Digital Music Rising; CDs On The Way Out

[matt87_50]

wow, two articles in a row read:
"Digital Music Rising; CDs On The Way Out"
"iPhone is Most Popular Camera on Flickr"

thanks apple, for destroying the quality of music and now photography.

 

[marsax73]

Let me give you a musician's standpoint on the matter. Digital music is a god send! No longer are we at the mercy of a record label to distribute the music. Thanks to sites like MySpace, iTunes, Amazon, etc, I now have a voice. You have the opportunity to purchase music directly from the artist with NO label interference whatsoever. Yes I prefer to have the physical cd in my hands but why are cd's still costing us >$10? My friend and I produced pressed 1000 cd's (no cd-r's) for $1200. That's $1.20 a cd! And that's not a company like Sony that can produce their own product at MUCH lower cost per disc. But even the $1.20 argument, you mean to tell me that 80% of the cost of a cd goes into distribution?? Come on. The music industry must die and artists must be able to sell their own music for their own profit.

 

[jn77]

I am going to look at this from a technical standpoint. First, I still have a record player, and even though DSP on CD players has gotten really good in the recent years, Many CD's by default have an un-natural "tinny" sound to them without the DSP processing.
Second, since digital recordings use bits, and are not a continuous like analog recordings, bit rate makes a difference in the quality when listening to MP3's
a MP3 recorded at 320 Kbit/s, while it may sound good, really is not what would be called a high quality digital recording. And this junk that ITunes, and other online stores are selling for $0.99 per song for a 96 Kbit or 128kit mp3 is a rip off. It shows how naive people really are.
People want mp3's to save space over conventional wav files or other lossless formats. If an mp3 is to have the full quality of a cd, then each track will be 40-100mb each and have a bit rate of 640 Kbit/s or 1280Kbit/s and you will need a 1000mb (1TB) mp3 player to have any sort of mp3 collection.
I am actually waiting for Blu Ray Audio Disc's with 7 or 10 channel audio at super high bit rates, they are around the corner, and the RIAA will institute their typical price fixing as they did with CD's.

 

[matt87_50]

[citation][nom]marsax73[/nom]Let me give you a musician's standpoint on the matter. Digital music is a god send!...[/citation]

I think everyone agrees with you, our major gripe is only being able to get 128kbps mp3s from stores. if we could get wavs or flacs we'd be all for it! I for one just immediately rip all my CDs to flacs anyway.

When I can just here about a band, type it into google, be directed to the band's site, and buy non lossy compressed CD quality (or better!) tracks directly from the band with GOOD drm, that doesn't hinder the user from creating backups or playing the track on different devices (i'm sure its possible). THEN I will be all for digital distro. Then it will be a God send.

 

[justiceguy216]

I'm a casual music listener, but I do appreciate audio quality. I must say that at 192kbps my music sounds fine coming through my home theater system. I can tell the difference between 192kbps and 320kbps..but only if I really focus on listening to the high instruments. I usually listen to music while at my computer or in my car, in these situations I've never noticed the difference...some of my music is even 128kbps!

I suppose if I were a musician who devoted many hours a week to purely listening to music I might be more concerned with the quality of my music.

I think iTunes should offer an option to download tracks in high-quality at no extra charge, the default would be 128kbps but if you're really after quality you should be able to change your preference to 320kbps...maybe even lossless (though that may increase opperating costs due to bandwidth). This would entice more people from the audiophile demographic to use their service and therefore increase their profit as well as reputation.

 

[dimar]

When companies will start offering a choice of downloading high definition quality music 24-bit 192Khz or original master quality in open/lossless format. Then it will be the end of CDs for sure. Until then, I don't think so.

 

[zerapio]

Amazon's MP3's FTW

 

[zerapio]

BTW, Amazon sells tracks at 256kbps. I don't know why the complaints about the quality of digital tracks. It's not like CD's aren't uncompressed either.

 

[Nick_C]

[citation][nom]zerapio[/nom].... It's not like CD's aren't uncompressed either.[/citation]You are obviously confusing dynamic compression with lossy compression. CDs are (by definition) 44.1kHz sample rate, 2 channel, 16 bit per sample, i.e. 1411.2kbps.

Anyway, currently I remain a purchaser of CDs and shun the online lossy download services. Until I can download in a lossless format (open source of course, without any form of restrictive DRM) I will not be changing my purchasing policy (my archiving method is identical to Belezeebub above).

