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Buddy,I am grooving to some downloaded, lossless, FLAC files of the ongoing Phish tour right now and I honestly don't miss not having any physical media.It is great, within a day or two of the show happening, I can download it straight to my computer.I also find myself buying more and more 96/24 music from HDTRACKS.comAs long as I have the ability to get high quality lossless (and even better, hi-rez) music via download, I say "hasta la vista cd's!!George
I need the hard copy flac down loads wont cut it for me. I am glad to see vinyl is making a come back and the advent of the death of cd's wiil make my move to a 99% vinyl user just that much faster. The whole ritule of selecting what i want to listen to getting it out looking at the art work ect. is part of the experence i'm not willing to give up. ED
Quote from: ecramer on 19 Jun 2009, 09:30 amI need the hard copy flac down loads wont cut it for me. I am glad to see vinyl is making a come back and the advent of the death of cd's wiil make my move to a 99% vinyl user just that much faster. The whole ritule of selecting what i want to listen to getting it out looking at the art work ect. is part of the experence i'm not willing to give up. EDThe vinyl "comeback" is a joke. Vinyl sales WORLDWIDE last year added up to about 1 million units. That's the equivalent of ONE "gold" record. Most people today are simply not willing to put in the effort that setting up, using, and caring for a vinyl system requires. They want to push "play" and be done with it. They don't give a rat's ass about sound quality, just convenience. The one hopeful spot for high fidelity (if there is no high quality source material, there is no need for high quality playback gear) is that reduced storage and bandwidth costs have led to a little more awareness of bitrate effects on sound quality and the emergence of "hi-rez" digital delivery options. Perhaps we are not sentenced to a future of only what SET Man correctly refers to as "shitty MP3" after all.PS to Scotty: Shoes for Industry, compadre!
With the closing of many domestic CD pressing plants, and the drastic reduction in CDs stocked by the major music retailers, I would have to say that CBS is late to the party. It won't be long before the volume of CDs sold equals the sales volume of vinyl. With nothing to buoy the sales, like the current interest in vinyl, CD sales volume is definitely going to continue decline. Unlike vinyl a CD is not viewed with any nostalgia and it is not perceived to be a Hi-Res medium. I don't see any force acting to keep it in play.Scotty
With the lousy mastering of most of the products that are being released today the hi res downloads will still be bad, But that is really neither here nor there. Any hi rez down loads i do i still back up on a cd /dvd disk and file
Quote from: *Scotty* on 21 Jun 2009, 03:14 amWith the closing of many domestic CD pressing plants, and the drastic reduction in CDs stocked by the major music retailers, I would have to say that CBS is late to the party. It won't be long before the volume of CDs sold equals the sales volume of vinyl. With nothing to buoy the sales, like the current interest in vinyl, CD sales volume is definitely going to continue decline. Unlike vinyl a CD is not viewed with any nostalgia and it is not perceived to be a Hi-Res medium. I don't see any force acting to keep it in play.ScottyYou are not even close on this one.Vinyl sales while increasing, are a pimple on the ass of music.Here are some stats from 2008:Nielsen, in its year-end review released this week, said total album sales in the United States, which includes CDs, vinyl LPs and digital downloads, fell 14 percent in 2008 to 428.4 million units from 500.5 million in 2007.Overall album sales, which take into account individual song downloads equivalent to an album, fell 8.5 percent in 2008 to 535.4 million units from 584.9 million in 2007, Nielsen said.Sales of digital albums rose 32 percent to 65.8 million units in 2008 from 50.0 million in 2007 but CD sales dropped by nearly 20 percent in 2008 to 360.7 million units from 449.5 million in 2007, Nielsen said.CD sales continue to account for more than 80 percent of album sales in the United States but they have been declining steadily as digital downloads and music piracy on the Internet sends fewer people to music stores.Nielsen said the number of digital tracks sold through services such as Apple's iTunes and Amazon.com topped one billion units for the first time in 2008, with 1.07 billion units sold, up 27 percent from 844.2 million in 2007.Surprisingly, the number of vinyl LP albums purchased in 2008 rose to 1.88 million units, up from 0.99 million in 2007, Nielsen said, adding that most of the vinyl purchases were from independent record stores.Whether we like it or not, downloads are the future.George
Quote from: ecramer on 21 Jun 2009, 12:07 pmWith the lousy mastering of most of the products that are being released today the hi res downloads will still be bad, But that is really neither here nor there. Any hi rez down loads i do i still back up on a cd /dvd disk and file Ed,I agree that there is tons of lousy mastering going on today. But I still haven't heard the case where a hi-rez recording didn't sound better than the same standard cd.But this thread is about cd's disappearing, not the quality of the original music...George
Well George i can't really argue that one. Since i am using a dac that up samples my cd's to 192, so i guess i would have to say that i'm not listening to straight red book cd's. but with that in mind with hi rez down loads ithat are not red book you will be tied to what ever sounds good to the provider of the high res for upsampling, and everybody has a different idea of what sounds good to his ear. I'm not sure if i expressed that idea correctly I spent quite a bit of time till i found a dac cd combo that i consistently like. that would be like changing cd dac combo's with every album. if i am thinking right.ED
Well George i can't really argue that one. Since i am using a dac that up samples my cd's to 192, so i guess i would have to say that i'm not listening to straight red book cd's. but with that in mind with hi rez down loads ithat are not red book you will be tied to what ever sounds good to the provider of the high res for upsampling, and everybody has a different idea of what sounds good to his ear. I'm not sure if i expressed that idea correctly I spent quite a bit of time till i found a dac cd combo that i consistently like. that would be like changing cd dac combo's with every album. if i am thinking right.
