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Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 11-26-2011, 09:31 AM:
 
In an iTunes age, do we need the record store?

As CD sales plummet and famed shops close, brave entrepreneurs are trying to reinvent the model. Is it too late?



On Wednesday night, hundreds of people passed through the doors of Other Music, one of New York City’s last remaining record stores. Yes, there was free booze. But the young, plugged-in crowd came to celebrate, not necessarily to buy. “The World’s First Perfect Zine,” a new print publication from the author of a well-known blog devoted to reviews of album reviews, was holding a release party. Along with a contribution by the novelist Tao Lin, the zine includes writing by members of the groups Vampire Weekend, Das Racist and jj, among others.

In what could be an intriguing — or depressing — glimpse into the future of record stores, all those extra bodies in the room didn’t necessarily translate into extra business. “There was a remarkably low number of kids who came in there and said, ‘I haven’t seen this, I’ll pick it up,’” observed Other Music co-owner Josh Madell, a day after the event. The zine’s editor, pseudonymous Pitchfork Reviews Reviews blogger David Shapiro, didn’t dispute the point. “Part of the reason was that the store was so packed that browsing for CDs and records wasn’t really physically possible,” he explained, in an email response to questions. “But beyond that, of course, people don’t really buy records that much anymore — especially people in a small, hyper-Internet-savvy subset of young New Yorkers.”

The episode neatly illustrates a fundamental paradox facing record store owners in 2011. Many music fans romanticize the record store as a source of both hard-to-find culture and local community. “It was a library and a clubhouse,” as director Cameron Crowe, one of the ultimate nostalgists, told the authors of the 2009 book “Record Store Days.” At the same time, however, record stores are just that — stores — and ever-fewer consumers are choosing to buy the little pieces of plastic they sell. For record stores overall, then, the outlook appears bleak. “As an institution, it had its function,” said Alexander Weheliye, a professor of English and African-American studies at Northwestern University. But the survivors aren’t going away. They’re simply changing their tune, becoming smaller and more focused. Time will tell whether that’s enough — for some, continued existence may require a whole new arrangement.

“A record store nowadays can’t just sell records. That’s the first step to failure,” said Ben Blackwell, a longtime record collector who handles manufacture and distribution of vinyl at Jack White’s label, Third Man Records. “Record stores need to put on events. They need to host live shows. They need to do listening parties. You have to have an active way with which to communicate to your buyers. You need a mailing list, you need a Twitter account, you need Facebook pages. All this stuff that wasn’t around 10 years ago when record stores were seemingly doing fine is what you need to employ to stay in the race.” But what happens when, like at Other Music, even cool events aren’t enough?

Of course, the demise of the American record store is a sad song that has become all too familiar. O.G. stalwart Tower Records closed in 2006, follow by another big chain, Virgin Megastore, in 2009. Over the past eight years, at least 3,700 stores that sell recorded music have shut their doors, leaving about 12,400 across the country, according to market research firm Almighty Music Marketing — and that number includes big-box retailers like Wal-Mart and Target. In the first half of this year, even as overall album sales rose for the first time since 2004, physical album sales continued to decline, a recent Nielsen SoundScan report shows. The music industry’s collapse, the rise of illegal file-sharing along with legal digital downloads, and the ongoing economic slowdown have each played their part.

The digital space, in particular, is one where brick-and-mortar stores probably don’t stand much of a chance. New services such as Google Music and Spotify keep springing up all the time, adding to the competition from old foes like Amazon’s MP3 — which often sells new albums for as little as $3.99 — and Apple’s iTunes. Mega-selling artists such as Lady Gaga, Kanye West and Jay-Z are striking exclusive deals with digital stores like Amazon and iTunes, leaving physical retailers out in the cold. While Other Music, for one, sells digital downloads, results elsewhere aren’t encouraging: The Coalition of Independent Music Stores, a 29-member consortium representing 59 U.S. locations, recently shut down its Think Indie digital store after less than two years, citing lack of business.

Still, all isn’t lost. Independent record store closures have been on the decline since 2008, according to Almighty. Amoeba Records, a three-location California independent record store chain that celebrated its 20th anniversary about a year ago, was founded as a “comprehensive, one-stop music destination for everybody,” co-owner Marc Weinstein has said. But that’s an exception. More often, today’s best record stores are carefully curated, niche-oriented establishments, selling new and used vinyl to a specialized market — which tends to be found in critical mass near large cities or universities.

One example is Grimey’s, an independent record store in Nashville, Tenn. Since opening in 1999, the Music City retailer has seen its sales rise every year except 2008, co-owner Doyle Davis says. Grimey’s offers a carefully selected inventory of records in a town known for supporting music, and it makes an effort to be involved in the community. In-store performances at Grimey’s have ranged from recent breakthrough bands like Phoenix and the Black Keys to heavy rock superstars Metallica. The store also does ticket giveaways and donates gift certificates to local causes. What it doesn’t do is sell much other than music, Doyle says, calling the store “fairly purist.”

The much-heralded resurgence of interest in vinyl records has been a boon to independent record stores, including Grimey’s. Vinyl album sales rose 41 percent in the first six months of 2011 alone, after increasing 14.2 percent throughout 2010, according to Nielsen SoundScan data. Vince Sluzarz, owner of the Cleveland vinyl-pressing plant Gotta Groove Records, recently told the New York Times Magazine that SoundScan figures only account for roughly 15 percent of vinyl sales; when you factor in the many small-scale releases distributed without a bar code, though, it’s unclear how to verify such claims.

Record Store Day, an event founded in 2007 and now taking place at more than 700 independent record stores across the country, certainly hasn’t hurt, drawing customers in with exclusive, limited-edition vinyl releases. Stores celebrate Record Store Day on the third Saturday in April, but this year organizers are holding an additional event on the day after Thanksgiving — Black Friday — with another set of exclusive titles. “A lot of people look at it as a traffic driver,” Doyle says of Record Store Day. “I look at it as a way to increase sales. We had our best day ever this past Record Store Day, by 72 percent over the previous best day we’d ever had. And people camped out!”

So against all odds, is there reason for optimism? Hopeful music lovers do keep opening stores. Excluding mass merchants like Wal-Mart and Target, the number of record store openings has increased each of the past three years, including 62 new independent record stores so far this year, according to Almighty. After Louisville, Ky., indie ear X-tacy closed this fall, Matador Records — the label that’s home to Pavement, Yo La Tengo and the New Pornographers — pointed out in a blog post that the death of the record store has been exaggerated, and used Steady Sounds, in Richmond, Va.; Cyklopx, in Forest Park, Ill.; All Day Records, in Carrboro, N.C.; Co Op 87, in Brooklyn, N.Y.; and Saki, in Chicago as examples.

