New decade, end of the CD?

 

That was my point on the kevlar. Today you find that material in a lot of mid range priced speakers, versus 20yrs ago maybe only in the upper end price range.

Just as you saw a lot of speaker cabinets 20-30yrs ago made from particleboard (as the choice of cheap material) but this product is extremely porous which made the need for those 300mm to 380mm woofers.

With HDF the low end seems much more tighter and you can get away with smaller drivers......Plus it gives the box some substance.

 

I don't think there will be another hardcopy media to replace CD - solidstate was tried and never caught on - it's going to be download and stream - local "storage" will be much like the Kindle model - temporary licence only and managed by the vendor not the buyer. The big push for *cloud* computing (or the Internet as I still like to call it) is heading everyone down this path whether we want it or not - we will dumbly handover control of our data to one of the three or four major megacorps that own the software we will need to listen to it and the concept of "owning" copies of any album or film will be but a memory.

Currently the music format of choice is still mp3 ... without any digital rights management. I think we'll see a similar change for ebooks, eventually.

That's one way of looking at it. I prefer to see music as vibrations coming out of speakers ... any means of producing those vibrations is fine with me. I have hundreds of vinyls, about a thousand CDs and thousands of (legal) mp3s ... all of them result in actual music coming out of speakers, and *that's* what really matters to me.

 

It is not so much the format that has "won" but the delivery system and I predict that music delivery will follow that. By limiting the transfer of files from a controlled source to a controlled receptor all DRM is unnecessary. The majority of music-buyers (who are technologically illiterate) will receive their music from Amazon or ITunes direct to their wifi music player, (or *cloud bubble* or whatever they'll call your remote storage facility) then stream that locally by wifi, 3G or bluetooth to where ever they want to hear it, be that their hi-fi, pc, portable mp3 player, car-head unit or smart-phone. Since the supplier will own and control the software on the receptor it will not be possible to copy this file without hacking into the stream, but without a means of playback for that hacked data there wouldn't be much point anyway. Of course this won't deter the determined, but the megacorps don't need to - all they need to deter is the masses.

 

The technology of this system is already here, and the "mentality" to adopt it is already with us. The speed at which the wide-eyed public is willing to accept a piece of hardware with no external I/O is bewildering, and the headlong rush to *the cloud* will be equally as stagering once that killer App that renders *the cloud* as indispensible has been produced/invented/discovered. By the time people realise they don't actually own anything they've paid for it will be too late.

True, however with colege text books the price difference is INSANE my freind just got a kindle version of his $200 text book for only (I think he sayed) $25. Just hearing that makes me think that buying a kindle or similar device would actually be worth it based on the cost I would save buying text books. (plus the fact that it comes with free classics is awsome)

 

As for music I like to have CDs because I like artwork and linear notes and showing them off. However I do download music when its free online and I used to download all the time because my parents always got me itunes gift cards for christmas and birthdays also I will download things that are rare and are significantly cheaper digitally. Currently my collection is 50%digital 50% physical. Sometimes I have somthing digitally that I want to have a hard copy of because I like it so much and I go out and buy the CD.

The ability to manufacture vinyl was kept viable by the dance scene where DJs needed 12" vinyl for their "performance" and the consumer wanted what the DJs had (because they all wanted to be DJs too).

 

In other scenes vinyl is a niche market and for many artists, a marketing ploy/gimmick - what says "we take our music seriously man" quicker and more effectively than releasing their latest album as a vinyl?

 

It may look like consumer demand, but it is a supplier created demand.