How long before CDs are obsolete?

[Bake]

I mean, it's bound to be coming, with everything going electronic "to the cloud." So how long do you predict they'll last?

Ten years? Twenty? What say you?

I think ten, personally, but that's just a SWAG.

:hi:

Bake

[JanMichael]

1. I guess until they all break. 20 years maybe?

Half of ours are already beat up from use.

[Tikki]

7. Worst music capture ever....

Tikki

[Shagbark Hickory]

29. When they stop installing CD drives in computers and car stereos.

Just leave it up to the corporations to say when.

[trof]

2. Pretty much already here.

IMHO

[quakerboy]

3. Before, are? Surely you mean since, became

Last time I bought a CD was circa 2000. And I was a hold out.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

4. I like CDs because of their full frequency range.

I don't like MP3s because of the compression.

[Bake]

5. I agree on the compression.

I haven't bought a CD in years. But at what point will the record companies stop making them?

Bake

[guitar man]

18. I agree

mp3, AAC and other portable music formats aound like shit compared to uncompressed 16 bit PCM. It's frustrating to us in the recording industry that we are getting better digital technology to record with and all too often our product winds up going from breathtaking sound quality at 24 bit mashed all the way down into a crappy sounding little file for "convenience". :banghead:

[begin_within]

36. CDs have always sounded cold to me.

I can't explain it, but vinyl LP albums have a warmer and richer sound to me than CD did.

[Archae]

6. CD's will go obsolete like vinyl has...

Wait, vinyl records are still being made? :-)

Don't forget all the CD players in cars.

It'll be decades before they are gone. If ever.

[Bake]

15. Oh, come now!

Can you see Captain Kirk in his quarters on the Enterprise sticking a CD into a CD player?

At some point CDs will be no more, surely.

:hi:

Bake

[kentauros]

24. Well, they did have those little plastic colored-coded card thingies

that looked a helluva lot like a 3.5" floppy :P

[applegrove]

8. My dad had some old vinyl records and bought a brand new record player

3 years ago. So CDs will be obsolete with the exception of online..where you will be able to buy anything.

[Initech]

9. They can have my blu-ray burner when they pry it from my cold dead hands!

[lazarus]

10. what's a CD?

:evilgrin:

I think ten is a good estimate, it'll all be downloads or vinyl after that.

[bluedigger]

11. A while yet, I hope.

You know, until old farts like me who don't give a rat's ass about moving all our music to the next 'media format to end all formats' every five friggin' years and just want some new damn tunes in the Jeep die off...:rant:

[kentauros]

12. When they make all downloads available in FLAC

instead of only mp3 ;)

[guitar man]

19. Exactly

mp3 isn't an audiophile format by a long shot. Hell, when I'm done mixing a project at my studio I really like, I'll save a copy of the 24 bit uncompressed .aiff files and burn them to a data DVD so I can listen to them in a wave editor when I want to :)

[kentauros]

23. MP3 is acceptable for a portable device,

but only if it's compressed at no less than 200kbps. Best is no less than 320kbps, but good luck finding them that way on Amazon or itoons. I do use mp3s on my "better-than-ipod" media player, at the higher rate. Plus, my player can handle all those formats ipod can't, like FLAC, APE and Ogg. So, if you're going to compress (because you don't have $800 for a HiFiMAN portable!) use the lossless formats, not mp3 or whatever the other ones are (I don't use them so I don't pay them any mind ;))


I had to look up what the rate was for MP3s on Amazon and am a bit stunned by their statement on that subject:

Guide to Making MP3 Files
by T. Byrl Baker and Agen G.N. Schmitz

In our experience, recording at a higher bit rate isn't worth the extra space, as the audio quality doesn't increase dramatically until you approach CD audio bit rates. Recording at 96 Kbps is a decent compromise, resulting in more compact recordings that sound like FM radio broadcasts.

I guess the two that wrote this are not discerning audiophiles. More likely, they use iPods, so 128kbps is in line with the rest of that philosophy, i.e., "It's good enough."

[guitar man]

26. "recordings that sound like FM radio broadcasts"

That's enough to turn me off right there...my gawd nobody can ruin audio quality like modern FM radio stations can :(

I'll have to admit that 256k is not all that bad, even though I can hear it, it's not completely ruining the music like 128 or lower can...the guys that wrote that must be near deaf.

