Von Schweikert's Universe Loudspeaker, a designer's lifetime achievement
- Thread starter Peter Breuninger
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I agree hard CDs will not be around forever...in fact, i like it that way. i have bought nearly all my CDs in the last 2 years second hand for 3 bucks each...and loving it. In fact, after buying a DAC many years ago when people thought i was nuts...because i was anticipating hires and downloads...which have somewhat disappointed...i decided 3 years ago to go long redbook CDs if for no other reason than they're just far cheaper than downloading an $8 mp3 album and better quality. I just bought a second hand cd for $1.26 shipping + 0.01 for the CD album...hard to beat. i own the hard disc (no licenses), can rip if i want to someday, and otherwise am just building a music collection as quickly as i wish...from 600 CDs to over 1600 CDs in 18-24 months. every cd i've wanted to buy.
When this forum sprang to life several years ago, I recounted a story of trying to buy a CD that I thought was common as dirt. I ended up driving all over Bloomington, IN, and stopping in numerous stores only to discover that I couldn't buy the CD I wanted. That is when I first came to the conclusion that CDs were dying out in brick and mortar stores. Things haven't gotten better since then. The ability to purchase any music you want is more limited with online downloads in RBCD quality than MP3s.
And the reason CDs are so cheap?? Because they are dying out and their intrinsic value is not valued highly by those who own them or the market place where they are bought and sold. Remember when CD first came out and the misinformed dumped their LP collections for next to nothing? The same thing is happening now with CDs and will continue to happen for awhile. If you are wedded to 16/44.1, now is a great time to take advantage of those who are looking to dump their collections. Let's just face the facts here; just as 8 track tape players and cassette players disappeared from cars, CD players/changers will be gone in a few years too. Why carry and load a bunch of bulky CDs when you can just plug in your Ipod/Iphone/whatever device into a USB interface that most new vehicles come with now? CDs are quickly becoming obsolete and that is the reality of the marketplace.
Really?? Fossil fuels are getting harder and harder to obtain? Don't confuse expense with availability. Just as all roads lead to a bar, all roads lead to a gas station.
sort of...the problem with 8track and cassette tap is quality of both was marginal and transfer was worse. Here with CD...transfer is basically the same when done properly. So i have no loss of transfer, with a quality that is competitive in quality and far less expensive than the mediums with better quality (reel-to-reel is limited and extraordinarily expensive for one album, and of the few hi-res albums out there...where are not just upsampled 16/44...those too are quite expensive.) Having heard SACD versions of albums i own on redbook, i am not convinced if all my albums became available on sacd i would replace my redbook with them.
so it would take a super-hi-res version properly mastered for me to replace the only other highquality version of most of my albums...i dont think at the moment rbcd gets that easily replaced in the end. And if/when it does...it wont be at prices that are anywhere near where i bought these.
Loydd-8 track tapes were horrible for so many reasons. Cassette tapes done correctly (can you say Nakamichi?) were quite another story. When you say you have no loss of transfer with RBCD, you still end up with RBCD quality. Yes, better formats are more expensive as you said in your last sentence above. You get what you pay for. If you primarily buy all of your music used and that music is contained on CDs, you are truly in the CD golden age with regards to price. Enjoy it and take advantage of it while you can. In the future, I don't think there will be a market for music re-released on CD with people clamoring to buy them. Because there was a gazillion CDs released, the ability to buy used CDs cheap should last for years. However, new releases on CD will continue to die out with regards to availability and thus accessibility. Frankly, I'm surprised that anyone is still making CD players with pretensions to greatness.
Steve williams
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Mark
Although I agree with you my guess is that it won't be any time soon. Wasn't the same thing said about vinyl
Although I agree with you my guess is that it won't be any time soon. Wasn't the same thing said about vinyl
Steve-I truly believe that RBCD as a physical medium is dying out. The only question in my mind is whether or not RBCD quality of all future music will be available as downloads. Vinyl is a physical medium and obviously will remain so. Vinyl appeals to people who love the physical medium with all of its attendant properties/qualities such as being able to hold the album cover in their hands and actually reading the liner notes and enjoying the artwork-not to mention the SQ when played back over a truly high-end system. Those aspects were lost with CDs (with regards to being able to read liner notes and enjoying the artwork-the SQ was and is an intense source of arguments/debates).
Retail outlets for CDs (meaning brick and mortar stores) have already made up their minds and basically have gotten out of the business of carrying CDs or have greatly pared back on what they have for sale. The days of walking into a place that sells CDs and thinking you can buy any music you want on CD is already gone. I predict that LPs will continue to be pressed long after the last CD press has gone to the scrap heap.
The other thing that I find ironic is that people who are in the business of making LPs realize their target audience demands high quality and won't settle for highly compressed loud garbage. Most LPs being released these days are being cut at the absolute best quality that people can produce them. The quality of the vinyl material has never been higher and the attention and care has never been better in making the LPs. Can you say the same for digital?
Retail outlets for CDs (meaning brick and mortar stores) have already made up their minds and basically have gotten out of the business of carrying CDs or have greatly pared back on what they have for sale. The days of walking into a place that sells CDs and thinking you can buy any music you want on CD is already gone. I predict that LPs will continue to be pressed long after the last CD press has gone to the scrap heap.
