Quote:
Originally Posted by HamsterRage
Analog, by definition, is going to have issues with noise. It also depends heavily on the quality of the media and the playback equipment.
Digital, on the other hand, only has the noise that came along from the recording equipment itself. The digitizing process itself, though, loses some of the qualities of the original sound - it's only an approximation.
It should be noted that CDs are an obsolete format. They were designed to store the data on a media with what we would consider today to have an extremely small capacity. The reason that they haven't been replaced with newer technology is because nobody is going to invest in playback equipment for a newer physical media, especially when people are moving toward downloaded music.
For the vast amount of pop and rock music, it isn't really possible to hear much difference between a CD and an MP3 at 192kbps, and even harder at 256kbps. There's really no reason why digital formats in the future can't run at much higher sample rates or use more bits per sample, all of which will shrink the difference between analog and digital.
A quick Google search came up with an article that indicated that digital sales would outstrip CD sales in 2010.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald
Amazon's now doing their mp3s at 320kbps. I also do my rips at that sample rate. Even that high of a rate is roughly 1/10 the size of a wave file. One would have to have some really good equipment and an even better ear to hear the difference.
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I think a factor in the format of digital file formats is the limitations of technology due to cost and space. In the past memory was extremely expensive so digital audio players had a very small capacity by today's standard. When I bought my first MP3 player, I chose a CD/MP3 player because it was more affordable than a flash player for the same amount of capacity (700mb) and I could quickly load more music without needing to connect my player to a computer.
One of the main reasons that compressed audio formats were important was due to the limited capacity of audio players. With compression, you can fit a relatively large amount of music in a small amount of storage. In the above example, it was possible for me to fit more than 10 hours of compressed music on one CD.
Now, the limitations of storage capacity and cost have been significantly reduced. Now, 16gb flash audio players are not uncommon and that's enough space to store 21 uncompressed CDs and this amount can be increased via the use of lossless audio formats (like FLAC).
One factor that I see that works against improved audio formats is the "good enough" factor. For many people, CDs are good enough and it is also good enough when a digital audio format sounds the same as a CD even if it is lossy.
Another factor that works against better audio formats is that they tend to be locked down with DRM to prevent things like copying and freely using the music the way you want. One advantage that true CDs have over many formats is that they are not locked down with DRM and can be played on any CD player.
This is one of the reasons I continue to purchase CDs and I only began purchasing music on line when it became available without DRM. If I can't rip a CD and put on my digital audio player, I cannot buy the CD. It is the same downloaded music, if I have to jump through DRM hoops to play music on my audio player, I will pass on purchasing the music.