In a message dated 1/24/00 11:09:39 AM Central Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
/|\/|\ I think that a music medium shouldn't be so tied in to computers. /|\/|
\
Oy, I hate mp3s. Well, not so much the *idea* of mp3s, but the people who
love the format despite it's obvious shortcomings -- because it's just the
'hip new thing'.
Many people mentioned on the "Will MD survive" thread that sound quality
really doesn't matter with the average consumer. That's the problem -- it
doesn't. And in the end, a $99 boombox wins out over $900 home theater setup.
Cost also plays into it. So free mp3s off the net or from your CD will win
out over much better quality MD (or DAT, even).
I think MD can survive despite the mp3 onslaught. Many others have already
hit upon the solution: marketing MD's strengths to as many people as possible
- something the previous US MD ads just haven't done.
MP3, being the new cool 'next thing' in the media, gets free advertising.
(Free advertising being pointing out its strengths while ignoring its
weaknesses.) MP3 players may win on cool factor for being so small and
shock-resistant, but they lose out on every other single comparison point to
MD or even CD, in my mind: You can't record without a PC; you can't do real
time recordings, even on a super-fast PC; the music can't be edited; the
media cost is too high... And the very last but not least point is that
nagging lack of decent sound quality. Actually, it's first in my mind but
last in everyone else's... If it were an issue, cassettes would have died out
YEARS ago. Either that or even cheap walkmans would have Dolby S. :)
But anyway, back to the subject. I don't like mp3's sound quality, or the
fact it takes my computer about 25 minutes per song to encode an mp3... Or 25
minutes to download the file off the net. ;-) Not all of us can afford DSL
and a Pentium III 800 MHz processor to speed things along. Plus, if I want to
move a song from CD to an mp3, it's about 6 steps. From CD to MD, it's about
3. In the time it takes me to rip a song from CD and encode it, I could have
recorded half the CD to MD, digitally.
Maybe when there's a real-time mp3 encoder that integrates into my home
stereo setup, that can encode @ 256 kbps stereo, *realtime*, on a storage
medium that meets or exceeds 80 mins (and costs $4), then MD will die. But
until mp3 surpasses the benefits of other consumer music 'units' like MD,
DAT, CD-R and cassette, it will just remain the bain of techie nerd-types,
gadget collectors and others who remained glued to these wonderful boxes we
call computers. :)
~Zach
http://start.at/cens - The Cutting Edge of Nothing Significant
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