Hey you guys, what's the future for the silver disc, do you think it will meet it's maker and become more or less obsolete to the public like vinyl did and less and less new released will be found in this format, what life expectancy do you give this very old technology?

In about 10years time, so not much to worry about for the time being, like vinyl there are millions and millions of both hardware and software out there for both vinyl and CD.

No way.

I don't think so, why, have any one got any proof, it always amazes me these claims that things are going to be obsolete but never are, ever wondered why.

There is a natural pessimism/optimism associated with music formats. Those who embrace the 'new' claim that everything is now obsolete apart from the current trend. Likewise, those reluctant to adopt unproven or nacent formats stand by the fact that there will always be a market for the established.

I, personally, see the CD going the same way as SACD and vinyl. That is, becoming more of a niche product than the mainstream. It will be a long time coming, however. The market is still strong enough and major change takes time.

SACD was a white elephant that never made the mainstream, on the other hand every single person bought records, I struggle to compare the two formats, vinyl and cd disc while be around for decades yet simply because of the sheer numbers produced.

The thing is that CD is finding pressure from two fronts:

1. The common download front.
2. The high resolution front.

The common download front is the sort of thing that so many kids use where they buy and download their tracks from iTunes in lossy compressed form. Very often they don't bother with complete albums and have a penchant to pick and choose tracks before appropriation.

CD is very much more album-oriented. Noody ever really liked having to change 7" singles every 3-4 minutes and the same goes for CD usage. 7" singles lasted because a) they suited the jukebox era, b) they were useful for DJing, partly because they were smaller and easier to cart around and c) partly because they were cheaper than LPs (although modern tracks are much cheaper than the complete album nowadays). So CD is being marginalised because it doesn't package music in the flexible form that the younger generation expects.

The high resolution front is much more niche market currently. For a long time, CD has been derided as a relatively low quality medium. In fact, we've seen significant advances in CD player quality over the last 25 years, but the amount of quality one can extract from a CD is limited by the fact that the resolution and sampling rates are out of the 70s. High resolution format digital audio is slowly becoming more available and increases on CD's (16/44.1khz) quality substantially. With all that extra information, one hopes that the higher resolution formats can provide much higher quality music than CD.

The limitation for high resolution technically is delivery. Where a CD is 650MB in size, the equivalent high resolution format varies between 2GB and 20GB depending on resolution and sampling rate. Most high res providers are attempting t use the download paradigm to keep costs down, but most domestic connections are still in the 10mbps ballpark and so it takes a long time to receive your album. Another approach is one designed by Prof Johnson of Referenece Recordings fame. He has a DVD solution called HRx where you buy a disc from him and then rip this to your music repository. You then stream that high quality feed using a streamer such as a Squeezebox or any of the others that are around. That said, with the explosion of download rates, the download paradigm will probably win out over HRx. After all, if the manufacturer only has to host a download server rather than print artwork and liner notes, own a production facility, employ people to package said deliverables and pay for shipping, then the costs of download make way more sense than the physical medium.

So CD is being squeezed. On one hand you have downloaders who don't want CDs anyway because they all use iPods, and on the other you have audiophiles who want higher quality than CD. in the middle you have everybody else who really wants an easy life and to buy a CD, but as they age, the CD will be squeezed further out...

Which is going to leave us with restricted choices, or at least until (if ever) all music is available as hi res downloads.
buy the crappy lossy downloads
put up with the choice of music avaiable as hi res (yak)
buy the VINYL where you can, and are prepared to pay the inflated 'audiphool price.
buy the CD for as long as you can.

Oh what joy

Maybe albums will be sold on SD cards in the future less workmanship to produce and less packaging needed essentially, with high rez etc as already mention and the lack of having to have a mechanical transports wear and tear, cd will eventually have its day.

Lets just hope with the extra space left in the source by not having a transport manufacturers will pack the casing out with better components.....as if!

U cant always have a pc near the hifi and I for one would not like to use an ipod or equivailent so mabye something like an SD would be the best option?

Why is CD considered 'low quality' when it covers fully what humans can hear or are capable of hearing? Isn't CD sound better than vinyl theoretically but many prefer the sound of vinyl.

Its not about frequency its about the amount of information cd can play compared to hirez a cd is usually 16bit 44.1khz, hirez on another format will be alot higher and has a choice of formats and bitrates from cd standard to very high in many gradual incren=ments.

Plus a cd is already a compressed studio recording.

The trouble comes when people were told perfect sound forever when it came to CD, so for them the quality is more than enough, try telling them that there could be better out there and they'll just shrug there shoulders and ask why.

Music had become like food, tasteless rubbish as long as it's cheap and disposable, there is no demand for quality of the reproduction and why should there be when its become one click away from the PC trash bin.