HasCD sound exceeded expectations since 1983?

According to Nielsen SoundScan, in 2011 223 million cds and 4 million vinyl records were sold in the US. Last week on Amazon about 2,000 cds and about 200 vinyl records were released. Cd will be with us for a while yet.

Loudness War has been detrimental to CD.

Tomcy6 - agree CD will be with us for a while and sales still dwarf vinyl - but the two formats have been heading in opposite directions for a few years now, something that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. Downloads appear to be in the process of replacing CDs but never will replace vinyl. Plus, many vinyl sales are not captured in statistics - things like specialists online retailers, independent record stores, used shops etc.

In the next decade I could easily see CDs getting squeezed out by downloads on the one hand and vinyl on the other. They will likely end up in the $1.00 bins with DVD videos (squeezed out by downloads / netflix etc and Blu-Ray).

Hfisher,

I don't think I would call the transition from cd to another digital format as cd being squeezed out. Cd served its purpose and it will be replaced by a newer format.

Cd was not all bad. It caused the reissuing of vast amounts of music that was OOP on vinyl or shellac. I have a lot of music in my cd collection that I never would have been able to hear if it had not been reissued on cd.

Cd probably sounded as good as or better than vinyl on most systems. Most systems are not audiophile quality and most people did not clean their lps or even their needles. They might blow the lint off the needle once in a while.

IMHO, Digital download or streaming is the future of the vast majority of music. Vinyl, cd and even SACD will remain as niche markets for as long as I'll be around anyway.

A technologically inclined friend of mine opined that the initial 44.1 Khz sampling rate that was adopted at the beginning of the CD era was even then known to be inadequate. However, it was the best that available technology could support. Over nearly 30 years of commercial production, I think the sound quality has improved enormously. Our own taste dictates which of these technologies-digital or analogue-sounds best. I'm perfectly happy with CDs in their present form, and just as vinyl never died, CDs will also survive the next format shift. What may NOT survive that shift is the major record companies. The centralized distribution of music is about to become a relic of the past, IMO.