I recorded the basic band tracks at my studio for cut #5 on this new compilation Shooter Jennings is promoting. It's download only so I was a little apprehensive about how it would sound as a mp3, but all in all I don't think it turned out too bad. They did a real good job doing the overdubs and mixing it down at the studio in TX so it stood up to the conversion pretty well :)

If you want to check it out it comes as a zip file with mp3s, the song title is "Another Love Song" It's the most visible recording I've made yet :)

http://www.kikaxemusic.com/news/country/item/4521-free-download-southern-independent-vol-3-feat-waylon-jennings-yelawolf-more

[OriginalGeek]

33. That's cool!

Shooter is one of the few country artists I listen to fairly regularly. But he had a head start since I am a huge fan of his daddy.

[guitar man]

34. Shooter us one of the good guys

He could have done a lot of things with his dad's name and fortune, but he's out there trying to help out and give a hand up to a lot of good artists that otherwise wouldn't have a chance because they don't fit the big record industry's cookie cutter approach. He's a real breath of fresh air in a hard, cut throat industry.

[Skip Intro]

13. Much sooner. Pay and download online, copy to thumb drive, plug into player or car stereo...

physical media will be obsolete in less than ten years, probably much, much sooner...

(this is also why Netflix's spinning off of their dvd delivery service makes all kinds of sense)

[guitar man]

27. I see it coming too

But the real question is going to be, pay for what? Mp3? At a buck or more a song? Not me, they better get the format sounding a hell of a lot better than it does now if they want me to pay that much. I might pay a quarter a piece for that low grade sounding crap but if I'm going to buy music, they need to step it up on the sound quality... a lot

[InvisibleTouch]

14. I happily switched from CDs to an mp3 player.

Holds a lot more music than a CD, and I'm rid of so much clutter! I'm not enough of an audiophile to even notice if there's a difference in sound quality as some claim; I just want to enjoy the songs I like.

I give CDs another 5 years, at most.

[meegbear]

16. Only an iTard would use an iCloud ...

Digital is already here - sites like Amazon offer the CD or mp3 download, but I don't see it happening for a while.

I' still waiting for the predicted end of newspapers.

[Bake]

17. That's gonna happen too.

Sooner or later.

:hi:

Bake

[guitar man]

20. one of two things has to happen

either

A.)Uncompressed file formats like FLAC become a standard offering for downloads

or

B.) Somebody come up with a way to make the "portable" files like mp3 and aac sound a LOT better.

I'm not sure what percentage of the music buying public we make up, but there are those of us who just won't abide paying good money for an inferior sounding product.

And yes, mp3 has it's place in the music world, to me it's the evolution of the cassette tape, an inferior sounding format that has it's uses, like sending out new music for my band to learn and sending rough mixes of works in progress out of the studio. It certainly isn't very pleasant to listen to though :(

[The2ndWheel]

21. It's like a race with no finish line

[hunter]

22. CDs are those silver things I sometimes buy in the thrift store.

I transfer the music imprinted upon them to my computer and then I put them in a box in my garage, out of sight, out of mind.

[AtomicKitten]

25. Vinyl has made a resurgence.

[dawg]

28. The physical media does not matter .... but I miss albums.

CD's ruined albums and digital formats are completing the process of killing them off completely.

When albums came on LP records, the inherent time constraint forced the band to edit down to the best 40 or 50 minutes of the recording session. If a band came up with two songs that sounded pretty similar, the best one made the record and the other one wound up as a b-side to a single or something.

With the CD, pretty much every passable track made it to the album. Albums ceased being works of art, parts that made a greater whole. They became boring, bloated, collections of tracks.

Now, with the digital format, we'll all just make our own playlists anyway, so bands barely even bother.

When I think about albums like Abbey Road, The Yes Album, Who's Next, or Led Zeppelin II, I realize that we aren't going to see the likes of those again.

[Bake]

31. But there's also the album artwork, and the liner notes.

You don't get that with e-downloads ...

What would Layla be without that incredible cover painting? Still a great song (one of the great songs of all time!), but the cover art added an icon to it.

:hi:

Bake

[Duer 157099]

30. The problem with clouds is that they eventually evaporate

I worry for the day when data clouds evaporate unexpectedly.

[dembotoz]

32. nice thing about cds and vynil is that you have it in your hands

hard drive dies--no problem

loose your mp3--no problem

get most my cds used
fine with me.

[CatholicEdHead]

35. Already are

The last few I have bought were 25 or 50 cents at library sales.