CD's probably wont be around much longer you think?

[XIbanez4lifeX]

Maybe more so for movies but as far as music, they will fade away.

[Kronos]

As far as anything goes...it's always fleeting. Remember 8-tracks? Cassettes? Vinyl? Wax cylinders? (Ok, I doubt anyone's alive to remember when you used a wax cylinders, but you get my point). I just hope that music's sonic quality doesn't suffer. I find that if I don't have an MP3 file that's at least 192kbps, I can hear the difference, and it bothers me.

[XIbanez4lifeX]

Kinda like pagers, they are slowly disappearing except in hospitals.

[Wrong Robot]

I prefer listening to things on vinyl than on CD.

I don't mind the difference between CD and .mp3(or whatever else) unless I tell myself to.

I don't think CDs are going to die anytime soon, but they are being phased out by compressed computer formats.

I think that as bandwidth increases(once 10 mbps lines are standard across america...etc.) we will start seeing an increase in the use of 'lossless' digital formats.

There have been conceptual ideas of digitial music kiosks that people can plug laptops or portable players or phones into and buy songs. I don't think that method will ever really take off, and I think the CD store will be around for quite a while.

That said, in the past 6 years I have seen 7 CD stores go out of business, 2 indie and 5 major. So, there is definitely a paradigm shift taking place. But CD is going away yet.

[lamborghini98]

Did you guys know Dave Pushic originally worked in CD mastering for Phillips? I think that they are too widely used to just ditch them. All computers have cd drives, and they are compatible with cd drives in mp3 players, cd players, stereos, boomboxes... lots of things. I think the next big thing, though (some day...) would be having a central server somewhere in your city which you can retrieve songs from. this way you have all the songs ever and you probably wouldnt have to cary around that much. Hmm... maybe Ill implement this idea some day...

[Wrong Robot]

Originally Posted by Kronos

As far as anything goes...it's always fleeting. Remember 8-tracks? Cassettes? Vinyl? Wax cylinders? (Ok, I doubt anyone's alive to remember when you used a wax cylinders, but you get my point). I just hope that music's sonic quality doesn't suffer. I find that if I don't have an MP3 file that's at least 192kbps, I can hear the difference, and it bothers me.

This is a peculiar argument to me. I personally prefer vinyl to CDs because, despite vinyl having an inferior sonic quality to CDs, the sound is more palpable and comfortable with what the average human ear likes to hear. CDs and all digital formats are often criticized for being 'harsh' on the ear, and, as I understand it, this is largely because CDs have unbridled control of a far greater frequency range than our ears are comfortable with, such that, even when those frequencies aren't necessarily being tapped into, it leaves our ears in an awkward position sonically.

Now, I'm not a master on the specifics, and I could be completely off base, that's just some stuff that I'm sure I've heard of over the years, and my preference for vinyl listening over CD listening does speak to that.

So, taking that knowledge a little farther and you come to compressed digital formats. Most compression algorithms are sophisticated enough to maintain 'near CD' quality, such that, out of average consumer speakers the difference between a CD and a 128-192 kbps .aac or .mp3 is negligible and even the top ears in the world can't really hear much of a difference(in fact, I have seen a couple of tests that involved studio engineers taking blind listening tests to various musics and incorrectly guessing which was a CD and which was a .mp3).

It's a little bit presumptuous to say "I can hear the difference" because, not only is the difference fairly inconsequential to the overall presentation of the music(refer back to the vinyl vs. cd theory), but more importantly. There is no defined "difference". Which is to say. Every song you listen to will sound differently when pitted against a variety of formats.

One album might sound terrible when it is compressed to .mp3, and another album will sound totally fine. There are far too many factors at play for anyone to truthfully say they 'hear the difference', and I would venture to say that anyone that does claim this is either lying to themselves, has extraordinarily good sound equipment, a possible medical condition(hypersensitive ears), or has something messed up in their listening setup that is causing them to hear a 'difference' that is actually a result of how it's being played back, and not a consequence of the technology itself(this could be a poorly wired setup, bad EQ settings, blown speaker or speaker component, improper output levels, interference from other sources, faulty decoding on the receiver...etc.)

But, to take it a little further. The difference between CD and .mp3 is kinda similar to the difference between vinyl and CD. In that, vinyl is physically incapable of reproducing all the frequencies that a CD is capable of reproducing, and a .mp3 actually removes a lot of the erroneous or otherwise unneeded frequencies that a CD is capable of producing. Which is not to say a .mp3 is the same as vinyl, but I think compressed music can be more palpable to our ears in some situations.

Which is the other point that I would make. In conjunction with all the other things I've said. The Situation and context that you're listening to music is greatly important to 'hearing the difference', or even understanding 'the difference' to begin with. If you have never heard an album in CD quality and you have only heard it in compressed .mp3 , then there is no 'difference' to hear. Likewise, if you spend most of your time listening to music on your computer, you become acclimated to that listening environment and 'the difference' becomes marginal and meaningless to your enjoyment of the music. Unless of course, you are actively trying to convince yourself that you cannot enjoy the music you're listening to.

Shrug.

I could easily be completely off base with everything I said here. I have simply encountered way too many people that go on and on about how much compressed music ruins their music listening experience, but then given a blind test they either completely fail or even say that the compressed music sounded better.

So it's one of those things that I think a lot of people pay lip service to, but very few people actually consider and approach from multiple angles and perspective.

