CDs made from 2020 onwards should surely be audiophile only...

Because I work with current artists on both major and independent record labels, & talk with those labels about marketing and selling their releases. Walmart & Target, aka big box stores, are still hugely important drivers of physical CD sales, albeit they do not carry a full line of titles. Getting your release into these places, which have multiple locations across the country, means a big initial order to spread the record across the locations, which the labels want for chart performance, marketing budgets, etc.

Are CDs sold elsewhere like online and in independent retailers? Of course. Even in those places, nobody really gives a toss about "audiophile" releases. Go into Rough Trade in Brooklyn, the largest dedicated music retailer in NYC. They don't even have a dedicated section for hi-rez and the staff is completely clueless about it. Labels NEVER talk about HD Tracks, Pro Studio Masters, they don't even know these places exist.

I was around when SACD was launched, DVD-A at the same time. Nobody heard the difference except golden ears, everybody thought it was a money grab, consumers could care less. Audiophile products are a niche within a niche, you can blame bad marketing, high prices, limited availability, yadda yadda. The reality is there is a small % of people for whom ultimate sound quality is important, but in terms of the importance of that audience vs the larger consumer audience for popular music, its a barnacle on a battleship.

CD was the limit in terms of what people wanted & needed for sound quality, convenience, reliability and price. The next product frontier is not about sound quality, but likely augmented reality audio products, which will provide a level of immersion that will be far more exciting and creative than the CD or streaming services. But that's a ways off yet.

 

On this board they are.

 

Here's what I miss about cd's. I wrote several songs a while back and put them on bandcamp. When I would play the tracks for people, I would be told 'wow that's good'. But nobody has bought anything. So how in the world, in 2020, do you get your music out there to the masses. When I used to buy albums from a physical store, there was the album cover to catch your attention, or maybe a display. I don't know. I feel like my music just got lost in the digital shuffle because there is SO much music out there online. I tried recording my songs in the highest sound quality possible, but if I am understanding what you wrote correctly, the sound quality really doesn't matter, physical media doesn't matter. So what does matter, pumping out music in quantity over quality? That's why I feel so disconnected with the current music scene - it seems more like a conveyor line of 'new this week' hits with very little lasting potential compared to the music I grew up with.

 

The music industry was always a conveyor belt, even during the "golden years" we now wax nostalgic about. 95% of artists/records that were released didn't break even on the costs to produce and market the record. The overwhelming majority of records released were failures, but the hits and back catalog paid for all those failures. There has almost always been too much music - certainly now more than ever, but it's not a new problem. Spotify didn't invent the cutout bin.

Sound quality matters to some people. Physical media matters to some people. But to MOST people, aka music consumers who make music a business, neither one is a key driver for consumption.

Bandcamp is the best thing to happen to music in years (and btw supports hi-res downloads). Identifying and developing your audience is an entirely different conversation than what this thread is about. I totally understand what Daniel Ek said about artists not waiting for 4 years between releases in the streaming economy (even though I think the way he said it is totally douche). But I also know that the music business is cyclical - every player has their time in the sun. Spotify will age out, there will be something new that strangles it. People listened to Robert Johnson on 78's, on 33 1/3, on cassette, on CD, on downloads, on streaming, etc. The music doesn't care about the format. It's the the only thing that lasts and the only thing that matters. The technology is there just to suck more money out of it.

 

Funny, I use to work for a company trying to break into the digital photography business. It's a similar thing going on there. How best to reproduce someones photos? Do you make them as accurate as possible? Or do you "improve" them to make the colors pop? Countless user tests got the same results - Make them POP! It didn't matter that the photo no longer represented reality, people liked pretty pictures. My conclusion? If you want the worst possible answer, conduct a user test.

 

I bought Seldom Seen Kid mainly because of the Turn Me Up! label on it - found it sounded fairly crap and the dynamic range readings on Foobar were hardly impressive. And I don't really like Elbow either!

I tend to buy quite a lot of electronic and synthwave FLAC downloads at the moment (The Midnight etc.) and sadly the loud mastering is as prevelant as ever in this genre. At least I can buy on a track-by-track basis and assess the sound quality without paying for a whole album. Sometimes there are exceptions where they state the mastering has been carefully done e.g. see Emotional Dials releases on Bandcamp Emotional Dials . Not likely to appeal to many on this forum but nice to see some musos care about SQ.

Haven't bought or played a CD in a good while - they are all ripped to PC and played through Foobar.

 

Scott, I can ask Siri to play me a song or band in seconds, or just play Random... Takes less time than shuffling through CDs

 

Yes but then you get highly compressed audio.