Sone existing stores are actually expanding. In Austin, Texas, End of an Ear recently added an 180-square-foot space next-door, co-owner Dan Plunkett said. In Oklahoma City, Guestroom Records is in the midst of opening a third store, located on the ground floor of a music school. In an email, co-owners Tarvis Searle and Justin Sowers pointed to their independently released offerings: “You’re not going to find many Best Buys that have big Tune-Yards, Dum Dum Girls or Oh Sees displays,” they wrote. Chicago’s Permanent Records recently opened up a second location in Los Angeles.

Permanent moved to the West Coast because co-owners Lance Barresi and Liz Tooley wanted warmer weather, Barresi said. Another believer in curated, smaller-scale stores, he warned that the snobbish attitude immortalized in the movie “High Fidelity” no longer cuts it. But he also acknowledged that owning a record store isn’t exactly a get-rich-quick scheme. “You’re hand-selling unique items to a unique set of people, and that’s the beauty of it,” he explained. “And you’re working for yourself. That’s the extent of the benefits. I don’t have health insurance. I am not high on the income total.”

What’s more, nobody can say for sure how long vinyl sales will continue to increase. And they still represent only a tiny fraction of the overall music market — 1.2 percent of physical album sales last year, according to SoundScan. Athens, Ga., music store Wuxtry, where Michael Stipe famously met his now-former R.E.M. bandmate Peter Buck, has survived — even though another local store, Schoolkids, recently closed. Two new record shops, however, quickly sprung up in its place. Mike Turner, a Wuxtry store manager, said the trick for a record store to survive is knowing its community, noting that sales in recent years keep looking up. But he also raised an interesting question: What if college kids stop thinking it’s cool to buy vinyl — or “vinyls,” as they often put it? “That’s the one scary thing, because vinyl is such a huge help in keeping stores going,” Turner observed.

Whatever happens with vinyl sales in the long term, record stores can probably safely bet on the cult of diehard record collectors for whom an album is a fetish object as much as a source of music. Indie labels, in fact, are already targeting this audience with various deluxe vinyl editions. As one example, the band Okkervil River made its 2011 album “I Am Very Far” as a special box set, encased in wood and accompanied by an individually signed letter from singer-songwriter Will Sheff. “In the age of everybody aiming their music down to the lowest common denominator, record stores can serve as a beacon of audiophilia, and a beacon of beautiful artwork,” Sheff said on the phone from Paris, where Okkervil River recently played a gig. “People who care about music are willing to pay more.”

To be sure, not all record stores that have closed in recent years have done so because they couldn’t afford to stay open. In some cases, store owners just looked at whether or not to renew their lease and decided it was time. That said, the abrupt closure late last month of Louisville, Ky., institution ear X-tacy comes as a bad omen. Honored as one of the best independent record stores across the country by Rolling Stone, SPIN and GQ, owner John Timmons’ store appeared to be doing so many things right, offering plenty of in-stores and a vast vinyl selection in a city that prides itself on being local and weird. The ear X-tacy closing took place just as Criminal Records in Atlanta — another top-15 store nationally — said it might also be forced to close.

Singer-songwriter Jim James of the Louisville band My Morning Jacket, a former clerk at ear X-tacy, posted an eloquent eulogy for the store on his group’s site. More recently, in an email interview, he expressed hope for a new, more community-based store that might sell coffee, jeans, an old stereo or a vintage guitar as well as vinyl — stores that create a need for people to come out and visit them. “The mp3 has done a fantastic job of killing the traditional idea of what a record store used to be … ” he said, with his capitalization and punctuation intact. “but as the cliche goes, and when you think about this subject in broader terms, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger … and i think in a bigger sense we are going to see a new generation of locally based stores and communities pop up in the real world that are stronger and better than ever. it’s just going to take some time.”

James might have been thinking of a store in nearby Lexington, Ky., called Pops Resale, which targets a single demographic with multiple categories of products. According to owner Dan “Pop” Schorr, vinyl is the store’s best-selling department and takes up about half of its 600-square-foot space. Its next-seller is vintage clothing, followed by vintage video games and systems; the store also sells old-school audio gear, vintage toys and other items. “I still have a hard time understanding in smaller cities how some record stores that are just record stores continue to do it,” Schorr said. “What we’ve tried to do is find niches that nobody else bothers with.”

Plenty of record stores carry audio equipment, but according to singer-songwriter John Vanderslice, they could be selling more. There are certainly downsides, ranging from handling returns to dealing with a new set of suppliers, but Vanderslice sees the products as a natural fit, like pipes at a medical marijuana dispensary. “If I were to open a record store, it would be vinyl-only, and it would be paired up with a very cool and working-class-priced audio equipment store, where you’re selling all-in-one devices,” he said. “If I’m intimidated walking into a stereo store, and I own like $700,000 worth of audio equipment, then there’s something wrong with the culture of audio equipment — if it’s paired up with a record, then all of the sudden it’s everyday shit.” Another advantage: The specifics of buying a turntable — determining whether it has the right connections, and so on — makes it one of the few purchases that’s still more easily conducted in person.

Stores with a strong reputation and the right set of circumstances can expand into still other potential revenue sources. Other Music also does music supervision types of work for various brands or businesses, and the store has generated money and publicity by holding live events at the SXSW music conference in Austin the past several years, according to Madell, the co-owner. Still, while those projects came about as a result of running a record store, doing them doesn’t exactly require paying rent on a record store. “It’s hard to envision a turnaround in the way the industry is going that would be in our favor,” he acknowledged.

Shapiro, “The World’s First Perfect Zine” editor, aptly summed up the conundrum. ”The way I feel about patronizing record stores,” he wrote in an email, “is probably the way everyone feels about things they know they should be doing but don’t actually do enough: heading to Occupy Wall Street after work, doing the pile of dishes in the sink and sparing their roommates, leftists not shopping at liberal-seeming megachains (Urban Outfitters, Whole Foods) whose owners hold beliefs and donate money to politicians that are inimical to leftism. I’m glad there are people who do these things, and if I had the constitution to do what I believed in 100 percent of the time I would buy all of my music at record stores, but alas … ” Unfortunately for record-store enthusiasts, it’s not a perfect world.

do we need a record store

SOME OF THE COMMENTS

1. That's part of the point, though, right? You trade relative inconvenience for materiality. You take pride in the object itself. You can see it on a shelf; it reminds you on sight of its existence. And being able to have 160 GB of words or music leads to a different relationship with the artform itself. No more liner notes for albums, no thought of fonts for ebooks. Nobody sits and listens to albums anymore, and you can't smell the paper of a new ebook. Just because a high quality mp3 doesn't sound any different than pristine vinyl doesn't mean that those two listening experiences are the same.

2. The practical reality, though, is that iTunes files will be 196 Kb/s or 320 Kb/s, which are highly compressed. Pandora is even worse, at 128 Kb/s, which is what the various satellite services give you.

