The Future of Music Technology

Future Formats..?

The technology behind CD, MD, mp3 and wavs is getting a bit old now; CD-quality used to mean perfect, but now a lot of people have much higher expectations.

Ever since someone worked out that there was money to be made in selling music, the manufacturers of the devices that play it and the formats it comes on have been trying to convince us that their product is the best thing ever. Obviously, once you have all the music you want you stop buying it, so new formats come along with better sound quality and smaller size, and we have to start buying all over again.

There have always been winners and losers in the format wars. 78rpm shellac discs won over wax cylinders, cassette tape won over 8-track cartridge, minidisc won over DCC. Others, like DAT, were great but never caught on outside of recording studios. CD won over vinyl in most domestic settings, but no-one saw club culture and it's reliance on vinyl coming.

The industry figures on a format life of about 20 years, which meant that DVD should have wiped out CD. Except it hasn't. In fact, the main new format in recent years has been mp3, which (in sonic terms) is actually a backward step. This has the industry frightened. How can they sell us an improvement on CD-quality if we're actually happy with CD quality and below CD-quality sound? If you want a bit more info on current formats there are some links here.

The other big industry problem is control of the medium. The only way to copy an album a few years ago was to copy it onto cassette; not perfect, but OK. However, now many people have CD burners in their computers, and the issue of clones of recordings is presented; true bit-for-bit clones of the originals. It doesn't feel like theft because the owner still has their copy. The internet gives us an opportunity to share our recordings (as exemplified by the deceased Napster, but continued all over the web). The industry needs to get us using formats that they, and not we, control. Recent legislation in the USA points towards this, as does Microsoft's new operating system that's in development, Palladium. These new laws have got a lot of people quite worried.

So, what next? The death of the industry?

We are being asked to buy into the next generation of formats. They use two main improvements over CD and mp3 to try to entice us away…

Surround sound
Improved sound quality

What I'd like you to do is to look into future and assess the current 'new contenders' for the crown of 'the next big format'. I can provide some links, but get on Google and do some proper research.

Sound Quality

Look at the emerging formats of DVD Audio (good places to start are the DVD Forum and the technical info from Digital Audio Guide) and SACD. Who owns them? Who stands to win or lose if one, or both, fails to catch on? How are they achieving superior sound quality to CD? What technology are they using? How much do they (and their players) cost? Are they backwards compatible (ie will they play old CDs?).

Surround Sound

What is surround sound? What are 5.1 and 7.1? What is the argument for making us all buy more speakers? What's wrong with stereo? What are the psychoacoustic principles behind surround? Are there any phase issues with having so many speakers?

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