PRESSON100
Member
It seems like everyone is being lured in to paying more for music. Buying music online and keeping it in the cloud actually costs how much? I only have CDs and don't do this. I would consider going that way, but I would not be willing to purchase MP3 quality recordings as those don't meet my standards. So if you are going to buy CD quality or higher, like FLAK, how much does that cost? Would like to hear.
It wouldn't surprise me that "all things audiophile" continue to succeed in the future, but as a specialized market segment. It seems that millennials are not attracted to high end audiophile equipment and appear to be fine with streaming MP3-quality music using their smart phone and ear buds. I attended a talk at last year's Capital Audiofest and one of the presenters thought that most of the high end equipment brands available today would be out of business in 10 years.
Mockduck
New Member
I am not arguing that CD sales are not declining; in fact, purchasing music as a thing people do is on the decline. I have a pet peeve when people say "CD is dead", since it clearly isn't. Dead things don't sell more than any other music format being purchased, and there is still a huge (but declining) demand for them.
Classical CDs can have good audio quality, or poor audio quality. I suggest reading reviews.
If you want to acquire recordings that have better than CD quality, then buy high-quality SACDs, Pure Audio Blu-ray, Blu-ray (e.g., videos of classical concerts, opera, ballet), hi-res (24bit/192kHz) FLAC downloads, and hi-res DSD downloads. For examples, see https://www.hraudio.net/ for a partial list of hi-res recordings, HDtracks.com for downloads, and Amazon for hi-res discs (SACDs and Blu-ray).
death to CDs. let the hoarding begin. let the collections begin at 100,000 and make LP
collectors look like they're asleep at the checkout.
0nly 100 copies of Aja, DSOTM, or even John Denver's greatest hits? buy more,
fly to Japan and buy the obi-versions, get beer-covered thrift store tossaways,
find scratched versions and get the entire collection to show all variations,
start a museum and charge $$$ to see the last CD ever made. buy CDP,
CD players, portables, and hoard them to drive prices up.
TOTL Pioneer/Marantz receivers, LPs, and now its CD's turn to drive up prices.
Here's to hoarding - the great American audio pastime - and don't forget to listen to them...
collectors look like they're asleep at the checkout.
0nly 100 copies of Aja, DSOTM, or even John Denver's greatest hits? buy more,
fly to Japan and buy the obi-versions, get beer-covered thrift store tossaways,
find scratched versions and get the entire collection to show all variations,
start a museum and charge $$$ to see the last CD ever made. buy CDP,
CD players, portables, and hoard them to drive prices up.
TOTL Pioneer/Marantz receivers, LPs, and now its CD's turn to drive up prices.
Here's to hoarding - the great American audio pastime - and don't forget to listen to them...
eljr
Koyaanisqatsi
If you had a business and your sales were down 80% in 10 years you know the business was near death.
roadrunnerx
Active Member
I realize it is dying, but so am I and everyone else.
Good format, should get me through the final years.
Love the thrift store discounts on CD's I've never had and will not find again.
I still own some rare titles from years back and suspect many will never be heard or found in this current environment.
Good format, should get me through the final years.
Love the thrift store discounts on CD's I've never had and will not find again.
I still own some rare titles from years back and suspect many will never be heard or found in this current environment.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273308/music-album-sales-in-the-us/
CD is not dead by any means . Once again , every new release is still on CD .
CD is not dead by any means . Once again , every new release is still on CD .
business down? depends on where you are. NYC, SF, maybe LA - yes - more stores going
out of business. and from inside the asylum, yes - it's dying.
[NYC used to be a great city for audio - there were yearly audio shows where all the (then)
latest products were shown, and American Audio-xxx Trading Company sold Audionics
and even the Rappaports, and that incredible guy selling colored vinyl in the subway
entrance on the SE corner of Macy's. and good guys selling infinity black widow arms
this was almost 40 years ago and the details are vivid if not completely accurate]
Hong Kong has dozens of stores selling CDs and more showing up. there's even a
headphone store with just about ALL the headphones even a B&W, and no Bluetooth.
and a lot of SACDs are sold there with many Japanese CDs/XRCD/SACDs available.
and their AV show in august - close to 20 years now - gives away a CD with great music.
check review33.com for pages of stores selling stuff.
in japan, Tokyo's Shinjuku (I recall) there's a tower records with somewhere around 4-7
stories, one of which is only classical music. and the Tokyu hands where you can buy
20+ flavors of toothpaste (curry - yuk), tube amp kits, and for those who think CD is dead,
a cheap machine that cuts music onto an unwanted CD, and a tiny and cheap tube
that runs on batteries.
alive or dead - depends on where you live or travel to.
out of business. and from inside the asylum, yes - it's dying.
