Is the death of the CD looming?

Original Link - http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Music/07/19/cd.digital.sales/index.html?hpt=C2#fbid=Yx9TbMYHsiJ (sometimes CNN links dont work)

(CNN) -- If you think the musical compact disc is dying or dead, you're probably younger than it is.
"Show me a teenager buying a Susan Boyle album on CD and I'll show you someone buying a gift for their grandparent -- for Christmas," jokes Billboard senior chart manager and analyst Keith Caulfield. "There is definitely an age component to the consumption of music."
As the music industry as a whole struggles in a down economy and direct download business models like iTunes flourish, the compact disc -- which was commercially introduced in 1982 -- has the appearance of going the way of vinyl.
And contrary to the recent declaration of singer Prince -- who said that the Internet is dead and released his latest CD for free via European newspapers -- there's some evidence that consumers aren't as enamored with ripping the cellophane off that new CD as they once were.
According to data from Nielsen SoundScan, in 2007 CDs accounted for 90 percent of album sales in the United States, with digital accounting for the other 10 percent. Just two years later, that number had shifted to 79 percent CDs and 20 percent digital, with the remaining percentage point being made up of vinyl and other media.
Billboard's Caulfield said that so far this year, about 44 million digital albums have been sold, compared with 40 million during the same time frame last year. But while digital sales have increased slightly, CD sales have dropped from 147 million last year to 114 million this year for the same time period.
Caulfield stops short of speculating on a date when CDs might be phased out, but he does see similarities with the history of other media.
"Vinyl was the predominant configuration from the '50s and the '60s all the way up through the early '80s, and then cassettes became the predominant format from the early-mid '80s to the very early '90s," he said. "Then CDs became the predominant format and cassettes really didn't go away until a few years ago. It's kind of a natural progression, to a degree."
That's not to say that some artists aren't still selling well. Country group Lady Antebellum has so far racked up 2.4 million in album sales -- both CD and digital -- making them the top-selling act so far for 2010. In second place is teen phenom Justin Bieber, with 1.4 million.
"When an artist like a Drake or Eminem sells a bunch of albums, that shows that there are a lot of people that really want to spend money and give money to the artist that they are really, truly a fan of," Caulfield said. "The younger an artist skews in terms of who they appeal to, you'll see a larger share of their album sales tilt towards digital."
One obvious benefit of digital downloads is their ability to scratch an immediate itch. Caulfield observes shows like Fox's "Glee" make songs almost instant hits because "they have already heard and liked the song by the time they download it." Paul Grein, who writes the "Chart Watch" column for Yahoo.com, agrees, seeing hope for the music business in the success of "Glee" and "American Idol," which have helped spike downloads.
Despite the CD's decline, Grein believes the format will be around for the foreseeable future.
"I think it's becoming less of a mass-market item and kind of a niche product that caters to a small but loyal following," he said. "But there are enough cases where we are seeing albums that are selling in big numbers that I think they will be around for a while." Younger-skewing artists, such as singer-rapper Ke$ha, enjoy a larger slice of the digital pie than older-skewing artists such as James Taylor, he says.
Indeed, the format isn't the point, he said. In 100 years, recorded music has gone from cylinders to shellac 78s to vinyl LPs to cassettes, CDs and now digital downloads. Through it all, listeners still crave tunes.

"Music is definitely still in fashion," he said. "It's all around us."

Check You Mp3 Audio Loss via Subtraction in Ableton Live Tutorial

In todays digital world, the mp3 has become a consumer standard among audio files. This is very sad considering the loss that comes due to compression of the audio file. For many everyday audio users, it doesnt make much of a difference, but to those of you who care about your audio, and want it to be as clean and high quality as possible...I am going to show you a little trick in determining how much audio you are ACTUALLY losing when converting your audio to mp3. By using reverse polarities of your track...you can basically subtract the lossed audio simply by looking at it in ableton compose view.

When converting to mp3, its good to keep in mind that about 90% of your audio is making up the track...so you are looking at a roughly 10% loss of audio. These apply directly to your highest and lowest frequencies pretty heavily, but also affects other parts of the track as you will be able to tell soon.

For this tutorial, I will be using SWITCH to convert my files, and ableton live to view and change the polarization of them. You can download SWITCH at http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/audio/switchaudioconverter.html

So, let me give you a run down of what we are going to be doing. Basically, we will be converting one of your master files from its original form, into an mp3, and then BACK to a linear (wav) file...and then comparing them.

I am starting with a .flac file which came from my mastering engineer of one of my mastered tracks.

Now I am going to drop that wav file (which I had already converted using switch) into switch and turn it into an mp3.

Now, I am going to convert it back to a wav file -


So now I have a file that has been converted to mp3, and back to wav. Now what we want to do is compare those 2 tracks in ableton live. We need to drop both tracks into ableton live compose view -

Now this is TRICKY, but a key part of this. You need to make sure you line up the audio so it is EXACTLY ON. If one files starts shifting away from the other, it will make this whole idea pointless because no cancellation will occur.

Now what you want to do is add a UTILITY PLUG to the converted file, and push both the PHz-L, and PHz-R buttons (they should turn yellow) -


Now simply play back the 2 audio files together, and you should be able to hear ONLY the audio that has been removed when it was converted to mp3. You are basically subtracting the audio from one another, and the only audio that should be left is whatever was REMOVED from the mp3 file. This is the simple concept of cancellation. Whoever told you mp3's only remove inaudible parts of the audio....was totally full of shit huh!

If you want to understand this concept in its true form....put 2 of the same tracks in ableton, and phaze shift one of the tracks. Play them together. You will hear absolutely NO AUDIO come out. The only reason you are hearing audio with this idea is because the mp3 removed certain parts of the audio...leaving only that audio left when you subtract the 2.

Now, sit back, and cry every time you have to convert it to mp3 just to upload it to a website.

This just reiterates the point of using lossless audio (like .flac) or pure linear files like .wav or .aif.

Peace!

FroBot