Read more.Is the death of the CD really upon us by the end of 2012?
Read more.Is the death of the CD really upon us by the end of 2012?
Terrible news. Now we can get overpriced low bitrate digital downloads and if you want the decent quality,ie,ones in lossless formats you end up paying more anyway. The sad thing is that CD is still better quality than all of them and is usually cheaper and you get a physical media too. This is why it has lasted.
Crap news for people like me who actually have half decent audio equipment. With higher speed internet now more common how about companies offering the full sized CD,DVD Audio and SACD tracks as downloads at the same price as the lower quality encodes?? Give some of us a choice as we can encode them as we feel fit or play them at full bitrate?? Of course not as the ***** if they offer it will do so as a "premium service" at a premium price. Now they have found addtional ways of segmenting the market. Just ****ing great!
As usual the race to the bottom is continuing and now the record companies have found a way to make even more money by selling lower quality audio. A backwards step.
capt_cornflake (07-11-2011),Funkstar (07-11-2011),Saracen (07-11-2011),watercooled (07-11-2011)
FLAC is not popular though and most of the companies use MP3 which is not even the best encoding algorithm but the most common. The iTunes tracks use AAC which is much better at the same bitrate however last time I checked iTunes does not use Apple lossless.
The cost per album is still rubbish for most of theses stores(unless you get an album on a special deal) and in many cases is comparable to a CD or even worse. You get lower quality encodes and no physical media. This means if you want to use a CD player you need to convert the files and then burn them to a CD which costs additional time and money. On top of writeable CDs by their very nature tend to have a lower physical lifespan than most modern pressed CDs and decent writeable CDs cost more. So in the end for me downloads in the long run are still expensive. Downloads ATM are great for casual listeners. The only reason companies are shifting to downloads is since the fixed costs for hosting are much lower now and the fixed costs for selling CDs are now more than the lower quality stuff most online stores are now selling.
On top of this I actually like owning some of my CDs TBH as quite a few have really nice album work on the CD too(plus album notes). Plonking a burned CD into a reasonable CD player is a bit meh TBH. It looks like costs for pressed CDs are going to increase quite a bit.
However,at least a full CD download would mean we got at least get the same quality as before. On top of this people like me can at least choose the method we want to encode for computer or media server use. In fact I would like even higher quality encodes based on the master tapes to be released. I don't see why even a 2GB to 3GB file size should be an issue.
In my case, I can. Last Monday (i.e. a week ago) I bought a 3 disk hybrid set (2 normal CD's plus one that you had to download tracks and burn yourself) of Alice Cooper's current tour. And on Saturday I got three of the remastered Pink Floyd albums plus Johnny Cash's last album. (yes, I know, weird taste in music!)We’re not convinced that this is going to happen for a while yet, not while CDs are still continuing to sell - albeit not in as huge quantities as before. Come to think about it though, we can't even remember the last we bought a CD.
Call me "Mr Cynical", but when the labels say "we're planning to phase out CD's in favour of downloads", I'm not convinced that they mean unprotected MP3's, AAC's, OGG's, etc. It doesn't take much of a stretch to remember the cries from the labels that "digital downloads = piracy". So, personally I'd still prefer - at least for the main bands I follow - to have that shiny plastic circle. On the other hand stuff I'm just trying out I'm more than happy to have on download only.
I'll grudgingly admit that I'm probably just an old geezer living in the past - not up to date with all this MusicCloud, Spotify, need-it-right-this-second style of music consumption.
As to HMV phasing out CD's - I remain unsurprised. Apart from the "3 for £10" type deals I've found HMV to be increasingly expensive. E.g. Pink Floyd's "The Wall" is about £16 there, but Amazon'll do it for £12. Speaking of "The Wall" - nice to see that the premium for going for physical media is only 48p on Amazon - a levy I'd be happy to pay.
Couldn't give a damn about the CD format....but unless they start offering music on a lossless format, I will completely stop buying it.
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I'll miss cd's. Something to be said for having something in your hands. Same with comic books if they ever move fully to digital.
with flac, ape, shn and other lossless formats you can get not only the exact same quality as CD, but higher quality than cd
whilst many/most "mp3" players may not yet support it, if it was to become a more commonly used format and/or replacement for cd, support would surely increase
if apple allowed flac to play natively on ipods etc it would be great, as i have a large collection of flac and the ipod classic has a decent amount of storage. the problem with most current "mp3" players and phones is the small flash based storage that would be quickly filled with lossless formats
i think few people actually play cds these days compared to digital files. even out of people who do buy cds, many/most will just rip them for playing digitally. so the format itself is unnecessary for many people. it's just a waste of resources and materials that could potentially end up in landfills
it is sad that whilst technology is progressing and enabling higher quality, that the general public is accepting lower quality. brickwalling, lower bitrates, compressed music etc. kids today will be growing up without hearing a decent hifi system
For the most part I agree with this.
The problem with digital formats is that at some point the physical media becomes defunct. There isn't any real need for physical CDs as such, for starters they get scratched. Having said that there's a nice simplicity about having a disc and not needing a computer with an operating system to play a piece of music
i have thousands of records and cds. they take up a large percentage of space at home, whilst i have most of it on 4 HDD's (2 drives of material with one backup each), that take up the space of about 10 cd cases. i rarely play the cds so they are just dust gathering and in the way. if i had a loft or basement or space i would box them up. i'm not yet read to let them go, and as prices have dropped due to piracy, ebay and internet sales, they aren't worth selling to get only 10% or 20% of the original price back. if i'm only going to get £1 or £2 for a cd i'd rather keep them
While there are benefits to higher than CD resolution formats for the most part CD is already very good, the benefits are felt more in the production and mastering stage as effectively you want to introduce as little rounding error as possible propogating. The benefits of higher sampling rates and bit depths probably don't outweigh the negatives that come with it, mostly that is a massive file size, a 24/96 pcm uses 3 times the amount of data to encode a second of music compared to cd 16/44 yet the effect of a well mastered record will far outstrip any benefit of using a high res, potentially it could sound worse due to the extra processing required and all sorts of things like that! Not an issue for most of the people on forums like this but considering most people wouldn't be able to notice might not be the best idea quite yet. There are a few places offering these types of files, but they are expensive and quite limited in number.
Not got many cds myself but hope they dont faze them out
I understand what you are getting at as production and mastering is just as important in many ways even when stocking with the same format. OTH,I have listened to SACD,decent quality turntables and even a decent quality reel to reel system. These sounded fantastic even when compared to their CD equivalent. However,at least offering downloads as the full CD file(around 700MB to 800MB) or a lossless format at a price 30% to 40% less than the equivalent CD would be a start.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 07-11-2011 at 01:09 PM.
Hi,
can't remember the last time I bought a CD, I tend to download legit material but in FLAC format so I get full quality rather than compressed mp3, but I suppose the death of CD was/is inevitable especially with the iPod generation taking over.
Mike.
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