Re: The End of Record "Albums?"

Margaret Wilson wrote:
Well I'm a hair short of 44, so count me as an "old fart." I buy CDs and regret having sold my entire LP collection 20 years ago to finance my CD "habit." I don't buy downloadable music because I believe a CD has better sound quality, and I want what's left of the album "experience," that is, liner notes, etc. I liked 'em better when they were LP-sized, but hey.

When I buy a CD, I always digitize it for portability when I go out walking. I am slooooooooooowly digitizing my existing 400+ CD collection, but it's taking ages. I, too, consider the MP3 (though I use WMA) and its players simply as more convenient "walkmen." I will be greatly saddened when music is available by download only. :-( I hope it doesn't happen, but that's how it looks for audio *and* video. 

OTOH, if higher resolution (24-bit, 96K sampling rate) is presented for
online sale, and the last mile of bandwidth gets over the hump, you
could be looking at higher quality music than std 16-bit 44K Cds.

Mp3s and other lossy compression at lowish, but still accepted
rates,*do* sound worse, and I'm not a audiophool by any means.
So I understand where you are coming from re: quality.  Higher
sampling rate (192K or variable sampling rate)are good quality,
but they only compress 5:1 or so.  The lower, and more downloadable
fixed rate sampling compress more like 10:1, but it *does* sound
worse even over a mid-range home stereo.  Non-compressed 24-bit
represents far larger files.  600MB for 16-bit 44K...do the math
on the 24-bit 96K for a relatively standard 45 min "album".

For car, or walkman, I don't think it matters, but if you pay good
money for your archival "golden" copy of a song or album, IMO, you
want top quality...so buying online for me, would require either a
hell of a lot of time, or dramatically increased bandwidth. Unless
the, say, 64K Mp3s are much cheaper than a buck like today.

Re: the "non-lossy" compression routines I saw reference to out here,
I have real doubts...I looked at the site and I couldn't find a
compression ratio.  I've written and rewritten a few data compression
programs....I know what it takes to compress data non-lossy...and music
and other similar binary data do not lend themselves to non-lossy
compression....unless the data *in* was chopped down somehow.

It would be trivial to print off liner notes...but that assumes
the record companies would even entertain the thought of providing
them...or "albums" for that matter.

We shall see.










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