All of this might sound great, until you hear something you have on CD and compare the WAV file to what you just heard streaming.

It worries me that I'll no longer be able to get WAV files. The loss if vinyl was bad enough, but what's coming is even worse.

3. It's sad, but the fact is even the best record stores rarely have the particular CD I'm looking for. The internet does. Furthermore, digitized my collection a few years ago after running out of space for all my CDs. I don't want physical CDs.

4. Of course I get what people say about the superior sound quality of tape or vinyl.
Analog will always sound better, because you get that sweet tape compression and great range and all. Digital media from CDs to MP3s cant compare dynamically.

However, really unless you are in the market for jazz records, its a nonissue that really only audiophiles care about.

I have my milk crates of old records and a few reals of tape, but really for most of my music these days its all binary. It's just more easy, convenient, and cheap. They dont get scratches or fall behind the counter. They dont take up an entire wall where I need a dewey decimal system to find a song.
And if I'm listening to anything recorded in the last 10 years, it's probably tracked, mixed, and mastered digitally anyway.

5. I have only anecdotal evidence on this, but I think people (like me) who buy and listen to classical music prefer to have a physical CD. Properly produced digital sound is far superior to analog and most downloaded music. The wide sound level range is an asset, along with absence of noise. The other thing is most CDs come with program notes, which I think is essential.
If you have the CD, you can always transfer the music to other listening devices. The problem is for brick & mortar retailers: keeping a relatively large inventory of merchandise that doesn't sell nearly the volume that pop stuff does.
This article should have at least mentioned classical music.
 

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Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 11-26-2011, 10:10 AM:
 
With the exception of a couple of recordings that I have been unable to find in any other form, the download services are useless to me. I am not interested in spending money on lossily compressed recordings and I buy recorded music to last decades (the expected lifetime of a record or commercially manufactured CD), not just a few years.

I will stoop to this level if I can find no other way of purchasing a particular recording, but I prefer to own recorded music on a physical medium with the highest possible quality.

I might reconsider this position of any of the major download services allowed downloading of WAV files or losslessly compressed versions thereof, but I am not interested in MP3s.
 

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Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 11-26-2011, 10:14 AM:
 

quote: Scott Norwood

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With the exception of a couple of recordings that I have been unable to find in any other form, the download services are useless to me.

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quote: Monte L Fullmer

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Don't think that the normal young adult cares about quality - just something to shove into their "personal" devices to listen though their earbuds, or patch into their car audio-why the "iTunes" downloading fad.

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quote:

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I have 5 grand invested in my turntable alone!

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quote: Victor Liorentas

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Linn Sondek LP12

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quote: Mark Ogden

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If I am replacing a favorite LP with a CD, or it's music that I know I will want to keep with me for years

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quote: Monte L Fullmer

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there will always be a record store for those audiophiles who want quality

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quote: Mike Blakesley

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People are buying lots of music on iTunes and the like. Lots of stores are closing.

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quote: Mike Blakesley

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Lots of stores are closing

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quote: Tom Petrov

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now record on computer directly from a new LP player

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quote: Mike Blakesley

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We still sell CDs in our store, but most of our sales now are to people age 30 and older. We do a fair amount of business in special orders, but our biggest sellers are "Greatest Hits" type collections by older artists.

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quote: Tom Petrov

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In an iTunes age, do we need the record store?

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quote: Mark J. Marshall

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Nope. And in the not too distant future we won't need movie theaters either.

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quote: Robert E. Allen

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the older artists were actually making MUSIC as opposed to the noise that's being described as music today.

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quote: Joe Redifer

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How are sales now compared to, say, 1980 or 1970? Or even 1990?

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quote: Tom Petrov

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Thats not true, thats like saying in the future we will not have any music concerts.

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quote: Tom Petrov

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People actually still like the big screen experience with packed crowds and popcorn.

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quote: Mark J. Marshall

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Not the same thing. People don't have music concerts in their house. Also, what Mitchell said.

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quote: Mark J. Marshall

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But fewer and fewer like dealing with those loud obnoxious crowds and their crying kids and ringing cell phones.

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quote: Frank Angel

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As for seeing that old cliché about how wonderful it is seeing a movie with an audience -- let's call it what it is....a bunch of strangers -- that's not all that it's cracked up to be. As my friend says who has a really big 57in HD flat panel LG and an impressive 7.1 sound system, "If I want that "audience feel" in my home theatre, I just invite my friends over. Nice thing about that -- I get to choose who sits next to me and I don't have to worry about body odor, bedbugs and/or lice."

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quote: Mike Blakesley

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One reason old artists don't get much airplay -- even when they release great music -- is becauuse they don't have marketing money behind them like they used to, and also because when an artist is OLD their coolness factor is zero, hence they don't get new listeners, hence ad sales don't happen, etc.

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quote:

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meaning those who actually sit down and listen to entire albums on a BIG sound system,

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quote: Tom Petrov

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sometimes they are no longer relevant or any good

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quote: Robert E. Allen

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Gee, could that be because the older artists were actually making MUSIC as opposed to the noise that's being described as music today.

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quote: Mike Blakesley

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I haven't heard anything by "Lef Leppard" lately either (ever, actually)

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quote: Monte L. Fullmer

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..and I still have some shellac '78's in as well as a ton of vinyl... I miss buying open reel, prerecorded tapes also.

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quote: Mike Blakesley

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One reason old artists don't get much airplay -- even when they release great music -- is becauuse they don't have marketing money behind them like they used to, and also because when an artist is OLD their coolness factor is zero, hence they don't get new listeners, hence ad sales don't happen, etc.

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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Actually I hear a LOT of really old music on the radio.

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quote: Mike Blakesley

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You missed my point. I was saying that NEW music by an older artist never gets played on the radio. Finding old music is easy.

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quote: Tom Petrov

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quote: Mike Blakesley

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I haven't heard anything by "Lef Leppard" lately either (ever, actually)

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Well they have released stuff in 2002, 2006, 2008 and just 2011. The latest is available only at Walmart if I remember...

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Just got back from visiting 3 different Wal*Marts. None of them had anything by "Lef Leppard". Looked online. Couldn't find any proof that this band ever existed. It's too bad, too. They sound like they'd probably be awesome and relevant! Were they responsible for that cantaloupe outbreak song called "Listeria" way back when?
 

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Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 11-28-2011, 10:46 PM:
 
2011 U.S. Album Sales Still Strong After Three Quarters



Artists including Adele and Eminem contributed to a 3.3% increase over the corresponding period of 2010.

s the year heads into its home stretch, things are looking up for the U.S. music industry -- sales are on track to increase over the previous year, something that hasn't happened since 2004.

