be successful, and the reason is quite simple - the acronym has been used already, and many of us can never forgethow.

The transition band isn't as big as you think

[tepples]

A 12Khz sound played on a digital system running @ [48 kHz] will be nice (at least, unless you suffer from presbyaccousia). A 12010 Hz sound on the same system may suffer some aliasing (a full wave doesn't quite exactly take 4 sample to produce and the maxima could be missed, giving some kind of beating in the sound). The Nyquist theorem states that convolution of the sampled signal with the sinc function can recover this 12010 Hz tone exactly, including all maxima and minima. Perhaps what you are thinking about is that a sinc function has infinite support, a filter with infinite support needs a window in order to make it realizable, and a window introduces a transition band. Luckily, with digital resampling prior to the DAC, this transition band can be usefully confined to between 20000 and 24000 Hz.

Overall Quality Has Declined

[Prototerm]

In the last few decades, recorded music has met with a steady decline on all fronts, not just sales. It's the quality aspect that bothers me. Much has been said about the way record companies hack the sound to pieces by making everything sound like it does on the radio (as if radio isn't total crap). Even older recordings are "remastered" in this way, thereby removing any incentive I have to purchase albums that might be missing from my collection.

Production: What is interesting is the reviews I see occasionally complaining when a band "sweetens" the music too much -- in other words, adds instruments, or perhaps a whole orchestra to make the recording sound like it wasn't made in somebody's basement or garage. Let's not equate primitive production for good sound, folks.

Then there's the artists. For every great singer out there, there are a dozen Bob Dylan wannabes. Hey, let's face it, Dylan sounds like he gargles with broken glass every morning.

Songwriting quality: where are all the pop bands with something to say, other than how much they want to rape and abuse women? Rare, indeed.

Record companies: In their greed to promote the big hit single in this digital age, they've abandoned the artists capable of holding your interest for an entire album, artists with long-term playability. Pop music today is down right *boring*. The old artists are either dying off or have lost their touch (e.g., Paul McCartney should just give up music and open up a vegetable stand somewhere), while the new artists pay too much attention to what the companies tell them.

Buy CD's? What on earth for?

I'll tell you something. My fourteen year old has discovered my LP collection from the 60's, 70's and 80's (about 1200 have survived the ravages of time), and he spends his spare time digitizing them onto the computer. He loves the music and the sound of these old dinosaurs, and will "rip" an LP even where I already have the CD. He hates what's on the radio, and feels like he's found buried treasure in these old archives.

Buy CD's? Why on earth would he want to do that? He's not finished listening to my LP's yet!

And there's perhaps the real reason CD sales are in decline: it has too much competition from what people already own. Something like Windows Vista having XP to contend with, I guess.

People don't care about sound quality

[tentimestwenty]

People don't care about sound quality. Now that they've seen that they can put their whole music collection on a little box the size of a deck of cards, the only thing 99% of people care about is size. Take it from someone who owns a high end stereo store. The number one request I get is for "wireless speakers." This is followed closely by "a tiny amplifier." People just want invisible music. They're not listening seriously, it's all for background. And now that they can download anything they want, why the hell would they buy space-taking CDs? The CD is dead. Ironically, the only people who do care about quality have gone back to vinyl, largely because the CD selection locally is dwindling to the same size.

Offer me...

[spaceyhackerlady]

Offer me the over-produced manufactured shit that passes for music nowadays and I'll ignore it.

Offer me DRM-encumbered over-compressed downloads and I will walk away.

Offer me some decent new music and I'll have a listen.

Offer me some decent new music in an uncompressed, DRM-free format, and I'll buy it.

I don't want to be one of the curmudgeons grumbling about all the new music being crap, but the fact remains that I tuned out in the early 1990s, and have heard very little of interest since. My latest (in terms of production date) music purchases are Bailando con Lola by Azucar Moreno and Drama by Bananarama, both released in 2006. Hardly mainstream music, either of them.

...laura