 

From the same source, however, the 24 bit media will sound better than the 16 bit CD. Much more so with acoustic instruments and reverberation. There is too much subtle detail that gets lost in a CD when it runs out of resolution, and each bit represents a few db of level.

Not saying CDs sound bad when well-mastered. But a blu-ray or digital file at 24 bits sounds better. So given a choice, why would I buy a CD for any reason other than portability?

 

I have tried and tried to hear the difference between a 24 bit file and the downsampled 16 bit file, and I can't. Even the waveform tells the story. When I downsample from 96 khz to 44 khz the waveform will show a very minor change due to the present but inaudible (to humans) sound above 44 that's being cut out. But when I downsample from 24 bit to 16 bit there isn't the slightest waveform change. When I make even the slightest EQ adjustment to a waveform there is always some sort of shift in the waveform from before and after but there is zero change when I do bit depth. With that kind of behavior, at least with the type of music I master, one would expect some form of visual change if the loss of detail was even fairly insignificant. That's just my perspective.

 

If you're enjoying CD sound, I don't want to mess with that enjoyment. At the end of the day what matters is that we both enjoy listening to music.

But technically, the differences in the waveform will start 70db down or so, as the CD data begins rounding while the 24 bit source still has plenty of resolution left. Unless you zoom into the waveform, these subtleties are not obvious at all. But you can hear this stuff. Consider the almost endless harmonics a violin produces, which quickly fall into that 70db and down zone. And then consider room reverberations, which go further down still. 16 bit files just can't record that information.

 

I don't disagree with anything you wrote above; I think the most frustrating point is just that, given that the vast majority of people don't care and don't notice, why then intentionally and actively degrade music? The old argument about needing it to be loud for radio no longer holds any water and has been thoroughly debunked, with highly compressed music actually sounding worse than more dynamic mixes when normalized for streaming, and obviously thats true for CD listening. It's become a self-perpetuating "well that's the way we've been told to do it" and "everyone else is doing it so I have to do it, too" philosophy, and it feels like labels/engineers have just dug their heels in rather than being willing to take another look at the issue. I'm sure cost also comes into it - it takes time and effort to do anything, and they're getting away with not putting any effort or thought into the process - figuratively speaking, just flick the "compression" switch and be done with it...

As usual, the format's not to blame; it's how it's used.

 

Hey man I am in no way justifying it, I’ve got a ton of SACD & Blu-Ray titles and two tube high end audio systems. I’m deep in the niche - But I’m also not naïve enough to think that at the end of the day the music business isn’t all about money first and foremost, like pretty much every other business.

 

Haha - sorry, my post wasn't really directed at you; I just used your post as a jumping-off point to hop on my high horse and go off on my little rant...

 

a lot of respected Mastering engineers are

 

That early CD of "Faith" sounds terrific.

 

"bo******"?

 

It seems when you look all the way back to portable AM transister radios to cassettes to 8-track to CDs... convenience is always the primary motivator. Audiophile always ran in parallel - vinyl, reel-to-reel, SACD, blu-ray, etc.
I don't think anyone is degrading the sound, they're just moving on to the next popular format and dealing with its limitations.

 

But they're not dealing with limitations, they're actively making the music sound worse. CDs certainly don't have any limitations that require major compression to sound good, and with the blanket normalization applied by streaming services, highly compressed music sounds worse than dynamic music on streaming services, too - again, not a limitation that needs to be addressed.

 

He sounds like a typical suit and tie bean counter to me. I'll bet my system that he has no input or clue from customers.

Agreed Bob, you get the typical Deer in the headlights looks from the uniformed and why my statement usually ends at I know why if anyone's interested.

Sorry, I have to disagree with this part 100%. There is only a limitation in regards to whom is at the helm. Why do you think the Japan 1st pressing Black triangle CD of Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of the Moon has never been bettered in the digital format.

 

I’m sure your right but I stopped buying Carrie Underwood albums on vinyl because they are mastered so loud the brickwalling literally hurts my ears, and others said the same thing over in that thread. So, it is possible to really destroy the sound on vinyl but maybe it’s just too much trouble. I just can’t understand an artist listening to something that is mastered so badly that it hurts your ears and saying that’s okay.

 

Problem is...then what was he doing at a radio convention, and not at the home office, counting beans...

 

While I agree with this it's really missing the point - that CD is capable of much higher quality than the typical release actually achieves. So sad.

Tim

 

Pretty difficult to hear IME. OK, if you have music with massive dynamic range, and deliberately turn it way up during the quietest passages, you will likely hear a difference (if the source is of sufficient quality). In most real-world scenarios though ...

Tim

 

Corporate poser is my guess.