[Wrong Robot]

Originally Posted by lamborghini98

Did you guys know Dave Pushic originally worked in CD mastering for Phillips? I think that they are too widely used to just ditch them. All computers have cd drives, and they are compatible with cd drives in mp3 players, cd players, stereos, boomboxes... lots of things. I think the next big thing, though (some day...) would be having a central server somewhere in your city which you can retrieve songs from. this way you have all the songs ever and you probably wouldnt have to cary around that much. Hmm... maybe Ill implement this idea some day...

Many people speculate that the future of information technology, the internet, digital media...etc. is convergence and centralization like this.

Google is a modern day example of what might be a glimpse into the future. As it stands, google is currently trying to accumulate as much data as they can about...well...anything. Their goal is to become a repository for information. Books, music, movies, maps, reference...etc. Whatever the information is, whatever the data is, they ultimately think that it should all be available and out there and etc...etc.

A friend of mine postulates that the future of computing will not be about who has data and who doesn't have data. It will be about who has access to the data and how much access they have.

This raises a lot of points about the rights of the people who create media and books and data versus the rights of the people who distribute and create networks to distribute and make the data available to everyone.

Ugh. It's a lot of **** really. In 30 years from now we might be operating in a completely different computing world than we could have ever imagined.

[chips]

Myself, and alot of others at SAE Engineering school believe that CDs will be phased out soon. New technology with blue laser will take over, not MP3s. Theres better sound quality, i believe the surface is a bit more resistant than normal CDs, and theres much more room on them.

[Wrong Robot]

Originally Posted by chips

Myself, and alot of others at SAE Engineering school believe that CDs will be phased out soon. New technology with blue laser will take over, not MP3s. Theres better sound quality, i believe the surface is a bit more resistant than normal CDs, and theres much more room on them.

You have to consider that we already have a disc that is CD sized, offers higher quality and tons more room.

It's called a DVD.

DVDs have not phased CDs out of existence because A) conventional walkmans don't support DVD audio, and while DVD players can and do support CD audio, they are not being sold for $20 in walkman form at the local best buy. B) having a lot of space doesn't really mean anything, who is going to record that much music on an album?


Yes, blu-ray is likely to take over the DVD market, since there will be players that are easily backwards compatible with DVDs, and since the format offers a good solution for new HD technologies for movies. But such high capacity discs are not particularly practical for albums.

[sbocaj55]

yeah CD's will be out the window soon. So will the conventional DVD once blu-ray comes out. If anyone has seen any HD-DVD's on one of the new clear-view (or whatever variant you wish), I'm sure you were absolutely stunned. No question they will take over as soon as they can make it affordable.

[chips]

i think the only problem is actually finding the blue crystal. Im not sure how readily available and cheap it is.

[syciprider]

All gadgets have obsolescence built in.

[Wrong Robot]

Originally Posted by syciprider

All gadgets have obsolescence built in.

Yea, like the can opener!

[syciprider]

I know that you're still using a John Wayne and that's okay (it goes well with your turntable and your ElCaset deck) .But really, there are Good Grip and electric versions out.

Can openers will be obsolete when they do away with cans.

[Wrong Robot]

I'd respond, but I don't know what the internet is.

[LajoieT]

One thing people forget is that one technology does not make another technology obsolete. Public usage does. CDs were developed in the 70's, but even in the late 80's 8-9 years after they were available, the radio station I worked at did not have a CD player on air (they had one in the production booth). How many have heard of Super Audio CDs (SA-CD)? How many have one??? A player for one??? They have higher sampling an frequency rates than standard CDs, and have standard CD Player Accessable audio on them. Their players will play standard CDs. They've been around for 4-5 years, and are a VERY niche market that was originally going to eliminate standard CDs. People didn't take to it.

Blue-Ray manufacturers have yet to definitively prove backwards compatability, indicating some difficulty in getting the players to be compatable with all previous formats (CD-R CD-RW, DVD-+R/RW/DL etc) and if they can't you can bet they won't be killing any format any time soon.

I believe that digital downloads, and possibly even a subscription service where you don't actually buy something, but subscribe to a library of available music will EVENTUALLY become the norm, and as for the Plug-In Kiosk, and wired 10mbs lines, over the next 10 or so years, wireless will overtake the "wired" mentality and we may soon get to a point where the only wire going to our house has electricity on it and everything else (phone, cable, internet, home security, etc) will be wireless. Your PDA/Cell Phone/NetBrowser/Audio-Video Player/etc will work just like your cable TV from anywhere.

And they will still be selling CDs.

[Thunderbird91]

Originally Posted by XIbanez4lifeX

Kinda like pagers, they are slowly disappearing except in hospitals.

Slowly? those thing were dead and buried years ago when a little invention called the cell phone came along.

[DigMe]

Originally Posted by Wrong Robot

I'd respond, but I don't know what the internet is.

That's because it's already obsolete, and by now it was before your time.

brad cook

[Coutts_is_god]

Right now its to much "how many of this can I fit into this little thing"

[All_¥our_Bass]

[quote=Wrong Robot] ... who is going to record that much music on an album? ... QUOTE]
I would .
If most of a bands music consists of 6-10+ minute, instrumental oriented songs this would be great to record on. I've seen a few bands here and there make CDs that opnly have one track thats like 50-70 some minutes long.

I know it's not popualr to make that much music on a CD, but I can't seem to help the fact that I greatly enjoy long songs.
Two of my favorite songs top out at about 23 minutes.