DSD: how to spilt into tracks?

High-rez should not cost more. If DSD and High-rez formats don't become affordable, they are dead formats. Everyone would be richer, artists finally included, if the distribution chain would get it's act together given the information age (e.g. unprecedented access to large audiences). Piracy won't go away, and it's not likely to be mitigated by HDTracks and Acoustic Sounds efforts to make "high-resolution audio" accessible but at great cost.

I agree with you that SACD failed for many of the reasons you list. I'd also argue the worst thing...was Apple and the .99 mp3. If they change that to a lossless file for a quarter, then we're getting somewhere. Music is too expensive. They'll sell more, and of course should give the artist more of that new surplus.

 

Very important thing to consider: Apple did not set the prices in the iTunes Store. Those prices were dictated to them by the record labels, and as it was, it took 6 months of arguing for Steve Jobs to convince them to drop the prices to 99 cents. And that was for crappy 128kbps files. Read the Appetite for Self-Destruction book I mentioned elsewhere about how most of the things that caused the music business to collapse happened prior to 2001 and the start of the iTunes Music Store. One could make a good argument that iTunes saved the music business from total collapse, because at least it gave the labels a legal outlet to sell their music and try to overcome the losses due to Napster in the 1990s.

I agree that in a perfect world, the cost of a high-res file should be no more than a regular music file. However, there is precedence for a higher price: HD movies cost twice as much as a standard-def movie. And HDTracks has always charged at least twice as much for a high-res album compared to the typical $9.95 download fee.

 

While you make very valid points, there are many different ways to look at it.

First, no one would argue there are any "downsides" to high res downloads. But the fact is like SACD and DVD-A, they will have utterly no
appeal to the mass market. They are just a niche market as SACD was/is.

Second, not only is physical media tanking, but MUSIC SALES are tanking. This has been discussed ad nauseum on the board. Ownership of music
is no longer a passion among a large swath of the population.

The economy? It hardly has ANYTHING to do with music sales. In the 70's, at the VERY PEAK of music sales, the economy was in shambles.

DSD failed in studios for a number of reasons initially, and yes, one was limited, proprietary hardware/software choices. But as far as quality, DSD
is the REAL THING. I have done extensive comparisons with 192 Khz, and most of the time, I prefer DSD.