 

[g00ey]

If iTunes started to sell non-DRMed flacs I would start buying from them.

 

[snarfeck]

the only medium i'll pay for music is vinyl. i don't even care if the album was recorded digitially prior to pressing.. i just love the warm sound.

 

[marsax73]

[citation][nom]Matt87_50[/nom]I think everyone agrees with you, our major gripe is only being able to get 128kbps mp3s from stores. if we could get wavs or flacs we'd be all for it! I for one just immediately rip all my CDs to flacs anyway.When I can just here about a band, type it into google, be directed to the band's site, and buy non lossy compressed CD quality (or better!) tracks directly from the band with GOOD drm, that doesn't hinder the user from creating backups or playing the track on different devices (i'm sure its possible). THEN I will be all for digital distro. Then it will be a God send.[/citation]

There's a band called King Crimson and they have the right model. You can get a high quality mp3 or for a little bit more, you can buy the FLAC version. Honestly, a properly encoded 256K MP3 or 160K MP4 is pretty darn near cd quality. Most online vendors are selling their MP3's at higher bitrates. I record my own tracks in 24 bit/48K and I can hear the difference when I dither down to 16 bit/44K (cd). So to call a CD a pure format no longer holds water.

Just my two cents 😉

 

[zak_mckraken]

A report released by The NPD Group reveals that the digital market is growing, and will eventually drive physical CDs into extinction.

Duh.

I, for one, will be sad when CDs are gone. I like having a physical media of the records I love. They fit nicely in my shelves and I know they'll be there 20 years from now. I don't know if I'll ever grow to buy digital music without CDs. For now, the musical process for me is Download -> Try -> Like -> Buy -> Rip -> Organize CD -> Enjoy. Whitout CDs, it might be something like Download -> Try -> Like -> Enjoy.

 

[Guest]

There are some good comments here. I also agree that they need to make higher quality MP3s available. Back when broadband wasn't as fast or as widespread as it is now, it made sense to go more for smaller file size. But now, there is no excuse to favor a smaller file size over higher quality. Connections are much faster and storage is DIRT cheap. The only situation I can see where you still might want the smallest file size is for older MP3 players with lower capacities. Other than that, is it really a big deal if the MP3 is 6MB (256Kbps) instead of 3MB (128 Kbps) ? I don't think so. BTW, what sort of compression does FLAC offer ?

 

[Nick_C]

My FLAC collection averages 880kbps.

... and in response to the respondent regarding hi-rez audio - are there any credible studies which show that 16/44 is differentiable from, say, 24/96 at *normal* playback levels?

Just because 24/96 or 24/192 are possible does not mean that they are meaningful in terms of improved end user experience.

 

[blackened144]

I buy CD's all the time.. But they are blank, so I dont think that counts.

 

[g00ey]

To marsax83: Why charge more for a flac than what you pay for a CD? The distrubution costs ought to be much lower than for CDs.

And one other thing people don't seem to understand about mp3s is that even though a 256k mp3 song sounds alright when unaffected it does not do so when being processed through a DSP such as echo/reverb, equalizer, pitch/speed/time-stretch control etc. Mp3s among other lossy formats suffer from artifacts which can be very audible and annoying when processing through a DSP (or analogue one for that matter).

The intention with lossy compression is to remove sound information that the human ear cannot hear. But when altering the sound through a DSP those inaudible parts become audible with poor listening quality as a result. Many devices contain equalizers that compensate for the weaknesses in the D/A converter which are difficult and/or undesirable to bypass.

 

[Caffeinecarl]

I do both, but I still much prefer the CD. Hard copy means my tracks are always safe and I can rip them to MY desire not anybody else's.

 

[g00ey]

kowrip: It does matter to iPOD owners since their devices are only 8/16/32GB and not expandable.

But I don't see the problem of downloading in lossless quality and transcode it to any quality you desire. Let the user choose the quality hisself once it is downloaded.

 

[jimbowne]

I will not purchase any online mp3's because they lack the purity and clarity of properly recorded CD's. In the future if they offer higher quality formats (.wav or .flac) that are identical to the CD then I will certainly download them. I am also waiting for Blu-ray music so I can hear the actual master recordings as they were intended to be heard. I don't care about space, I care about quality. 192k or 320k mp3 files do not compare to 1411k CD audio. Don't even mention the mp3's at 128k that apple offers