<font color='#000000'>I agree with this entirely. I am starting to see some of the music I enjoy get more populated on the lists for hi-res recordings. I only have a 2 chan. DVD-A player, but it still outplays on it's worst day the insane CD quality.
I suppose one ave. of why we haven’t gotten many hi-res recordings is the de-appreciation of the art of music. I blame mostly mp3 formats for this, and here is my reasons as to why (not a rant on profit / loss of record companies). Many people unfortunately have been used to the idea of getting music on the internet under the new compression format MP3. With the inclusion of broadband, many people have gone this route whether they pay for the music through subscription services or download it for free off the internet. Also, the amount of popularity associated with audio players that allow playback of the MP3 format has exploded on the market. (In fact I own one myself only for carrying music with me to the office without taking 100 cd's) As a result, the number of people that think CD quality is awesome or that MP3 audio quality is perfectly ok to them is staggering. Most people think that an averagely mastered CD recording is about as good as it gets. Ask anyone you know who owns a MP3 player if they ever heard a 120g LP on a half way decent audio setup, or a DVD-A or SACD, and I bet you over 90% won't even know what you are talking about. I believe the problem with most audiophile quality or high quality audio is that it is not as advertised or pushed here in the United States. Everyone thinks CD's are all there is, and this includes sales people at your average audio / video store as well as your average consumer. I had a friend over who told me I was insane for thinking an LP had a better sound than a CD player. I invited him over to my home one day and played the exact same track on a high end CD player and a low / medium end turntable. (I have some albums on both formats). Every time he told me the LP sounded better, but he thought it was the CD he was listening to. I let him listen to a DVD-A after that and he was blown away. After years of listening to CD and MP3 quality music I had expected little else. After hearing my system he has since started to buy high quality audio for not that much more than what he would be paying for another CD player or more CDs.
Sadly, some people don't even hear the differences. Their ear has been tuned to listen to average or poor quality CDs in which case they can not even tell a difference. Once you tell them to try to tune into one instrument on a hi-res recording and then play a CD of the same track and ask them to track the same instrument they were listening to on the hi-res recording their eyes almost pop out of their head with the difference. Other's simply say "I don't care about better quality.. it's good enough." I can see where people want to say this, but I can't stand it when people say "I have every CD xyz band put out." and then turn around and say "I don't care if I have a crappy sounding copy." It just seems to me that they don't appreciate the music as much as others do. Such a condition must be horrible to the bands that strive for better equipment to make their music sound better only to have it lost in badly broken down and compressed audio formats such as CD or MP3.
The sad fact of the matter is as long as people listen only to CD quality and MP3 quality music and think they are just as good as anything out there, hi-res music will always be 2nd rate on the minds of record companies. Personally I feel that if they only advertized more and educated the customer on other musical formats it would catch on rather quickly. I think that DVD-A is the absolute best at achieving this medium. You can get much better audio quality on DVD players that cost only around 150-300 bucks than you ever could on a CD. Once people realize you don't need to spend tens of thousands in order to enjoy a truly unique, audibly pleasing, near-master recording music people will start buying better equipment in droves. This would cause cost of high end equipment to plumit and more recordings to be released. Simple supply and demand would dictate such an action in the hi-res audio marketplace.
Larry...</font>
