What does the future hold?

[ListeningEar]

...well central servers controlling home entertainment already exist in the multi-million Dollar homes that I have worked in on the California/Nevada border.

One house I worked in was a 12.5 Million Dollar 'weekend' home for one of the senior Intel guys (spare cash he needed to be rid of!). His home was totally wired for piped entertainment in every room from a central server, but when spoke to him about sound quality and fine audio equipment he was just not interested!

Like Tom Alves stated, it is all about convenience. Maybe I am fast becomming a dinosaur on this subject but sound quality is the most important thing for me, don't care for convenience or freeing up space where my CD and vinyl sits.

X-Box is already usuable as a media server, no need to wait for the X-Box 2, and the PS2 can also be set up with a HDD and network card as well as there being at least three very good media control centre programs.

One thing I do think is a good idea is having a media centre for my kids stuff. You know what kids are like, they never look after things properly and for me, I refuse to buy DVD's for them. I get copies from friends but if I had a media centre I could store movies for them without ever having to worry about scratched DVD's or worn out video tape, and sound quality is not important there

 

[lAmBoY]

...no, I'm Craig!

Sorry to pee on your bonfire Craig, for I am Craig.

Craig is Dead! Long live Craig!!

viva la lamboy

Sorry - carry on.

 

[julian2002]

Listening ear,
central servers aren;t just the toys of the idle rich. a numebr of my friends have media servers with their dvd's ripped as divx and their music collections (and other peoples) as mp3's using free/share ware and 1/2 decent pc's. my own modest pc/squeezebox/dac solution could be multiroomed very easily by waking up the wireless part of my router again and finding a cheap amp/speaker combo.
as for quality, well the squeezebox can no doubt be improved upon but for something costing about the same as a cheap sony cd player it's doing a stand up job. throw some audiophile thinking and components at it and it could be a fantastic transport. (although i reckon as a transport it's damn good anyway but this has yet to be put to the test).
what i'm trying to say is that quality need not be sacrificed on the altar of convienience , i seem to remember people saying similar things about cd 20 add years ago. now cd's are definately considered audiophile, a similar thing will happen with 'network audio'. i'm becomming more convinced that the next 'big thing' will be better ways to source the music you listen too. a bit like a much improved amazon 'recomendations' page but interactive with music and things you see around you. how about something that pulgs into your brain that senses your mood analyses what's going on around you and suggests music, movies, fragrences, clothes, etc. that it thinks will recreate those feelings later?
cheers


julian

 

[joel]

what i'm trying to say is that quality need not be sacrificed on the altar of convienience

Close, but no banana. The problem is the devaluation of music (and much else) at the alter of convenience. Call it dumbing down if you will. it is quite a complex process, but inexorable and... dumb.
Anyway, this is way OT on this thread. Perhaps a mod could split these posts off?

 

[joel]

Perhaps a mod could split these posts off?

Slick. You boys are pros. This ain't the moment to be throwing in the towel (oops OT, again ).

 

[julian2002]

joel,
how does increasing the amount and variety of music listened to devalue music? perhaps you are referring to the lack of packaging etc. well you could download image files and other faff if you wanted to kill a tree or two wasting paper and plastic on that stuff but you can easily have cover art, lyrics, etc. displayed by the media box of your choice so i can't see how that argument holds.
if it's some sort of masochistic urge to piss about with antistatic brushes, unipivot tonearms and dragging bits of rock over pieces of vulcanised rubber then fair enough, embrace your anachrophillia and be done with it but don;t say that convienience when coupled with quality somehow devalues music.
cheers


julian

 

[ListeningEar]

Listening ear,
central servers aren;t just the toys of the idle rich.

julian

...er yes I know! I was trying to provide a basic history stating that media servers were common place among the materially affluent, but if you read the latter part of my post you will also see that I mentioned many people are using their X-Box's and PS2's as a media server recognising that this type of technology is no longer just for the wealthy.

 

[ListeningEar]

joel,
how does increasing the amount and variety of music listened to devalue music?

julian

The decrease is not relative to the quantity listened to, it's normally relative to the compression used to store all the data on the media server. Compression equals loss of sound quality, fact! Although there are lossless compression systems such as .flac (that I have not actually used myself).

We should also be careful not to dismiss devices such as record cleaning arms and uni-pivot tonearms in blank statements indicating that these are only for the fanatics. This only shows how little some many know/understand of how they work and what improvement they offer.

 

[bottleneck]

I dont think we can link media servers or downloadable music with a decline in musical content or recording quality in the world generally.

Both the general public and the record industry alike contribute to what we hear on the radio every day.

Whether chart music has declined in quality, has always been poor, or has always been good is just a matter of opinion of course.

Likewise, whether the quality of modern recordings themselves are better, worse, or no different to past periods is again open to opinion and interpretation IMO.

It seems to me that music stored digitally on a server is just as able to provide audiophile content as music stored on a CD.

 

[Tenson]

The only thing that really worries me is that most music will probably be compressed using a lossy format like mp3. It's already happening, just take DAB and music channels on Sky/Cable ad an example.

Sure we can probably still get music in uncompressed formats but I bet the selection we can choose from will be much smaller than that of compressed music. If you look at the websites where you can pay to download music legally (check out www.allofmp3.com) most of them offer uncompressed versions of some music, but not anywhere near the amount they offer on compressed formats.

