MP3 players

You must not be aware of all the lawsuits against Napster and MP3.com. There is simply no way you'll have a higher than (or equal to) CD quality recording you can download off the internet for FREE. "From the original master tapes"...Just isn't going to happen. It may be that people stop buying aluminum CD's, and instead pay for downloading their own (in the next 10 years), but I wouldn't bet on that either. CD as it exists now will be around for quite a while longer, and if you shop hard enough, you can find many for cheap. If you like classical, many of the Naxos titles sound excellent, and they are only $5 a piece.

Actually Carl, I am aware of the lawsuits against Napster because I was banned from using it for supposedly having Metallica in my computer. I already own all of their discs including the DCC golds so I had no reason to put in my computer, but I was banned anyway. Thanks to some other users, many web-sites posted ways to get around it, and thats what I did. Actually, you're statemanet about not being able to have "from the master quality" is incorrect. The main reason that peolpe use mp3 format is because it takes up less file space and shortens the download time. You could just as easily transfer .wav files, that are true uncompressed digital files, but it take much longer to download and a lot more file space. A lot of music is actually recorded, mixed, edited, and stored in computers without ever using any tape, digital or analog. Alan Parsons is one of the main persons doing this. His album Try Anything Once was completely recorded using his computer.

I'm fully aware of how many "modern" pop recordings are made, the varying fidelity notwithstanding. I also know that all the big time mastering engineers still archive on 2 inch analog tape. My assertion was that you'll not see it appear for free on the internet en masse. What you have is taken from a CD (sometimes an SACD perhaps), and not any sort of "master" that was used upstream of the process to make the the PCM redbook CD, or the SACD. That's what I meant. Don't get so defensive already...

Carl, sorry if I sounded defensive, I didn't mean to be. Most people just don't realize how much music is actually recorded and mixed on computers and optical drives. The price of 96/24 equipment for computer is incredible anymore. You can get a killer home studio for the fraction of the cost of a "real" studio. Obviously most audiophile recordins aren't done this way, but more and more popular music is being done this way all the time. Hell, even most of the big studios do quite a bit of mixing and editing on computers because it is easier and more flexible than tape could ever be. They can pick and choose which take they want and mix it how they want over and over until they have it right without having to time-sync tape machines and swap tracks back and forth between them. I agree that you won't see master quality en masse for a long time, but it could happen sooner than we think. I read an article some time back in Sound and Vision about Joe Gastwirt(mastering genius) and in it he said that almost all of the master tapes were 1/2 inch at eithter 15 or 30ips, not 2" tape.

That's Joe Gastwirt. What about Bob Ludwig and all the rest of the big timers? I distinctly remember him and several others mentioning the 2 inch tape in an article in Mix. I'll look for it sometime............I know it's better to edit on a DAW, that has nothing to do with what's available on the internet in MP3. I also know that pop music is big on compressor/limiters and panning a flat 2 dimensional stereo "image"...and short on concerns of "fidelity to the original", especially if there was no original to begin with. They like to make it "translatable" to car audio with the top down at 80 mph!................The DAW world is great for musicians that want to get their music composed and into the market place. But nearly all audiophiles like minimalist recordings done in a real acoustic space with no compression/limiting, no digital sound space processing, etc. IMHO, the best recordings ever made were done in the golden age of stereo, with 3 omni mics spaced only a little bit apart, and direct to tape (more or less). Once you've heard one of these, you'll know what I mean. Not that I don't like modern music, but it certainly is fatigueing to listen to, even on the best/most musical systems.