With nine months of 2011 down, album sales stand at 228.5 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan -- up 3.3% from the 221.1 million albums sold in the corresponding period of 2010. Overall U.S. unit sales, meanwhile, are up 7.2% to 1.18 billion, from 1.1 billion last year. And when albums including track equivalents are taken into account -- whereby 10 song downloads count as one album unit - albums have jumped 5.4%, to 323.7 million from 307.1 million.

The positive showing for album sales can primarily be attributed to the digital format, where the configuration's scans are up 19.7% to 74.1 million units, compared to 61.9 million units in 2010's first nine months.

But it's not only digital numbers that are encouraging. Though physical sales are down from last year, the dip isn't nearly as drastic as music executives had long grown used to. CD sales have decreased only 3.6% this year, after experiencing declines ranging between 18%-20% in each of the five previous years.

A banner year from Adele has helped across the board. Her album 21 has moved nearly 3.8 million units, while the best-selling title at the corresponding time last year -- Eminem's Recovery

With 1.3 million units sold digitally, 21 is the best-selling album in the digital format since SoundScan began tracking such sales in 2003. Adele's song "Rolling In The Deep," with 5.2 million paid downloads, is likewise the best-selling title in the digital format.

Where market share is concerned, Universal Music Group has finally pulled away from Sony Music Entertainment, which had been nipping close at its heels for the first six months of 2011. At the end of the nine-month period, UMG's market share tallied 30.3%, while Sony's stood at 28.9%. Meanwhile, the Warner Music Group's market share totaled 18.7% and EMI's came in at 9%. Independent labels' market share, as determined by distribution ownership, totaled 12.6%.

Billboard will present a more comprehensive article on third-quarter stats, including market share by label ownership, in the coming days.

SOME INTERESTING HIGHLIGHTS:

-CD sales have decreased only 3.6% this year, after experiencing declines ranging between 18%-20% in each of the five previous years.

quote: Joe Redifer

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Just got back from visiting 3 different Wal*Marts. None of them had anything by "Lef Leppard". Looked online. Couldn't find any proof that this band ever existed. It's too bad, too. They sound like they'd probably be awesome and relevant! Were they responsible for that cantaloupe outbreak song called "Listeria" way back when?

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So, this has nothing to do with lp vs. tape vs. cd vs. digital, but I'm with Mike here: pop music is for kids, and there is still lots of great pop music on the radio. You know why you love the stuff from when you were a kid? Because it was the soundtrack to all that emotional sturm und drang, the time when you were literally becoming who you are. It's part of what defines who you are now. When a seventeen year-old girl gets dumped this Friday night for someone hotter, she will hear Selena Gomez on the radio as she cries into her smartphone, and when she's 40, Selena Gomez will still resonate with her. (And the new chick on the radio will not.) People love to pick a random year and declare that there's been no good music since, and I always assume that's the year they became an adult and forgot what it was like to be a kid.

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Great way to put it Melanie
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 11-29-2011, 01:41 AM:
 
Hey, since we have classical music fans here and vinyl fans as well, I have quite a few unopened Philips LPs of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess with Simon Estes and Roberta Alexander with the Rundfunk-Sinfonicorchester of Berlin under Leonard Slatkin. We stocked a bunch to sell in concessions when he was on our program a number of years ago. This recording is not a spectacular definative recording and it's only excepts, but it IS unopened vinyl and that's a plus, not to mention the price is right -- you just pay the postage and I will ship it out.

I also have the a bunch of albums that I personally engineered in Enthraphonic Sound (trademark for matrixed Quadraphonic Sound -- the 70's version of surround sound, later stolen by Mr. Dolby to put into the Cat 150's) of an Original Cast recording of the musical Rubber Nickels - also virgin vinyl for your listening pleasure. Again, yours for the asking. Let me know via email.
 

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Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 11-29-2011, 03:09 AM:
 

quote: Tom Petrov was the last to post

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Eminem

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quote: Tom Petrov

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You can get it on iTunes for $7.99

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quote: James Westbrook

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I can't find Lef Leopard, either.

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Must be a Canadian thing.
 

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Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 11-29-2011, 11:22 AM:
 
I'm no fan but isn't it Def Leopard?
 

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Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 11-29-2011, 11:23 AM:
 
Not "Leopard", but "Def Leppard" ....

"Hysteria", being one of their greatest albums for 1987...
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-29-2011, 12:21 PM:
 

quote:

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I'll be dog gone all to hell, there's no Lef Leppard anywhere on iTunes, either!

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quote: Monte L Fullmer

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"Hysteria", being one of their greatest albums for 1987...

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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If I'm actually going to buy a piece of music, I want it uncompressed.

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quote: Robert E. Allen

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I'm no fan but isn't it Def Leopard?

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Def Leppard. Despite continuously reposting Tom's original misspelling, he just wasn't conscious enough or was completely unable to catch it due to a lack or reading comprehension skills. But Lef Leppard's Listeria album is one of their bigger successes.
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-01-2011, 09:51 AM:
 
The reason itunes doesn't offer "HD downloads" is that:

1) They're already making lots of money without it (indicating that most users don't care much)
2) Having the larger download will perhaps not be worth the extra storage. Per song, it seems like not much difference but when you start having a lossless version of damn-near their entire catalog (or only the new songs added to it) will take a significant amount of space. And it might not add enough to their bottom line to make it worth it...
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-01-2011, 10:12 AM:
 

quote: Tom Petrov

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Bobby- Any thoughts on why iTunes does not offer a HD download of music or something like it?

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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A lot of home stereo equipment has iPod specific inputs. Lots of car stereo systems have iPod inputs too. Some support music input via both USB and iPod style connections. It's not too difficult to tell the difference between a lossless compressed piece of music versus something that's been lossy compressed.

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quote:

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The tyranny of iTunes popularity is actually causing progress on audio quality to go nowhere,

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quote: Chris Slycord

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Per song, it seems like not much difference but when you start having a lossless version of damn-near their entire catalog (or only the new songs added to it) will take a significant amount of space.

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quote: Joe Redifer

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With people uploading terabytes of information to Youtube each hour, I doubt space is much of an issue these days. It's not like they need to have an individual copy for each time some asshat downloads a song like they need physical items in a record store. If they want to pay for the space, charge 25 cents more per song for uncompressed.

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quote: Chris Slycord

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I highly doubt that Apple devotes anywhere near the amount of server space for their songs as google does for youtube.

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quote: Tom Petrov

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I agree with you Bobby, and I also don't agree with you. While it is easy to tell the difference, we did have super audio cd and we also had DTS music for a while there in the late 90s. While super audio cd did ok and still is offered I believe (maybe you can confirm?) the dts music cds were a flop.

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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My guess is fears over music piracy.

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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Audiophiles have also driven trends with improving how music is recorded and then reproduced in the home. The tyranny of iTunes and lo-fi engineered shit has basically amounted to a giant "fuck you" to all music audiophiles. In return, many audiophiles have shouted "fuck you" back to the music industry by refusing to buy much of any new mainstream music.