 

[Kit]

I think the future will be the end of fixed formats.

As I understand it, a digital amp works by a microchip telling the output stage to switch on and off to create a soundwave.

If your PC could control the output stage, file format and recording type stops being important. Download music or buy it on any sort of physical media, with any necessary conversion from one format to another done in software.

Sounds exciting to me.

 

[julian2002]

L.E.
i thought i was clear that i was talking about lossless compression where quality is the issue. my point being that ith flac, alc and hdd;s big enough to store even raw wav's now mp3's are a bit pointless unless you are downloading music.
as we are talking about the future i assumed that everyone would have a very high speed data link so transferring a 1 gig file would take a matter of seconds.
personally i'd prefer to have a 'hard' backup of a cd sitting in the loft or wardrobe in case of accidents this also gives me the opportunity to rip the software in the manner of my choosing without all that drm bullshite.
cheers

julian

 

[Tom Alves]

Don't know if this is relevant but when I started looking at the Squeezebox etc I went on a few PC fora asking what was possible. The general response was one of suprise. Suprise that anyone wasn't using the PC for music.

 

[Tenson]

as we are talking about the future i assumed that everyone would have a very high speed data link so transferring a 1 gig file would take a matter of seconds.
julian

The thing is, this is already possible but we don't do it. Cable TV has huge bandwidth easily capable of sending uncompressed music for the music channels, but they use compression. The reason being they would rather fit even more channels into the space.

The thing you have to remember is that although in the future you may be able to download 1gig in a few seconds, the servers have to be able to push many times that amount of data out. With something like a central EMI server with all their music on it for the UK to download.. think how much bandwidth that server would need too send every person in the UK music that?s uncompressed! It's possible yes, but I bet they would rather spend 1/10th the money on bandwidth by using mp3 or similar compression Lets face it, there are not really enough audio enthusiasts for them to care about.

 

[GAZZ]

so i take it you are sitting on the fence Bottleneck?

 

[bottleneck]

me? wot? eh?

nah - not sitting on the fence - thought I'd explained my POV..

I see music servers as currently something that only hifi people and computer people have.

Im sure more and more people will store music on computers - computers just seem to get more and more powerful and capable of more and more things.

To look at it from a social level though, I think its necessary to look at how people use/want music in their lives.

If you had to categorise you could say there are-

1) People who have an interest in playing music for many hours each day and are always looking to expand their musical horizons. (us?)
2) People who like music, but have smaller collections and rarely get anything new
3) Kids who are really really into about 3 bands only.
4) People who arent really that into music, and can live without it on a regular basis.

I believe that 'music servers' wouldnt interest 2) or 4). It would interest 3) - a bit. and of course 1).

There is also an aspect of the tangibility of an object, what we value and what we don't. I think there is a belief that something downloaded from the internet should be free, and something taken from a shop should cost money. I dont think that internet sites selling albums for say 6.99 - sellig an intangible asset will sway the public at large. I believe people will believe they have ''a copy'' and not ''an original''.

Just some thoughts.

 

[lAmBoY]

I agree - tangible assets make you feel youve got your moneys worth.

Maybe the future will be downloadable - with limited burn counts.

 

[joel]

joel,
how does increasing the amount and variety of music listened to devalue music?

Music becomes simply another consumable, like chocolate or MTV.
There is a superabundance of music, and it is instantly available, yet the paradox is that the more choice there is, the less we value what we have and the less attention we pay.
This is progress only in a simplistic mechanistic sense.
Music simply becomes a playlist, background noise or the soundtrack for MTV. The magic (even in the literal sense) of music, or of the human voice is lost.

 

[domfjbrown]

Ever since people first started talking about music and TV over cable, using central servers, I got worried. If I can't stick a disc or (heaven forbid!) a tape on when I want to hear it (assuming the component that plays it isn't being repaired) I get VERY antsy. Music is the most important thing in my life - and is EASILY better than sex (based on the experience of going out with the crappest ex in the world!).

And unlike chocolate, music won't rot your teeth...

I will be using vinyl until no more cartridges are available. I also use CD. I have cassette and 8track cartridge. I even have minidiscs and some reel-reel tapes. I like music, and I also like collections of stuff, and walls of vinyl and CD are like a book library or an art gallery of yore.

The idea of owning "rights" to play something, probably run through Micro$oft or Crapple really puts me off, and with my eyesight, trying to see sleeve art on a monitor is a real passion killer. A cut down in the number of boxes would be nice, but until they can make a cheap speaker sound really good and take up less space, I don't see the point in cutting down the size of my "software library".

BTW - I also have a whole hoard of laserdiscs - some from the initial British 1982 launch. I acquired all of these in the last two years. Why? It's kind of groovy seeing sleeve art at that size, even though DVDs are smaller and don't need turning over (on some discs, Laserdisc is better than DVD for me, but that's another story!).

SO I won't be getting a Squeezebox OR a blinkinig iShod any time this year. I might look like a bell end, totiing a CD walkman bag (1992 vintage) that's the size of a weekend bag, but at least if I'm on holiday I can bung a just-bought CD into the player and hear it, and put AAs in it when the batts run out. Try doing THAT with an iPod. And I'd like to see how long your iPod/speakers'd stay in your tent at Glastonbury while you're off having fun...

 

[domfjbrown]

...here's MY take on bleeding-edge technology - this will be going on a white T-shirt should I get a Glastonbury ticket this year!