Old Records Are Outselling New Ones

[RGA]

The only way these formats take off is if you actually produce albums that SELL. It doesn't matter if Madonna's CD was compressed - this is the biggest selling female artist out there since the 1980s - Lady Gaga is the current biggest selling artist along with say Adele who certainly has the voice quality for pop that deserves a good recording - unfortunately the recordings tend to suck but that still isn't the point. There must be a non sucky master around someplace because they manage to come up with remasters of many mainstream pop/rock artists and wouldn't you know they're not uncompressed dredge but 5/5 star caliber as good as a Patricia Barber disc as you can get.

Ok Jackson isn't a big seller - and Sarah sort of fell off a cliff for me after "Surfacing" but it's not the point.

Old farts and a tiny minority of old farts listening to Mozart (and we're knocking Jackson for being old - at least he hasn't been dead for centuries - is not going to be able to satisfy the Sony/Philips marketing machine.

Young people weren't interested. It's not about recording quality either since in most cases all the classical and Jazz artists ALSO come out on vinyl as well. You get all the old fart music AND you get the mainstream bubble gum pop - and the alternative rock - and the underground trance/house hip-hop dub step etc. (DJ's kept vinyl alive - not audiophile - though there are certainly FAR FAR more audiophiles into vinyl than SACD).

It's not that SACD is bad or anything - it's just that they failed miserably to market it properly.

Any new format that you want to "take over" the world by storm you have to START with mainstream music and convince people through auditions that it is vastly superior (especially if you charge double for it). Even if you have to cheat and put out truly lousy recordings on CD and then remaster it put it out on SACD and blow the CD to the weeds. No instead stores came out demoing Hotel California - which is patently ****ty on SACD and that was the "young person's" music - chortle chortle.

Adele might be a target market - she's a bit different than usual pop - good voice but her recordings are dreadful - Make a brilliant recording put it out as a remaster on SACD and have a B&M that will demonstrate why it's better.

I have several Madonna LP's that walk all over most any recording period - not compressed massive dynamic scale. Hell even her CDs up to Ray of Light have been quite good - then they went to piss - I even tried a vinyl of Hard Candy - not that I liked the album but I basically wanted the thing just to have it and unfortunately the vinyl sucks as well (for sound).

But if you want to know why people like vinyl over CD - listen to the LP of Sarah McLachlan's "Touch" versus the CD. What a fraking drubbing that is. Or 45s of Vogue or anything Like A prayer or before versus CD. And this is just pop - Jazz it's even more embarrassing.

Hi res is better but of course there is no selection. I looked through the SACD catalog - it's painful. Fortunately Blu-Ray may be the answer in time.

[Feanor]

...
But if you want to know why people like vinyl over CD - listen to the LP of Sarah McLachlan's "Touch" versus the CD. What a fraking drubbing that is. Or 45s of Vogue or anything Like A prayer or before versus CD. And this is just pop - Jazz it's even more embarrassing.

Hi res is better but of course there is no selection. I looked through the SACD catalog - it's painful. Fortunately Blu-Ray may be the answer in time.

I'd be fine with Blu-ray, hi-rez download, or SACD; vinyl, no way.

Sir Terrence protests notwithstanding, Blu-ray music is next to non-existent. Hi-rez downloads are likewise extremely scarce. SACD is also very scarce except to classical where it is merely quite limited.

[emaidel]

. SACD is also very scarce except to classical where it is merely quite limited.

I have to disagree. There are currently over 6,000 titles on SACD, mosty classical. Go to arkivmusic.com and check under "SuperAudio CD," and you'll find an extensive listing of classical titles available. Also, the BIS label produces exclusively SACD's (no CD's or LP's) and continues to release new titles on a regular basis.

[mlsstl]

I have to disagree. There are currently over 6,000 titles on SACD, mosty classical. Go to arkivmusic.com and check under "SuperAudio CD," and you'll find an extensive listing of classical titles available. Also, the BIS label produces exclusively SACD's (no CD's or LP's) and continues to release new titles on a regular basis.

6,000 sounds like a real big number until you consider that an Amazon search for classical CDs shows over 389,000 titles. SACD albums represent only 0.15% of what's available on CD.

No doubt that the current "big" classical titles have decent coverage, but that still leaves an enormous amount of classical music -- over 99% -- only available on CD. (Out-of-print LPs have been intentionally left out of this discussion, but including them would only make the situation worse for SACD.)

[E-Stat]

I looked through the SACD catalog - it's painful. Fortunately Blu-Ray may be the answer in time.

Forget boomers like me who grew up with vinyl and were the ones who largely bought SACD and BR music.

Do you honestly believe the majority of Millenials will embrace the notion of putting down their iPods and actually having to spin a shiny disk for each piece of music they want to hear? Always carry around their Case Logic tote with their collection? It's one thing to do that once every two hours to watch a movie. For each song? It is they who will determine what will survive in the market, not hi-fi geeks like us.

As for me, I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell that will ever come to pass. The genie is already out of the bottle. For geezers like me, too. This week, I just replaced the ten year old GamuT CD-1 upstairs with an Audio Research DAC and another Squeezebox Touch network player.