The other thing that I find ironic is that people who are in the business of making LPs realize their target audience demands high quality and won't settle for highly compressed loud garbage. Most LPs being released these days are being cut at the absolute best quality that people can produce them. The quality of the vinyl material has never been higher and the attention and care has never been better in making the LPs. Can you say the same for digital?
Watching the video, I never realized how tall Cor and Peter are. The three of em with Albert would've formed a sizable college front court in their day.
I guess your last sentence is what concerns me...other than rbcd which already exists in the gazillions on Amazon for the moment...i am not seeing commitment to a proper hi-res remastering/mastering and production/distribution by the music industry as a whole. I do NOT think hi res downloads will go the way of DVD-A and SACD. However, i am also not seeing largescale production of hiquality hi-res. There are even threads here about existing hi-res not really being hi-res.
As a result, i kinda look at rbcd as the only 'reasonable res' medium. I promised myself never to get involved in vinyl with all its attendant maintenance, and reel-to-reel equally is not a financial commitment i wish to make. $300 for a single album is just too far a bridge.
Believe me, i am NOT arguing for the greatness of rbcd...simply not seeing a strong front from a superior form of digital in quantity. Someday, i do think it will come...but like the final deathknell on rbcd not being around the corner just yet...i am not convinced that true, high quality, hi-res proliferation is just around the corner either. the music industry is struggling from its own inherent profitability problems (in some part due to the digital download that it supported/proliferated...how ironic), and a massive ongoing recession.
If/when hi-res does really come around the corner in a universal way, i'm all over it...but admit with the Zanden digital front end am exceedingly happy with rbcd albums.
Andre-Somewhere buried deep on this forum is a thread I started in order to talk about my experience with not being able to buy what I thought would be a simple CD purchase and I named the CD in question. It might have been a Lyle Lovett CD, I really don't remember. It was mainstream and nothing esoteric. The reason I started the thread was because I was shocked at what I considered to be the demise of retailers selling CDs. So if you really want to know the exact CD I was trying to procure at the time, there is a thread about it on this forum.
Oh, I was not trying to interrogate you. I was going to illustrate that with an inventory of CDs in the millions, Amazon is your friend. Why
would drive all over the place? I realized CD retailers with back catalog were extinct, outside of a few major cities, back in 2008. Tower closing
was the nail in the coffin.
You want obscure?? I ordered a CD by an Indian rock band I saw on Jools Holland last night from a third party reseller on Amazon. Took
exactly 7 minutes of web searching to find it.
So just because you could not PHYSICALLY find a CD in a bin in some store does not mean they are dead. One of the middlemen
has been eliminated and that is why CDs are cheap today. Same for travel. The last time I used a travel agent over an airline website
was 2001.
Lloyd-I'm not convinced that hi-rez digital will ever go "mainstream." Why? Because most people have never heard of SACD or DVD-A, let alone hi-rez digital files or DSD files. Pretty much every Jane and Joe Blow has heard of CDs and MP3s and thinks that either format is all of the onions and they couldn't conceive of something being better or wanting better. Hell, there are people on this forum who think that once you get to high bit-rate MP3s they couldn't tell the difference from a RBCD after 5 beers and a pair of earplugs. Combine that with the entitlement mentality of many digital music lovers who think their digital music should be free or damn close to it. I laugh when I read some comment from a digital cowboy where he complains about the outrageous price of $30 for an album's worth of digital music and how he would NEVER pay that. So, when you mix in equal parts ignorance (regarding other digital formats that exist), contentedness with the digital formats that people already own, and the unwillingness to pay more than a buck or two for a CD, that doesn't bode well for any type of mainstream hi-rez digital future. I think it will remain a very small niche market in the high-end. I think it would be highly ironic if the main purchasers of high-rez digital files are people who are also invested in analog technology vice people who are strictly into digital music for their source material.
Anyway, you have cast all of your eggs into the RBCD basket. This is smart for several different reasons if you are strictly a lover of the digits. There are a gazillion CDs floating around so availability is high for used CDs and the price is cheap. Since you play each CD vice loading them onto a server, you will probably run out of storage space for your collection before you run out of used CDs to buy.
Andre-I went out on what I thought was a simple shopping trip that day because I wanted that CD NOW. I wanted to buy it and take it home and play it. I wasn't in the mood for going online, finding it, paying for shipping, and then waiting for it to show up sometime the next week. I ended up doing that anyway though.
As for travel, I have never used a travel agent.
As for travel, I have never used a travel agent.
Understood. But I just don't see how not being able to get it NOW means that RBCDs are hard to find or dying.
The last time I went home with a CD in my hand was when Borders was closing and I got some clearance items.
You seem to be painting with a broad stroke.
PS. I just checked Lyle Lovett's web site. He offers direct links to Amazon for all his albums, and of course links to iTunes.
I think it is a shame that an artist like this does not offer ALAC/FLAC/WAV/AIFF downloads.
Seems like we may be making similar observations here...which for me would be a shame in the long run, as i would truly love to see hi-res go mainstream and enjoy great digital on all albums at rational cost. BTW, rational cost might even be as much as $30 given that CDs used to cost $15 back in the late '80s...add a bit of inflation and we're there over 20 yrs later.
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