Probably not far away. Heck I still miss vinyl records with all the artwork, words etc.!!

Hopefully never mp3s are so compressed that thy are a really poor representation of the music. Fine for earbuds but horrible if you listen through quality electronics. BTW, vinyl is still out there and making a minor comeback.

I might be the odd one out here but I prefer audio fidelity and quality to portability.
I rarely listen to an mp3 and don't own an ipod

Sound on CD is already clipped and mp3 are just horrendous.

I started sampling SACD's and DVD audios for a while but blu-ray audio has finally taken the cake it is just incredible coming through even a fairly a decent sound system.

A blu-ray holds 50 gig of data, DVD 8 gig, cd 700meg and individual mp3 are just a meg or two something missing there somewhere.

Also while I do make use of headphones, I stick with a full pair of noise canceling Sennheiser or AKG's. Those earbuds common with mp3 players can generate enough pressure to do damage, but that is about all they are good for.

[getting off soap box did not realize I was on ]

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Keep on Truckin, Going full speed ahead down the highway to hades.

I'm right there with everyone. I hate how it's common these days to only buy crappy quality MP3s. I always love to actually HOLD something in my hand when I'm listening to a song off of the album for the first time, I love the smell of the CD booklets, I love the CD art, and everything about the actual physical CD.
If you really want my opinion, though, vinyl is the best.

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"If it's planned, it's boring." - Freddie Mercury

Hello STLBlues,

No Mp3 player for me.
{except the one in this computer,if there is one}
My sons and his pals are all mp3 users,
that may be the future.

Cheers.

No MP3s here in any form. Kinda, if you like good instruments and amps, how can you even stand, much less stomach the trash quality of MP3s?

Audio engineers seem to agree; First purest, real, live. Next, real, live, mic'ed, then reel-to-reel tape. Next, vinyl. Then cassette tape. Then, CDs. Then Mp3s.

Hyperproduction and compression keep getting more intense, down the line. And just like gossip, the longer the chain, the more reality suffers in the retelling.

I have an mp3 player, but only use it to listen to my cds while i am mowing the lawn or I use it to listen to my cds thru my radio in my work van .Everything else its cds.

I just LOVE lugging my turntable around when I'm running on the treadmill. Whenever I take a step the needle bounces everywhere and scratches up the record.

I hate mp3's as well. Poor quality, and nothing tangible to show for your purchase.

I'd rather have the actual product, higher quality recording, and the artwork to go with it.

ipods in a way have ruined music. Noone has a music collection anymore, they have an ipod with 4,000 songs on it.

How far away is the next music format ? My guess is in the next year or two the cd will start to co-exhist with a Blu Ray counterpart, much as we are seeing in the video isle. Then as the hardware becomes available,and more affordable, the cd will join the ranks of the vinyl and audio tape formats, hard core, not main stream.
Of course the cycle of re-releasing old catalogs in the new format will resurface. I make myself laugh at that one, having purchased Sgt. Pepper on vinyl the first time around and making a cassette copy to play in the car, then purchasing it as the first cd to go along with my first cd player some 30 years later.
My current computer has software that will allow me to hook a turntable to the computer so that I can convert my vinyl lps to cds.

Round and round she goes,
John.E

I remember the reason CD's were said to be so great was their sound--now an inferior sounding option is foisted on us in the name of convenience--downloadable, more portable, and all those songs in a tiny package.

Give me good sound any day.

I don't own an ipod or mp3 player.

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It wasn't Willy-Nilly, it was at crows.

I was one of those people who wasn't thrilled about the CD when it first appeared. To this day, I have a lot of vinyl. But as time passed, I finally accepted the fact that I had to listen to music that way. I think it was the late 80's when I finally bought my first CD player.

The same was true with mp3's. I have a lot of them now, but most are my CD's ripped to iTunes for my iPod. The only songs I have bought online are artists who only have one or two songs that I like. If there's someone I really like, I'll buy the CD.

I like the fact that the new vinyl releases also include a downloadable version of the LP. You're not getting it for free, of course. I used to convert my LP's to MP3's, but it's too much work and doesn't sound as good as the original.

I think that as long as people are enjoying music it doesn't matter how you listen to it. As long as the artist gets paid somewhere down the line.

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"...The final truth is, there is no truth..." - (from "Nice n' Neat" by the Boomtown Rats)

time will see and what the record companies will do.
vinyl has a comeback in metal and rock area.
myself i'm a cd album collector (no singles). for the moment i won't change to mp3.

cheers

mp3 quality is only as bad as it is compressed. The ignorance in this thread is staggering honestly. No offense to any involved. But digital quality is however you wish it to be. 192kbps-320kbps are the standard, relatively low bitrates that are accepted simply because of the convenience of having such a small file. If filesize is no matter, then there is no reason you cannot have lossless mp3s or a truly lossless format file like .FLAC.

It all comes down to the legwork and what you are willing to do or get.

There will be no future format. Digital is the wave of the future and so #$@*&!% convenient. Even when I buy a CD or vinyl, I just rip them anyways and never spin the discs again.

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I wish that when you downloaded music it came with liner notes, which is one of the main reasons why I still try and buy CDs. I only have a few CDs. I don't even have a CD player (I used to have a crappy one, but it broke) and I listen to 99% of my music on my iPod so as far as the quality goes I really can't tell. I need a stereo system though, especially now that I've unearthed my parents ancient turntable. It still works, but I need something other than my guitar amp to hook it up to.
They also have a massive collection of vinyl that I've started to go through.

Oh, and this is probably pretty obvious but in case you didn't know you can adjust the sound quality of MP3s. I always listen to mine at the highest quality, but since that takes up a lot more space I can't fit as many songs on my iPod. But that's OK with me, I'd rather have the best quality MP3s that I can have instead of the most MP3s I can possibly squeeze into my iPod.

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