---

quote: Joe Redifer

---

My point is that they CAN devote a fraction of the space and have uncompressed stuff available with little effort or cost.

---

quote: Bobby Henderson

---

a bare bones Red Book CD format disc in music stores, often between $18 and $20.

---

quote: Bobby Henderson

---

It might result in them attracting more customers. Right now they're acting like a certain segment of the market doesn't exist.

---

quote: Chris Slycord

---

While I'd appreciate the service, I doubt the influx of customers would really lead to long-term usage of that portion of the service.

---

quote: Bobby Henderson

---

The online music vendors HAVE NEVER TRIED selling lossless or high resolution music to download.

---

quote: Keith Paynter

---

I think iTunes (and digital media players in general) is a convenience...one that affects the online sales of physical media, as well as the B&M model. Not since the days of the homemade "mix tape" have we been given an opportunity to carry around a diverse library of our favorite tunes in such a small package. I encounter more and more techs who are carrying iPads as their weapon of choice for setups, break music and band lead-ins, and I use a laptop in place of a CD player when such physical media is required. When songs are mastered well and converted effectively, the general public doesn't have a clue and won't know the difference. On the other hand, audiophiles like us can recognize a crap rip a mile away.

---

quote: Connor Wilson

---

There's nothing like opening up a CD or vinyl from their shrink wraps, placing the disc into your player, and playing it. Furthermore, there's nothing like reading CD booklets or staring into that twelve-inch album art while listening to a vinyl, with all the gatefolds and sleeves containing liner notes, lyrics, and more artwork.

---

quote: Bobby Henderson

---

The tyranny of iTunes popularity...

---

Um, riiiiiiiiight. Kind of like saying Bob Dylan would have sold more albums in 1975 if not for the tyranny of the Captain and Tennille.

iTunes is for the mass market and it has raised the quality standard for the vast majority of consumers. Imagine the disaster it would have been to start selling lossless files back when the iTunes store began and most people were using dial-up Internet service in their homes. Imagine how pathetic the song capacity of an iPod Nano would seem if it were loaded with uncompressed 96k/24bit music. The people at Apple weren't stupid. After being well-known for always catering to elitist snobs, they finally figured out how to make popular products in the 21st Century (not to mention the miracle of convincing the record companies to reconsider their stubborn resolve to stick to their unworkable business model in the age of Napster).

Don't blame the Ford Escort if BMW sales are down.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-03-2011, 11:42 AM:
 

quote: Connor Wilson

---

There is one that I know of. It is called HDtracks.

---

quote: Connor Wilson

---

There's nothing like opening up a CD or vinyl from their shrink wraps, placing the disc into your player, and playing it. Furthermore, there's nothing like reading CD booklets or staring into that twelve-inch album art while listening to a vinyl, with all the gatefolds and sleeves containing liner notes, lyrics, and more artwork.

---

quote: Keith Paynter

---

I encounter more and more techs who are carrying iPads as their weapon of choice for setups, break music and band lead-ins, and I use a laptop in place of a CD player when such physical media is required.

---

quote: Greg Anderson

---

Um, riiiiiiiiight. Kind of like saying Bob Dylan would have sold more albums in 1975 if not for the tyranny of the Captain and Tennille.

---

quote: Greg Anderson

---

iTunes is for the mass market and it has raised the quality standard for the vast majority of consumers.

---

quote: Greg Anderson

---

Imagine the disaster it would have been to start selling lossless files back when the iTunes store began and most people were using dial-up Internet service in their homes. Imagine how pathetic the song capacity of an iPod Nano would seem if it were loaded with uncompressed 96k/24bit music.

---

Greg, did anyone here ever say iTunes should have started selling lossless CD quality music from the start? No. The rumor mill about iTunes offering lossless music (just CD quality, not high res 24/96 stuff) began buzzing just a few years ago.

BTW, most people have not been using dial-up Internet connections for quite some time. I had a DSL connection and was able to download LPCM .WAV files without much problem at all before the iTunes store was ever established. Here near the end of 2011 DSL technology is a very old, dying connection standard. Many neighborhoods, even mine here in bumblefuck Lawton, Oklahoma, are getting connected with fiber optic cable. That's making the whole notion of needing everything lossy compressed more and more irrelevant every day.
 

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Posted by Edward Havens (Member # 4715) on 12-03-2011, 12:58 PM:
 
In the end, it all comes down to personal choice. For me, even in this iTunes age, there is an absolute need for a record store. Where else am I going to get my fill of over-tattooed and over-pierced thrift store-clothed hipsters?

But seriously, a good locally owned and operated record store is essential for me, as I continue to search for Blue Note LPs from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s that I don't already have in my collection, and learn about new music I might not otherwise hear because I don't listen to the radio anymore (even alternative radio).
 

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Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 12-03-2011, 01:52 PM:
 
I recall reading some computer "expert" claiming that the mp3 format was just as good as WAV but had the advantage of using less space on one's hard drive.
That expert must have had a friend who worked at the local then-owned-by Clear Channel stations as they received songs from their providers via mp3 e-mail attachment. Yet the manufacturers of the radio automation computer software recommended using WAV files imported from cds. (At least the software companies I have checked online.)
Yet in my home set-up, having my desk top computer hooked up to the tape jacks on the back of my Onkyo receiver through my baby Advent speakers I can tell the difference between a WAV file imported from a cd vs an mp3 imported from same cd, and can also tell the difference between WAV and the format used by iTunes.
So it wasn't "just in my head" after all.
 

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Posted by Greg Anderson (Member # 235) on 12-03-2011, 07:40 PM:
 

quote: Bobby Henderson

---

Tone your anger down a notch or two...

---

quote: Greg Anderson

---

Um, riiiiiight. I'm so angry.

---

quote: Robert E. Allen

---

I'm still morning the demise of LPs.

---

As opposed to evening them?
 

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Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 12-04-2011, 01:43 PM:
 

quote: Greg Anderson

---

iTunes is for the mass market and it has raised the quality standard for the vast majority of consumers.

---

quote: Aaron Garman

---

We'll never see lossless adoption across the board for music until cell carriers/ISPs improve their bandwith and make it easier to download large files.

---

quote: Aaron Garman

---

Of course, there is other music I want to listen critically to, like John Williams' upcoming score to War Horse, which I plan to purchase on CD.

---

quote: Aaron Garmin

---

I was in my car after the Muppets, humming We Built this City by Starship, and really wanted the song. So I got on my iPhone and paid $.99 for the impulse.

---

quote: Joe Redifer

---

Wow, and people thought driving and texting is dangerous. I guess it's OK to drive and browse/purchase in iTunes. That's not dangerous or inconsiderate of other people's lives at all.

---

I purchased it when I sat in my car after the movie before even driving away. It's funny, because legally I could buy it while driving, as Indiana's law only bans texting and emailing while driving. I could theoretically web surf legally too, but I don't.

