When is digital going to get the soul of music?

"Music buyers voted down high resolution audio with their failure to buy enough SACD or DVD-A discs to encourage the record companies to continue with the business model."

Tvad, I'm more optimistic than you on this I believe.

Yes, those were not good business models.

I believe electronic delivery of music over the internet is the business model that will work as it does for other forms of electronic media and will continue to expand into higher resolution formats as well. Its already happening, I believe.

Its inevitable that upcoming generations of products like Roku Soundbridge ($129 currently) for example will expand to higher resolution and continue to be relatively cost effective hardware products to produce. You will pay accordingly for the high res content to go along with them though.

It'll be similar to how companies practically give away cell phones today do that they can lock you into their much higher revenue services.

Digital technology is the enabler of all this, not a hindrance. Viable business models are a different concern.

Tvad,

Hopefully its enough of a boutique/niche thing to take form and survive. As such , there will be a cost but hopefully enough willing to pay. It'll be a long time before it is ever mainstream for sure. I'm sure I will never be able to afford to replace my LP collection in my lifetime. I will look forward to it hopefully though for new stuff and better yet versions of the titles I truly cherish.

This is not a digital versus analog viewpoint on my part. It's about enjoying music. For instance, before I wouldn't listen to lp's made after 1982 in case digital was in the mix somewhere. Even drunk(not me!?), you could feel the relaxing nature of all analog versus analog with some digital. Finally I had to do something, as I had missed all music after 1982. I have a very fine digital setup(APL Denon 3910 and Oritek pre/dac{used at BAAS's recent events}-both with Lessloss pc's), and I hope to build my digital library. That being said, I wonder about the ability of the musician to translate his intent on digital. It seems that maybe analog makes it a song, and digital has sounds that don't seem to quite add up to a song-or you have to listen to it a lot before it becomes a song. Is this due to the lower resolution of redbook cd? Here is where I'm going to show my ignorance/laziness. Don't all these bits and extended frequency sampling still give you either a 1 or a 0?