Should Sound Quality of Computer Audio be improved

My responses are long because some like to dog pile- they think it makes their position stronger. If I hate everything Computer Audio, why do I want BOTH Formats? I use Computer Audio, I know its faults, so do you!
It is a little hard to measure the "Sound Quality" of silence, and weither it should be improved or not. If the Music Selection isn't there, what are you measuring? What is the point? "I understand Petty's concerns, but do not share them". I'm not sure what to make of that one. I can't seem to add it together.
Drubin- no offense. What you say seems like a sales pitch (Or Too Good to be true). Reality just doesn't measure up to your description. It sounds to me like a whole hell of alot of hot air- soon to be. I am certain you believe in what you say- so much so that when someone indicates results that don't match, they must be the fault. Here, and Now (Not Future Soon To Be) Computer Audio Download Music Selection leaves alot to be desired. You have not heard this the first time from me! Here, and Now ten thousand CD Music Selections have been gone for quite some time. Computer Audio is not keeping up.
People, there is currently a whole lot of Music that is NOT available on CD, AND NOT available as Downloads. If "understanding" this concern, "but not sharing it" is the best that 7 pages of Responses can do- I'll take it! Something tells me that you guys know there is a problem, but just want to protect Computer Audio against all. I have NEVER threatened Computer Audio. I have never claimed that it should be eliminated- shoot, I use it alot of the time. I like it, I want to keep it. It's advantages outweigh it's disadvantages. I also want to keep the Silver Disks "just in case" those disadvantages become unmanagable. If that makes me some unreasonable "ALIEN" from another Planet, or a "Borg soldier here to assimilate" (COME ON!). Sorry if it takes a whole page (Or Seven of them), to address such rediculous issues. I am doing the best that I can in as little space as I can. I will try to do better (Assimilation, that is)! I plan on continuing to use Computer Audio, but you have got to give me some slack on the Music Selection on both CD- and Music Downloads. Your Silver Disk Assimilation to Download ONLY
availability- is just being a little bit too ruthless on Music Selection. I am not always right, neither always wrong- I just know that I am missing Music. To me (Crazy Idiot!) that is NOT an option in switching Formats. If that makes me an Alien, so be it- call Will Smith or M.I.B.! Attacking me again in your last Responses- is confirmation of what? Go back and read my last response more carefully, if you don't know. I think you know, so do I. Why continue to pretend? No one here is really an Idiot, unless they pretend to be. Some of us need more time to catch up, unless you just want to leave a big portion of our Music behind permanently. Let me know what Music you want to cherry pick to save, so we will both know what will be available P-U-L-E-A-S-E!

" "I understand Petty's concerns, but do not share them". I'm not sure what to make of that one. I can't seem to add it together. "

In other words i can understand your frustrations with teh complexities of modern computer based audio. I agree it is too complex for many. Not for me though. I work with computers for a living though so I do not consider myself a typical case.

ALso, computer audio is still a "new frontier". It will become more settled over time, probably for the better.

Pettyofficer,

"Low blow on the Wife issue, I will let it pass."

I meant no insult, quite the opposite. It was meant as lighthearted fun. Please except my apologies if offence was taken.

To continue on with these other rather tedious concerns, I think you worry too much. I have yet to see any unresolvable issues in your long replies. Surely after many replies you can see another side to your concerns?

I honestly read your list of issues and most just don't exist. The format thing is irrelevant. These will always be interchangeable/convertible and available. Even if you just keep redbook.

But I do understand this availability problem. It's just a case of knowing where to look. Give us a list of CDs you would really like to find. Maybe I could help track some of them down. If it existed it probably still does somewhere.

PettyOfficer, you make a fair point above:

Why does everyone here complain more (numerically) than I do, if you already have what you want? Why aren't you happy? Why waste your time here?

Why, indeed?

My enjoyment of music certainly has little to do with yours, PettyOfficer, though as a friend I would love to see you have more of what you like.

The only reason I'm weighing in here is for the benefit of posterity, and for the hearts and minds of other posters. This is what I do, and it's not meant as a slight to you, or an incitement to you to change your ways. I just don't want future generations to look back at us arguing about formats and misunderstand any perspective.

So, to that end, I have two more points I'd like to bring up. You continually mention cassettes and solar flares, and I think a fuller understanding of the issue would bring clarity to the discussion.

1) Magnets have a measurable strength, as anyone who's ever tried to push two together with their polarity opposed will tell you. Some are more powerful than others. The strength of a magnet's "Magnetizing Field" is measured in Oersted (or Oe) units.

Any storage medium for magnetic information, including cassette tapes, reel-to-reel, and platter Hard Disc Drives (NOT Solid State Drives) also use magnets, and due to the unique principles of magnetism it will resist having its field altered or realigned, to a certain point. This property is called "coercivity", and it's what protects your data. In a very simple sense, a weaker magnet cannot influence a stronger one. One cassette tape cannot erase another, nor can a weaker magnet erase a hard drive.

The Earth itself has a magnetic field of 3-5 Oe. The magnetic field generated by a cassette tape is between 25-50 Oe. Modern hard drives, which write data in a perpendicular fashion, have an Oersted rating of 4000-5000 Oe.

By contrast, the magnetic read head of an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machine in a hospital has a rating of about 60,000 Oe. Not to worry, though: a magnetic field degrades exponentially over distance. As long as your hard drive is more than 1 meter away from the MRI read head (i.e. not in the MRI machine itself) the field will not be strong enough to effect your drive.

I hope that puts to rest the question of whether "giant" magnets will erase your drive, and the comparisons between cassettes and Hard drives. Hard drives are literally upwards of 100 times more powerful than cassettes, and the strongest magnet most of us are likely to encounter in our lives won't erase them unless we're trying. Nothing to worry about.

2) Solar Flares. I'm not sure where this concern comes from, but it's not warranted. Solar Flares wreak all kinds of damage on our lives, degrading satellite orbits, ionizing our outer atmosphere, corrupting radio communications, and numerous other detrimental effects. One thing they don't do is effect the Earth's magnetic field. If they did, you would routinely have bits of metal around your house flying into the air.

The single most magnetically disastrous entity in the known Universe is a magnetar. This is a superdense neuron star, so dense that a thimblefull of magnetar would weigh upwards of 100 million tons. It's the strongest magnet in the universe by a country mile, and it will literally rip the water out of your body at 1000 km. It's magnetic field is hundreds of billions of times more powerful than the sun.

However, it couldn't even erase credit card strips until it's about half the distance from the moon away from Earth. By that point, the gamma radiation it emits will have destroyed our entire civilization.

None of the problems from solar flares are magnetic. They will never erase nor corrupt your hard drive.

Plenty of things can erase or corrupt the data on a hard drive, but magnetism and solar flares are not among them. You're far more likely to lose data to a power failure, read error, or any other of 100 things than you are to magnets, and you can easily protect against those things.

So be concerned about choice and about quality, but don't worry about magnets or solar flares. This data will outlive us all.