With all this talk about Starship, what about Cobra Starship?

AJG
 

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Posted by Jonathan M. Crist (Member # 413) on 12-06-2011, 02:43 PM:
 
CDS =RIP 2012?

2012: The End of Music Compact Discs (From the Website: Digital Film Tree)

Are you ready for a format refresh?

Well, ready or not, new reports have surfaced that the music compact discs will be a thing of the past, come 2012.

It’s been a foregone conclusion for some time that all optical media is going to fade away within the next few years. Formats such as CD, DVD and Blu Ray have taken a beating from online download and cloud-based initiatives.

Now, it is the turn of music CD to die. The reports say that major labels will do away with music CDs come the end of 2012. And that any music CDs published after that point would be special editions, sold through outlets such as Amazon.
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-06-2011, 03:51 PM:
 
^^^ AFAIK, CDS died in the early 1990's.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-06-2011, 05:16 PM:
 

quote: Jonathan M. Crist

---

The reports say that major labels will do away with music CDs come the end of 2012.

---

quote: Bobby Henderson

---

I'm not sure why these "physical media is dead" articles keep appearing.

---

It's sensationalism. The media is trolling you. It's supposed to be shocking and make everyone freak out or angry. Like Mike says, there's no source for this kind of BS and it's all speculation at best.
 

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Posted by Edward Havens (Member # 4715) on 12-07-2011, 02:41 AM:
 
My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Simon Cowell say "CDs are dead" at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.
 

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Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 12-14-2011, 11:26 PM:
 
10 Things that sucked about music industry...



1....

2....

3. The (Almost) Death of the CD

All indications tell us that 2011 will be the last year in which CD sales outperform digital ones. In fact, many industry insiders predict that by this time next year, most record labels won't even bother making them anymore. So long liner notes... so long those annoying sticky labels we never, ever thought we'd miss. It was nice while it lasted.

4....

5....
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-15-2011, 12:00 AM:
 
Shit. Guess it's 100% true, then. I'm sure glad I believe everything I read.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-16-2011, 03:23 PM:
 
Tom's article is actually called "10 things that sucked about MUSIC in 2011," not the "music industry." Even so, the article is stupid on many levels. The thing on CDs is flawed because it falls back on the ever-popular "many industry insiders" but never quotes any real sources.

#5 and #8, I agree with. So the article has 20% validity.
 

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Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 12-16-2011, 05:14 PM:
 
Here is another good article.

Labels Like 2011's CD Numbers...Except The One On The Bottom Line

By Ed Christman, New York

Label executives may gnash their teeth about the razor-thin profit margins they derive from the $5 CD being sold in corrugated fixtures and at speed tables in Walmart and Best Buy. But they like the sales bump that this year's new popular consumer item is giving the industry.

Indeed, some label sales and distribution executives credit the $5 CD with reclaiming floor space previously lost to other product lines in big-box stores. Some even predict the $5 CD will help extend the life of CDs at such retailers.

While budget CDs and cut-out titles have long sold for $5 and less, Walmart's expanding rollout of $5 CDs beginning in January proved key to revitalizing sales. In the last five years, CD sales have declined 18%-20% annually, and in first-quarter 2011, CD sales were down 12.8%, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Since the end of the first quarter, CD sales are down only 1.9%, for an overall decline of 5.1% for the format year to date.

On the negative side, sources speculate that even though all album sales are up 2% this year, dollar volume is almost certainly down.

Titles placed in the $5 bucket range from deep catalog albums to hit releases nearing the end of their initial run. With the latter titles, labels are using the $5 price point as a liquidating strategy to avoid returns when sales slow.

Along with the location provided by the high-profile bins, one sales executive says the program with Walmart is succeeding because it provides "an impulse purchase based on the surprise of seeing well-known titles at a low price."

After Walmart started finding success with the $5 CD, Best Buy jumped in with its Treasure Bin, and sources say Target is considering getting into the $5 CD market. "It's getting stores to carry titles that they normally wouldn't have in stock," the head of sales for an East Coast-based major label says. "You see a title that normally will sell 20 copies a week jumping to 400 copies."

The head of sales for a West Coast-based major adds that consumers are clearly embracing the lower pricing. "That has given all of us optimism about the physical format," he says. "It shows that we still have a physical business, even though the mainstream press seems delighted to report the CD is done."

The West Coast executive says his label's sales are about 55% digital, 45% physical. But digital sales aren't eclipsing physical sales with the same speed the CD enjoyed when it topped the cassette, or even as quickly as the cassette did when it supplanted vinyl, he adds.

The downside is the reduced margin. "It still costs as much to make a $5 CD as it does to make a new one," the executive says.

Indeed, one major-label distribution executive says he's not a fan of the $5 CD because of the slim margin. "We do it with titles that make sense but are getting pressure to do it more," he says. "We are all supporting a bad initiative that is not helping the industry." He argues that the increased floor space is actually a false triumph, and that the $5 CD is eating into overall music space in big boxes, leaving manufacturers with "less space devoted to music where we can make money," he says. "I personally think it is bad news, because it is a race to the bottom. None of the suppliers win in that kind of race."

However, the growth of simultaneously released deluxe editions with higher price points, complete-catalog boxed sets and extravagantly packaged reissues of classic albums are helping the industry counterbalance the low margins on $5 CDs as well as the overall downward pressure that the CD has experienced in the last five years.

As a result of the increased demand for both budget and deluxe product, the industry came into the holiday selling season facing a problem it hasn't had to deal with in years: CD manufacturing is at maximum capacity.

"With everyone at capacity because of the $5 CD," the distribution executive says, "we can't get the titles we make money on manufactured."

Labels Like 2011's CD Numbers
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-16-2011, 05:20 PM:
 
I've got an idea. Let's revisit this thread at the end of 2012 and see who was right. I'm sure sales will go down, but completely eliminating or nearly eliminating CDs? Not gonna happen in 1 year's time.
 

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Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 12-16-2011, 05:25 PM:
 
I dunno joe.

Laserdiscs were decreasing year after year when DVD was introduced...then all of sudden everyone stopped making them.

I could see it happening
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-16-2011, 05:46 PM:
 
Laserdisks were never more than a niche market. CDs are bought by millions of people who don't want to, or can't, or won't, download their music.

There are millions upon millins of CD players being used today, not to mention the additional millions of computer CD-ROM drives that can read CDs. Laserdisks never had a prayer of getting to that kind of market penetration.
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-16-2011, 06:10 PM:
 
Anyone care to place a friendly wager? Tom?
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-16-2011, 08:23 PM:
 
Something else to consider: If the music biz suddenly stopped making CDs, most current CD buyers would stop buying "albums" and cherry-pick their favorites -- or not buy music at all. The industry's revenue would shrink to about 25% of its current size, if that.

