When is digital going to get the soul of music?

Holy XXXX guys. . . what happened all of a sudden. . . Everyone feelin' hurricane Ike approaching mayhaps? G. (grins!)

We have more choices now than ever...

This may be part of the contributing problem to the debate. When there was only vinyl, the recording/engineering/pressing of the album was either good or bad, and it was usually pretty obvious. Now, we have many choices of sources to go along with our dizzying choices of amps, pre-amps, speakers, DACs, etc ad-nauseum. Add to that the fact that we listen to music everywhere (home, car, work, outside, in bed, etc) and in every way (two channel, multi-channel, iPods with ear buds, computer audio with headphones, boom boxes, car stereos, hotel lobbies, etc) it's near impossible to produce music in manner that suits all venues equally.

There are a lot of modern pop and rock albums that I really like that are hard to tolerate on my $20,000 hi-fi but sound great on the stock system in my car. Just the opposite is true for some of my favorite jazz albums - too much ambient noise in the car to really enjoy it.

Yes, the soul of music is the music itself; the performance. But being able to get to it - to connect to it? It's unfortunately become somewhat medium and venue dependent for a lot of music. Buying multiple versions of an album to find the one that you connect with gets expensive. I mean, how many of us own at least three versions of 'Kind of Blue?' Worth it for a handful of recordings, but near impossible for modern recordings.

Albertporter - I'm sorry for my sharp response and my words toward you. We both feel the same dissapointment.

Maybe lack of better digital media is related to quite large number of audiophiles claiming that they will never buy digital or the greed of the companies selling SACDs for over $30 or the lack of the will from government to push for the standard. (We have in US many different cellular companies and two different non-compatible standards while whole Europe has one unified standard/billing and much better coverage).

My experience is very limited and more oriented toward electronics than audio but I enjoy good sound and practicallity of digital media. Better, smoother digital format is around the corner, I'd like to think, but the same time I'm buying a lot of standard CDs I will be stucked with.

I know, we should concentrate more on music than audio, but when I listen to thin sounding Julian Bream CD with hiss of analog recording in the background I don't enjoy it as much as I should especially after listening to beautiful recent Telearc DSD recording of David Russell with completely black and quiet background and full round reverberating sound.

Tvad, Shadorne, Albertporter, you guys have made my arguments much clearer than I did, and I appreciate it. Once again, I am glad that I decided to become a professional musician instead of writer. You guys both make great points, Newbee as well.

Oh, and by the way, Kijanki, just to clarify, I am not the sort of "music teacher" you so disparage. I play full time in a major professional orchestra, and am blessed to play almost every day in one of the great concert halls this country has to offer. I do teach on the side, both privately and at a major university. I have also been interested in high end audio ever since my college days, and know a little about recording, though more from the acoustical rather than technical standpoint.

Speaking of ears again, Mapman brings up an interesting point about the human ear hearing above 20000Hz. Recent research has actually proven that the brain IS sensitive to these extremely high frequencies, it just doesn't process them the same way, so we don't "hear" the actual pitch of those tones. One of the very biggest differences between digital and analog, and why digital sounds like it has something missing to many of us, is that digital processing deliberately cuts out these supposedly inaudible frequencies. Engineers have claimed so far that we won't miss what we can't hear, but it has finally been proven that this is simply not the case - the human ear is most definitely more sensitive to sound than any machine yet invented. So I continue to urge everyone to use their ears and not rely on some engineer's specs - the better your ears become, the more enjoyment you will receive from your music, no matter what type it is, or what form it shows up in, or what type of equipment you are using.

Maybe lack of better digital media is related to quite large number of audiophiles claiming that they will never buy digital or the greed of the companies selling SACDs for over $30 or the lack of the will from government to push for the standard. (We have in US many different cellular companies and two different non-compatible standards while whole Europe has one unified standard/billing and much better coverage).

I agree with your comments, except I wouldn't object to $30.00 or even $50.00 for a perfect digital copy of the master file.

Perhaps that's the amount of money required to make it worthwhile for the music people. I'm already paying that much for the new Music Matters Blue Note LP's, so why not new artists as super digital files?

I've bought a few SACD's and contrary to many, my experience is quality is all over the place. Some are better than CD and some are worse, not much confidence instilled for the extra money they cost. I had hope for the format until I realized it was just another "huge-tiny, digital step."

I refer to it as the "huge-tiny, digital step," because of all the fanfare around each new software and equipment introduction, generally a minor improvement if any. Much like some of the overpriced audio gadgets that we spring for in other places in our systems.

I don't object paying for tweaks that work, I have stuff in my system (footers for instance) that cost $10.00 and I believe they are better than those that cost ten or twenty time more.

Then again, I have a phono cartridge (Air Tight PC-1) that's retail price was just increased to $6000.00, yet I believe it's worth every penny.

Still, it frustrates me that many of the new artists are CD only when other high quality choices could be available. Sure, many are on LP and that fixes it for those of us that are vinyl fans but what about fixing the problem so we don't need vinyl at all? I would gladly switch and enjoy storing the smaller software and convenience of remote control if they would just get the quality right.

Did they consider they could then get money from ALL of us?