[NYC used to be a great city for audio - there were yearly audio shows where all the (then)
latest products were shown, and American Audio-xxx Trading Company sold Audionics
and even the Rappaports, and that incredible guy selling colored vinyl in the subway
entrance on the SE corner of Macy's. and good guys selling infinity black widow arms
this was almost 40 years ago and the details are vivid if not completely accurate]
Hong Kong has dozens of stores selling CDs and more showing up. there's even a
headphone store with just about ALL the headphones even a B&W, and no Bluetooth.
and a lot of SACDs are sold there with many Japanese CDs/XRCD/SACDs available.
and their AV show in august - close to 20 years now - gives away a CD with great music.
check review33.com for pages of stores selling stuff.
in japan, Tokyo's Shinjuku (I recall) there's a tower records with somewhere around 4-7
stories, one of which is only classical music. and the Tokyu hands where you can buy
20+ flavors of toothpaste (curry - yuk), tube amp kits, and for those who think CD is dead,
a cheap machine that cuts music onto an unwanted CD, and a tiny and cheap tube
that runs on batteries.
alive or dead - depends on where you live or travel to.
I'll just put this out there for whatever it's worth. The year 2007 saw the 200 billionth cd produced, and still they come, not as fast but still spinning forth.
Now I cannot speak for everyone, but most of my music I buy and listen to are older dated tracks, certainly before 2007, most in fact from the 90s and before. I suspect I am not alone in this. Could it be that the CD is in decline for several reasons (other than streaming ). Those reasons are that new manufactured CD'S are in direct competition with all those 200 billion CDs that are out there selling for a buck or so and refusing to die.
It reminds me of pre-digital era film camera makers like Nikon who were barely keeping in business because those damn cameras they made decades before refused to die. What saved them was digital! Or more accurately Built In Obsolescence.
Could the CD of today simply be a victim of its own incredible prior success in SQ, durability, thrift and sales?
And or could today's music be itself dead?
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KDAC
Addicted Member
The music is definitely alive. Answer to the other questions: A resounding "yes." Thanks to Nyquist-Shannon up to 22.05 kHz at 16-bit/44 kHz and 96+ dB of dynamic range, the Phillips/Sony consortium et al. produced an undeniably compact, enduring, engaging format with the longevity and billions of units manufactured and sold to prove it. I know that there's legions of vinyl fans and "tape heads" all over the planet, but the proof is in the pudding - millions, if not billions of music lovers, myself included, simply love the format. The number of units manufactured and sold over time, especially in this era of music distribution via file formats (most prominently, the .mp3), may ebb and flow, but the format is seemingly here to stay. Between its dynamic range, universal appeal, popularity, easy duplication, and reasonable degree of durability, it simply "checks the boxes" and is a difficult format to beat in regard to use and availablity. I'm not an oracle, but my best guess is that's it's simply here to stay and not going anywhere soon. In further response to the OP, yes, they will stick around.
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restorer-john
Addicted Member
The format is the most successful music carrier in history. It changed the world, by bringing massive amounts of digitally stored and retrieved information to everyday consumers at a time when hard disks with half the capacity of a CD cost US$27,000. CD ushered in many other technologies that we take for granted now.
What I find amazing is that even before it's launch, the designing engineers knew* the average life of the format would be approximately 25 years, before it was replaced by a newer technology. They also knew it was a game changer, and only incremental change would occur once digital moved to a 'non-moving-parts' system.
* They had chronicled and studied all the formats from wax cylinders etc onwards.
vmartell
Active Member
Yes it is - some maybe better recorded than others, as another poster replied, but re: the brickwalling issue, it can be said in general, that classical CDs did not suffer from that malaise... there may be exceptions I am not aware of, but at least none of my couple of thousand classical CDs have shown the problem. Granted I own absolutely no crossover/pop pseudo-classical CDs, so no 3 Tenors, no Andrea Bocelli, no Charlotte Church and how/what-ever has come since... given their pop component, the CDs from those artists might suffer from it... but I have no way of knowing...
v
vmartell
Active Member
True - but the question was about brickwalling - I answered elsewhere but I will repeat here - in general, it is a good assumption that classical CDs were/are not brickedwalled. Recording SQ is a different issue.
v
eljr
Koyaanisqatsi
OK, it's not "technically" dead, I'll give you that.
It IS a dying medium past the September of it's years.
But what is its replacement? There IS NO VIABLE REPLACEMENT on the market today save for hi-res digital downloads, which are a niche market and unknown to most people.
eljr
Koyaanisqatsi
No and no.
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