The industry had an incentive to dump Laserdisk: DVD. There is no such incentive with CD. In the digital world sales will be less, not more. (Although I will admit there are probably some 30-year-old "suits" who don't get that.)
 

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Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 12-16-2011, 11:27 PM:
 

quote: Mike Blakesley

---

most current CD buyers would stop buying "albums" and cherry-pick their favorites -- or not buy music at all.

---

I don't agree with you. I think music lovers will find a way to get their music online, they just won't give up on music. At the end of the day, I don't think anyone really knows when, or what will happen if or when CDs are done.

And yet here is another article, looks like everyone is trying to write about this topic. This one is the best to date IMO.

The disc versus the download: is the CD really set to disappear?

You can download a huge music library without ever leaving home, but reports of the compact disc’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, writes BRIAN BOYD
IT WAS INEVITABLE. The report went like this. By the end of next year the major record labels are planning to have abandoned the CD and replaced it with downloads and streams through iTunes and similar music services. That’s because the CD is an anachronism from a pre-online era, according to the online music magazine Side-Line. CDs won’t disappear completely, the report continued, but the format will occupy as small a niche as vinyl does now. Its end not only makes economic sense, as downloads are cheaper than a physical product to provide, but is also in tune with how we consume music in these days of the smartphone and the tablet.

The story was widely blogged and tweeted, and almost everyone accepted that technological progress had lapped the physical CD and that we were going to live our cultural life happily ever after in the cloud.

There’s just one problem with the Side-Line story: it’s wrong. At first it looked solid: more and more people are opting for downloads, and CDs have the drawback, when they don’t sell as well as expected, of leaving retailers and record labels with return and storage costs. Downloads, on the other hand, incur no packaging, transport or storage costs and minimal distribution costs.

Music stores have been giving CDs less and less floor space in recent years, as video games are now the big sellers on the high street. More people are getting their music from iTunes and other digital services, and a whole generation of music consumers each own hundreds of albums but have never touched a CD.

After Side-Line published its story, people started to wonder about magazines, books and films. Surely, the argument ran, if it’s cheaper, easier and more convenient to acquire music, books and films online, we’re looking at the end not only of the CD but also of physical copies of books and films as well.

BUT WHAT IF THE END is not nigh for the CD? And what if that means our cultural future will not be entirely digital? Side-Line contacted three major labels – Universal, EMI and Sony – about its story, but all declined to comment. That probably fuelled a grassy-knoll theory that the majors had privately decided to kill off the CD next year but didn’t want the news to be reported too soon.

This week, at least, it was easy to find music-industry people who will talk about the future of the compact disc. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry represents the interests of the recording industry worldwide, and CD sales are its lifeblood. “This story was first written back in October, and as far as I can see it hasn’t gained any credibility at all,” says Adrian Strain, the federation’s director of communications. “CDs still account for more than 60 per cent of industry revenues globally – more than 70 per cent in some markets, such as Germany – and there is still healthy consumer demand for the physical product. This is despite the rapid growth we have seen in the industry’s digital revenues.”

Gennaro Castlado, a spokesman for HMV, says, “I don’t think we should write off the CD just yet, as there are still a huge number of people who like the idea of owning and collecting music in physical formats, especially when they can make their own digital copies to get the best of both worlds. There will be a viable market for CDs for quite a while to come.”

Universal, the world’s biggest record label, says it has no intention of stopping production of CDs, pointing out that discs have made up 72 per cent of album sales in the UK and Ireland this year. If you look at last week’s Irish album chart, you will find that the number-one album, Christmas by Michael Bublé, sold 10,610 copies, of which only 654 were digital copies.

DOMINO RECORDS, HOME to artists such as Arctic Monkeys and King Creosote, is one of the biggest independent labels. Its director, John Dyer, says, “I’ve just been looking at the digital sales for Susan Boyle. They amount to 0.5 per cent of her total sales. The other 99.5 per cent is for CD sales. What you get with a lot of these stories about new technology killing off old formats is an incredibly American- and UK-centric view of the world. I know of certain European territories where the people are just culturally averse to using their credit card online to buy a download. Spain, to take just one example, doesn’t really go for the digital format.”

Susan Boyle illustrates where the story about the supposed demise of the CD was right. The people who buy her music tend not to use smartphones or iTunes. The same is broadly true for classical recordings and for country music and rock’n’roll, all of which appeal to an older, CD-buying audience.

With more contemporary genres, the gap between digital and physical sales is narrowing. Over the next few years, CDs will become less important in sales of pop, hip hop, urban, and r’n’b, as teenage music fans are already used to the one-click model of getting music.

Age alone isn’t the defining factor. Certain types of consumers demand the physical album, book or film. They enjoy the tactile sensation, the artwork and the way the objects are presented. People also like to look at and organise their collections, not just move them around a desktop with a mouse.

The CD-is-dead theory also assumes that people can afford high-speed broadband or that they can easily spend €500 on new devices. The drift to digital will continue because of its convenience and its generally more competitive prices. But the CD is safe for now. A large section of us, for whatever reason – economic, social or personal taste – will always prefer the tangible product.
Why CDs still rock

They look great Granted, they are made of unlovely plastic, but they are shiny and, even after three decades, look futuristic. And the music they hold is read by lasers. Which is still very Tomorrow’s World.

The sonic experience Yes, audiophile anoraks might think music should be listened to only on a beach at midnight surrounded by scented candles and only on vinyl. But, for the rest of us, the CD does the job just fine.

You can freeze them Apparently, if you put your CDs into a freezer for a few days the result is superior sound quality. It can also remove scratches.

The album sleeves Never as big as with vinyl, but with a CD at least there’s a bit of art to it. Downloads have made the album cover almost invisible.

Arts and crafts You can make sculptures from them. I once made a beautiful shiny fish from a Westlife CD.

Disc versus the Download
 

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-17-2011, 12:28 AM:
 
Will you please stop posting articles? They don't make a difference one way or another. It's all speculation. Did you know that the future is, in fact, in the future?
 

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Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 12-17-2011, 09:21 AM:
 
No problem Joe
 

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Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 12-17-2011, 07:08 PM:
 
$5 CDs are a good start- I've seen those dump bins in stores but the way they're (dis)organized I'm not patient enough to look through them, unless something I want is on the top (like those stupid DVD bins Wal-Mart has had for a while.) Figures record company people would already be whining about those, shows they still need to be taught a few more lessons. Don't know if I mentioned it before, but all the record stores in my area that priced CDs at list are no longer in business! I kind of miss going into Musicland at the mall and being disgusted at their prices
 

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Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 12-17-2011, 07:36 PM:
 
Jesse, did you know WalMart is the largest music retailer in the world?
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-17-2011, 08:05 PM:
 
The most recent Tom Petrov article shows that he doesn't even read the stuff he's posting, since it argues that the CD is NOT, in fact, about to disappear.
 

