Should Sound Quality of Computer Audio be improved

Petty everything moves on. Change is universal. Nothing stands still. You are seeing the dawn of medias all converging.

The equipment is better than its ever been, and I'm sure it will continue to refine & redefine. Whether other formats survive or not only time will tell. But if they do not, I doubt it will because of any of our opinions. It's a global market.

The needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few! You can still burn (record!) your own CDs if you wish. I suspect the devices of the future will be so compact & multifunctional that software (records) that need their own separate hardware to just to do one thing (I.e TT/CD players/Reel to Reel/DATs etc) will be forgotten.

It will just mean that the software will be played on all devices with no need for all these hard formats. Don't worry it will be much better.

This thread is train wreck...

I agree Gsself - and interestingly the one who started it ultimately hijacked it! Could be an Audiogon first!

Get over yourself- Gsself! Simple differences of opinion are not "Train Wrecks", more akin to a "Democracy"?
Revisionist History? I can't think of a single Monopoly
where the Economy thrived- going back thru the entire
Economic History of the U.S.! Perhaps I am wrong, can you give me an example? I believe that they have a tendency to
cause Recessions, and Depressions. The Audio Market is, after all a Market. I don't believe that it is immune to these. Change can either be good, offering more choices for
the Consumer empowering him. Change can also be bad, eliminating options that limit the Consumer depowering him.
I am simply trying to acknowledge the economic risk here
for the Consumer, in limiting his options to just only one
Audio Format- Computer Audio Downloading. The risk here is
in making Audio so irrelevant (Compared to other popular Computer Functions) that even Computer Audio goes by the
wayside. As you said, "Change is universal, nothing stands still"! Nothing makes Audio more irrelevant than lower than
CD Resolution MP3. Keep on lowering the resolution to the point of irrelevancy/ oblivion. Why waste the Processing
Power keeping it around? If your idea of change is to make
Audio irrelevant to its inevitable end, I disagree with you that this is a "Good Idea" for change sake only. Needs
of the many, the many need Music- not Audio made irrelevant
no matter how much Profit can be made off of this. Your
type of change puts the needs of the Computer over the needs of Audio, especially Computer Audio. How does this
help us who are in the Consumer business of Audio? We pay
more, we get less resolution/sound quality. "WOW- I'll buy
THAT for a dollar"!

Petty, your premis continues to be wrong.

I have explained MP3. You can choose if you want higher rez. So get off that argument of low bandwidth. It's a red herring. If anything, CD is low bandwidth today.

You have more choice than ever. In fact you could even download music which never would have been put out by a record company. New artists with no A&R interference. Pure expression if you are lucky or interested.

What you don't seem to understand is the music is stored as a file which can be read by any entertainment device or computer. So you are free to play music in pretty much any environment. That is good. I don't see how it makes audio irrelevant? It makes it accessible. And if you want to get all audiophile you can.

Which bit do you not understand? Pardon the pun.