Chris-An Ordinary Fool said:I pretty much agree with Harry post, that for this new format to really take off they need to grab the younger audience who buys most of todays CD's.
Fo me personally, I guess I am re-gressingI been buying more LP's this past year than I have CD's by a long shot. For me I get more enjoyment out of finding a mint Lp & burning that format to CD. In most cases, the sound is fuller, richer & my ears never tire of listening. It's weird cause some factory Cd's make me restless & almost tired of hearing it, where-as my LP's burned to CD, I can really just listen to them & I get "more" out of the play. I can also hear things little things that pop out more for me from the LP format, maybe it's just the way CD's today are being processed but I think that they are making sooo many CD's today that, are they really putting the "best" into them? Or are they trying to manufature soo many that there not giving it all they can. Hope that makes some kind of sense, hard to put into words.
Chris--your tastes in listening are similar to mine. I've been the same way lately--I've actually been replacing a few CDs with LPs, and I spend my evenings spinning LPs and the occasional SACD or DVD-A disc. CDs are pretty much limited to car use now, around here.
The problem today is that you would be hard pressed to find well-mastered CDs. Most of today's new music is "assembled" using Pro Tools on a computer, a far cry from an Ampex 24-track analog tape deck. Not only that, the record labels and the producers demand that the music be LOUD...that bad sound you hear is compression. And if it's a reissue, the music is also very likely processed with No Noise and a smiley-faced EQ (abnormally boosting the low and high ends). You can still find some well-mastered discs, but they're becoming fewer in number. And even the CD player can make a difference--players that cost many hundreds or even thousands of dollars will outshine any mass-market CD player.
The new formats aren't geared toward the mass market right now, though...so it's not like you'll see the next Britney Spears on DVD-A or SACD. The main attraction for many right now is the multichannel capabilities...and I would be that at least a couple of Carpenters fans would jump on board if Richard did some surround remixes of a few of the albums.
I'm still thinking that downloadable music will probably be the mass-market delivery method of the future. If you want an actual product to buy and hold, it's probably going to be one of the high-res/multi-channel formats. CDs still got some life to it, but 5-10 years from now, we may finally see which direction this is all heading. This change may not be so much consumer-driven as it would be industry driven.
I don't think it'll happen for awhile though.