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Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 12-17-2011, 10:52 PM:
 
Mike- I will post both sides of the argument if it came be found.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-18-2011, 12:46 PM:
 
You HAVE both sides of the argument right here in this thread. Apparently you don't believe the word of real people with hands-on experience as much as you believe random writers from the internet.
 

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Posted by Jesse Skeen (Member # 586) on 12-18-2011, 10:38 PM:
 

quote: Robert E. Allen

---

Jesse, did you know WalMart is the largest music retailer in the world?

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quote: Joe Redifer

---

Wal*Mart is run by pussies.

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quote: Jesse Skeen

---

If I were going on a record-shopping trip Wal-Mart would be the last place I'd think of stopping at.

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quote: Chris Slycord

---

I still chuckle remembering that refused to carry an album by Nirvana

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quote: Chris Slycord

---

they felt customers would be offended by the cover and the song titled "Rape Me."

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quote: Jake Spell

---

I now usually listen to Pandora radio.

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quote: Monte L Fullmer

---

plus tonnage of streaming audio stations through shoutcast.

---

quote:

---

Compression SUCKS!

---

quote: Tom Petrov

---

I can listen to any station in the world while I am driving.

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quote: Tom Petrov

---

Changing, burning, inserting, taking out CDs sucks even more.

---

quote: Tom Petrov

---

Changing, burning, inserting, taking out CDs sucks even more.

---

quote: Bobby Henderson

---

I rip the CD audio to a hard disc in uncompressed quality. That takes care of the problem of switching discs while preserving their biggest strength: superior audio quality.

---

quote: Bruce McGee

---

All my vehicles have a cassette player on them. Remember those?

---

My 2003 truck has one of those
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-22-2011, 09:03 PM:
 

quote: Tom Petrov

---

You really hear the difference while working out or bike riding?

---

Yes. It's not all that difficult to tell the difference if you have some decent head phones and listen objectively.

The LPCM-based .WAV music files typically have a more full bodied sound. I can compress copies of the music file into various constant bit rate or variable bit rate settings. The end result doesn't have the same punch to it and there's a noticeable level of detail missing.

In Adobe Audition I can visibly see differences when comparing LPCM music file to a copy of it in MP3 at various settings. The wave form will have show some differences. When you bring up the Spectral Frequency Display the differences are even more obvious. A great deal of subtle details are erased particularly at the top end.

Here's a couple partial screen shots from Adobe Audition:





The screen shot examples I posted use the song Money by Pink Floyd. One image is from the original .WAV. The other is from a MP3 copy compressed at 256kbps, a common quality level for lossy compressed music sold online. Even with the window shrunk to fit this forum's 800 pixel limit (and significantly JPEG compressed) the visual differences between the two are obvious. You can see a lot more of what's missing in the compressed version when zooming in closely using a 1920 X 1080 pixel monitor. The original WAV file has more audio "meat" in it.
 

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 12-22-2011, 09:33 PM:
 
In the days when audiophiles would fret over ever last decimal place of every last spec in the audio chain, there was an expression used when a product had all the right specs but lacked a certain quality which was hard to quantify -- but you knew it when you heard it (or better put, when you didn't hear it). We would say that a speaker system or an amp or cartridge, etc. caused "listening fatigue." Such a system would sound good initially, but if you were listening SERIOUSLY to the music -- like sitting down with the lights soft or off and NO DISTRACTIONS and you were listening to a Beethoven symphony or any other real piece of music that actually had dynamic range -- it would sound great at first, but listen for awhile and you would experience what could best be called listening fatigue. The ear strains to hear things it knows should be there but that the system just can't deliver -- all those subtle nuances which you want to hear but don't. All the crap that comes over the internet and the MP3 format and out of what Bobby so rightly calls them -- Apple TOYS -- they all cause NOTHING BUT listening fatigue. And you don't have to listen for half an hour or an hour like we did sometime with those wanting system; with this stuff, you get it within minutes.

This is why I get disgusted with the classical OTA FM stations that think it makes them oh so cool to stream serious music over the internet....and they have the audacity to brag about it. The phase distortion can get so bad with WQRX (NY's only classical station) that it sounds like the music is going thru a phasing WaWa effects peddle. Audiophiles back then would save up every penny to buy the best phase-lock loop (PLL) FM tuner -- today we listen to this stuff on the internet and laugh. It's a joke.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-22-2011, 09:51 PM:
 
"HD Digital Radio" was a big insult to the intelligence of the listening public -as if 64kbps or 96kbps compression was "HD" or befitting the broadcast of material like classical music or jazz. Here in Lawton Cameron University's radio station is doing just that.

One more thing I wanted to say about the Adobe Audition screen shots I posted, the MP3 version not only has a considerable amount of top end clipped, but a good amount of dither/noise was added. It's artificial looking. The fall-off at the top in the WAV file is more even and natural.
 

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Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-23-2011, 12:29 AM:
 
Yes, even in the lower resolution in those screen samples that Bobby placed above, I can see the lesser signal strength in the Mp3 file against the original WAV, esp in the mid-range sections.

Then, what bites is when you take those downloaded MP3 files and 'explode' them back into a WAV file for audio CD burn and playback..

..like hearing a playback from a cassette dupe that came from a cassette source.

There was once a method of duping audio for archival purposes and that was: to dupe analog audio to VHS tape in VCR's that were "HiFi" units since this was an FM based audio process. Also, since some of the early "HiFi" VCR's (Panasonic units and units made by Panasonic for other manufacturers) actually had separate audio record/playback capabilities.

The process would turn off the video section of the spinning head and just used the audio heads on the head drum.

Playback was close to CD quality in dB being that CD was over 100dB and VHS "HiFi" audio was in the 90dB range. It didn't matter what speed the tape was in-from SP to SLP mode....and it was still pure analog sound being FM based. Also, in this units, was the "add-on" in the circuit called "dBX sound expander", where the analog signal was compressed, then expanded during playback - an early form of signal compression.

Thus, duping a cassette to VHS greatly enhanced the quality playback with the tape playing back through the VHS VCR, against the source tape due to the high dB range.

Sadly, not too many knew about this process, were the main market for "HiFi' was mainly for VHS playback, thus this above option faded away quickly in manufacturing VCR units.
 

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Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-23-2011, 01:32 AM:
 

quote: Bobby Henderson

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WAV files are compatible with more devices. For instance, I don't think a Playstation 3 will play audio files stored in FLAC lossless format.

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quote: Chris Slycord was the last to post

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the HD in HD Radio stands for

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quote: Michael Barry

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I'm in Australia

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I fixed your avatar for you:


 

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Posted by Michael Barry (Member # 237) on 12-25-2011, 06:18 AM:
 
Hehe!!! Too funny!
 

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