The future of the compact disc?

[Mr. Hyde]

I was wondering about if advances in technology have made it possible to upgrade the bit rate and sampling rate of the standard cd from 16 bit 44.1K to say 32 bit 96K. I haven't seen much written about the subject anywhere. I know that the digital recording industry is now using 24 bit 96K but then a lot of information must be lost when making the actual cd.
Do you think we will see an upgrade to the compact disc or will there be some new format that emerges within the next 10 years?

 

[rabies]

Its inevitable. Technology always pushes ahead..even for a large scale consumer good item like CDs.

Its just a matter of when..and in what format...but I would bet it does happen within the next 10 years. More than likely, it will somehow integrate with mp3 ..or some other digital format.

 

[Eddies cellmate]

I think we're pretty much at the point now where you'd need to upgrade your ears to tell the difference.

 

[Mr. Hyde]

I think we're pretty much at the point now where you'd need to upgrade your ears to tell the difference.

Well, I can only judge by what I hear now. I have found that many people can't hear the difference between a cd and an mp3 at 128k but to my ears the mp3 sounds like garbage. I have mp3's that are of even much higher qaulity and I can still hear a drastic difference between the mp3 and original.
How that compares to a standard cd and the source recording at a higher bit depth and sample rate I'm not sure. I haven't been able to hear what a 24bit 96K recording sounds like or compared it to the original source (guitar amp itself, for example). I imagine it has to be much better or more accurate than 16 bit 44.1 but I don't personally have access to any way of testing for myself.
I have a feeling that we will see some kind of major improvement in the coming years and it will make people wonder how we were ever able to listen to those nasty sounding 16 bit cd's. At least that will be what the marketing people will sell us on to get us to replace our entire music collection and upgrade our stereo systems to take advantage of the newer fidelity.

 

[Eddies cellmate]

It's an interesting thought Mr Hyde, and I think you're right to say that there's really no basis for comparison right now.

I personally think the industry would be much better served at this point to focus on accuracy before and after the actual recording itself. What I mean is that even if you were able to hone the CD format to the point where it was 100% accurate guarenteed, you'd still be using instruments and processors that are much less than 100% accurate, as well as having the vast majority of users listening with sound reproduction gear that's also much less than 100% accurate.

So, I guess my point is that unless you made improvements on both sides and had the commitment from producers and listeners to actually purchase and use such gear properly (in accoustically perfect environments), there probably wouldn't be much point to increasing the accuracy of CD recording much. It wouldn't serve an artist's purposes much if he/she were able to take advantage of a higher bit-rate to preserve that wonderful, subtle bit of "airyness" in thier reverb in a particular passage only to have the listener fire it into thier mid-line CD player on thier mid-line stereo system with mid-line speakers and play it in thier less than acoustically perfect living room. :zombie:

 

[rabies]

Yea...I gotta agree with EC...the whole point of the mastering process is so the music sounds the same on whatever lame system you happen to be playing it through. We definately need a mass update of the technology playing the music before we bump up the quality of the recordinds themselves.

 

[Mr. Hyde]

Good points guys. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.


(Crap, I hate it when I take to long to hit submit and lose an entire post. I'm too lazy to re-type what I did before so the above will have to work.)

 

[rabies]

(Crap, I hate it when I take to long to hit submit and lose an entire post. I'm too lazy to re-type what I did before so the above will have to work.)

Heh..I've done that before...couple times...that is why I now actually use notepad and cut and paste when I know I am going to type up a 'novel' on here..

 

[Mr. Hyde]

Along the same lines as what you were saying Ec, I've often wondered why people go to the expense of buying top of the line gear when the end result will be a product that can't reproduce that level of fidelity anyhow.

I'd like to know what those 5 and 6 thousand dollar snare drums that some people claim to use in the studio sounded like before they were "produced" into sounding like someone hitting a cardboard box, or metal trash can.