The Decline of the CD and the
Uncertain Audio Future
This year, we celebrated the 25th anniversary
of the Compact Disc. The format has had an amazing run; in fact, after it superseded the
LP and cassette back in the 1980s, the CD held on to the spot of No.1 music format for
longer than many thought possible. After all, in the last few years there were some who
believed that the SACD or DVD-Audio disc would replace it. Not so; the CD held firm. But,
that doesn’t mean that CD’s reign will last forever.
Recently, I read an article about Wal-Mart and Best Buy,
two of North America’s largest sellers of CDs. They’ve begun, and will continue,
to scale down the size of their stores’ CD sections. Customer traffic is down in
those aisles and sales have steadily declined, something these companies don’t see
stopping anytime soon. In fact, making these stores’ music sections smaller will
probably decrease CD sales even more. The writing is on the wall.
None of this is surprising. The music industry has been
telling us about this tailspin for years, and most people know that, nowadays, many music
enthusiasts don’t buy their music on CD -- or SACD or DVD-A -- at all. Instead, they
download it from the Internet. If you need proof, look at the success of iTunes.
What is surprising is that, despite the decrease in
CD sales and the increase in downloads, no new "standard" has yet been
established to replace the CD following its demise. Nor does the digital audio market seem
to be taking any definite turn in one direction or another. As a result, audiophiles
worldwide today keep asking What’s next? They’re getting few answers.
What they’re getting instead is a lot of crystal-ball gazing, some of which I do
myself.
In my opinion, it’s pretty clear that the next big
thing won’t be a physical format like the CD, which is one of the reasons that SACD
and DVD-A have failed. Consumers don’t seem to want anything that cumbersome anymore.
Instead, the music delivery of the future won’t be tied to a "hard" medium;
rather, it will be about digital files -- WAV, AIFF, FLAC, Apple Lossless, etc. -- that
can be delivered to your system in a variety of ways, downloading obviously being one.
Think of it as MP3 on a more expansive scale. Furthermore, without the constraints of a
physical disc format tying us down, we might get away from the idea of the
"album" altogether, as people buy their music by the song or the work.
It’s not hard to imagine that the musical front-end of
the future will be a computer of some sort hooked up to the Internet, whether a device
dedicated to the job or your multi-use home computer. Whichever, gone will be the large,
cumbersome disc transports that have been staples of the audiophile world ever since
digital separates took the stage back in the 1980s, and whose controls haven’t
changed since the first CD player surfaced in 1983. Enter something like the MacBook,
which can store and output every kind of digital music to an external DAC, and has a
super-slick user interface that puts even the best CD player’s control panel to
shame. It only makes sense that things will continue to go in this direction.
None of this is new or revolutionary -- many people are
doing all this today -- but as yet, no new format has been formally adopted by the
music industry, as the CD was. No one is endorsing some new protocol and telling you that
this is the way to go. In fact, I suspect that many companies don’t even want you to
even lean this way. Copyright infringement through digital copying is one reason for that,
but the royalties generated by sales of physical media is another.
Sony and Philips jointly developed the Compact Disc, and
reaped the rewards of their invention by collecting royalties from every record and
hardware company that licensed it in the 25 years following its introduction. Obviously,
that’s a lot of money, and the way to keep that going is to invent something new.
Sony developed SACD in the hopes that a newer, better digital format would keep the
royalties rolling in. It didn’t work out that way.
Today’s world isn’t like the world of 25 years
ago. With the proliferation of digital technologies, it’s hard for a single company
to own everything and control what people do. Sony never had a chance of making SACD
stick, and neither did the companies behind DVD-Audio. In fact, although some may disagree
with me, I’m actually happy that SACD and DVD-A have failed. Hard formats such as
these may be bigger money makers for their developers, but file-based, downloadable
playback is faster, easier, and cheaper for the consumer. That’s the way I want it to
go.
However, that doesn’t mean that you need to stop
buying CDs (and/or SACDs or DVD-As), or throw out the ones you already have. None of this
will happen overnight, even though we already have the technologies needed for a
downloadable, high-resolution music-serving solution. For whatever reason, such changes
move notoriously slowly. So, for a long time -- years and years -- you’ll still want
a playback device that can handle your discs without having to rip them to a hard drive:
in short, a player of some sort. But at the same time, you might want to consider looking
toward the future, if you haven’t already. You might want start thinking about using
a computer for a source as well. It’s the right time to live in both worlds.
This month, we review two products that might help you out.
One is the Oppo Digital DV-970HD universal player, which supports CD, SACD, DVD-A, DVD-V,
and more -- most of the relevant hard formats of the day. What’s more, it costs only
$169 USD. Then there’s the Trends Audio UD-10.1 USB-based audio converter, for those
who have an external digital-to-analog converter (DAC) that lacks a USB port. The UD-10.1
connects to your computer’s USB port and gives you four digital outputs to connect to
your DAC: two S/PDIF, one TosLink, and one AES/EBU. It’s not a complete music-serving
solution, but it’ll help get you there -- and it’s only $149.
CD may be on the decline, and the future might look
uncertain, but that’s no reason to sit on your hands and wait to see what finally
shakes out. If you do, you might wait a long time. I suggest you instead take advantage of
what’s on the market today, and create your own music-making way.
…Doug Schneider
E-mail comments to the editor@goodsound.com.
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