What the heck ... I might as well throw my 2 cents in. I read through most of the posts ... it's the Agon version of Row V Wade.
I side with the "right to vinyl" guys for their purity of heart ... I still have some vintage stuff on vinyl and I am secretly plotting at least $2500 for a table when the time is right. I'll never part with my albums ... EVER!
I side with the CD guys because I have about 1500 titles and a good many are not available on vinyl, SACD or DVD-A ... CD's are small, don’t degrade for the most part and are widely available. I love my Krell/Levinson combo and like my forefathers have already mentioned ... with the right recording it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up ... and all my problems melt away. That’s good enough for me.
I side with the DVD-A and SACD guys because I work in the computer field and like it or not they have the potential for a significant improvement over standard CD ... although at this point it might be moot. I think harddrives might eventually beat all the digital format players out. The hardware will never keep up with the fickle nature of software and harddrives don’t care. Whip up and new front end or plugin for your existing player and you are good to go! 100% backward and forward compatible.
Look at Winamp ... it's been around for years and now plays all the new formats with just a simple free plugin. Good luck keeping up with that! Check the posts on digitizing sound ... you can now take a Redbook CD - stick it in your PC run EAC and have a digital representation of it that is indistinguishable. When you see some of these guys dumping $30,000 reference CD playback systems to go to a PC - you have to figure it must be that good. I will judge that for myself later. I haven’t had too much time to play with it yet … see, I love gizmo’s so the more they change stuff around me … the more I like it.
I’m digressing :
I can see a day when you just pick up the new format as data and copy it to your PC. Let the computer figure out the playback. Sampling rates we can’t yet comprehend and the only hardware will be a DAC which will be flash enabled to handle software upgrades from the same PC. The “player format war” will be a faded memory.
Again ... it's all going after that same sound we let go 25 years ago. The record album … I’m glad to see I can still pick up some titles on vinyl … and yes I’ll pay the $30 only to have my kid make fun of me as the grey hairs on the back of my neck stand tall!
The Horse
I side with the "right to vinyl" guys for their purity of heart ... I still have some vintage stuff on vinyl and I am secretly plotting at least $2500 for a table when the time is right. I'll never part with my albums ... EVER!
I side with the CD guys because I have about 1500 titles and a good many are not available on vinyl, SACD or DVD-A ... CD's are small, don’t degrade for the most part and are widely available. I love my Krell/Levinson combo and like my forefathers have already mentioned ... with the right recording it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up ... and all my problems melt away. That’s good enough for me.
I side with the DVD-A and SACD guys because I work in the computer field and like it or not they have the potential for a significant improvement over standard CD ... although at this point it might be moot. I think harddrives might eventually beat all the digital format players out. The hardware will never keep up with the fickle nature of software and harddrives don’t care. Whip up and new front end or plugin for your existing player and you are good to go! 100% backward and forward compatible.
Look at Winamp ... it's been around for years and now plays all the new formats with just a simple free plugin. Good luck keeping up with that! Check the posts on digitizing sound ... you can now take a Redbook CD - stick it in your PC run EAC and have a digital representation of it that is indistinguishable. When you see some of these guys dumping $30,000 reference CD playback systems to go to a PC - you have to figure it must be that good. I will judge that for myself later. I haven’t had too much time to play with it yet … see, I love gizmo’s so the more they change stuff around me … the more I like it.
I’m digressing :
I can see a day when you just pick up the new format as data and copy it to your PC. Let the computer figure out the playback. Sampling rates we can’t yet comprehend and the only hardware will be a DAC which will be flash enabled to handle software upgrades from the same PC. The “player format war” will be a faded memory.
Again ... it's all going after that same sound we let go 25 years ago. The record album … I’m glad to see I can still pick up some titles on vinyl … and yes I’ll pay the $30 only to have my kid make fun of me as the grey hairs on the back of my neck stand tall!
The Horse