The music business

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Tero
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The music business

Post by Tero » Mon Feb 25, 2013 2:28 am

It's really gone strange when video HD gadgets are selling like crazy, but nobody wants HD music. The kind you could sell on DVD audio. It turns out people will pay full price for iTunes, mp3 etc or get it free.

Sales 2012:

Per Nielsen ratings, 376 million music units were sold in the US last year. The breakdown by genre:

Rock, 27.3%
Alternative, 13.9%
R&B, 13.2%
Country, 11.9%
Metal, 8.5%
Rap, 6.4%
Christian/Gospel, 6.1%
Soundtrack, 3.3%
Latin, 2.6%
Dance/Electronic, 2.3%
Jazz, 2.2%
Classical, 2.0%
New Age, .5%

Even with the 27% market, rock bands make money mostly from concerts.

I'm still collecting CDs as they are the best format for classical. Some 90% of what I buy is classical. I'm in the 2% who cares category.

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Re: The music business

Post by Thinking Aloud » Mon Feb 25, 2013 8:01 am

Is there a discernible difference between CD-quality audio and DVD-quality audio, and is it worth it to the majority of listeners? If they're content with MP3 then clearly not.

HD video means more pixels for a bigger, more detailed picture: 1920px is a clear and noticeable improvement over 720px or whatever standard TV resolves to.

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Re: The music business

Post by Audley Strange » Mon Feb 25, 2013 10:30 am

A lot depends on the ears and speakers. However I have a few albums on flac and even compared to my cd's of the same, they sound much better. So I think it more a case of convenience rather than contentment.
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Re: The music business

Post by Tero » Mon Feb 25, 2013 12:27 pm

Let's go back to vinyl! I like the snap crackle pop of my few punk singles.
From a purely technical standpoint, the audio resolution of a DVD-Audio disc can be substantially higher than standard red book CD audio. DVD-Audio supports bit depths up to 24-bit and sample rates up to 192 kHz, while CD audio is 16-bit, 44.1 kHz. In both cases, the source recording may have been made at a much higher bit and sample rate, and down-converted for commercial release.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvd_audio

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Jason
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Re: The music business

Post by Jason » Tue Feb 26, 2013 6:52 pm

16-bit 44.1kHz covers the range of human hearing sensitivity until you begin to significantly amplify it, perhaps in a concert hall or some such. Your average person listening with earbuds will not be able to differentiate between a high quality mp3 and a .flac file being played.

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Re: The music business

Post by Tero » Tue Feb 26, 2013 6:58 pm

Yes, I'm sure they did some consumer tests. Sampling at half fewer data points gave tolerable audio for speech, but not music. They then backed off to safe 16bit.

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Re: The music business

Post by Jason » Tue Feb 26, 2013 7:34 pm

Didn't mean to sound like a smart-ass.. it's just that amplifying digital recordings is like enlarging a digital image. If you picture a sine wave on a cartesian plane with x being time and y being amplitude and imagine there are 44100 data points for every second of x you can imagine that it approximates the form of the wave quite well, but if you amplify it 2 or 3 times the curves become more noticeably made of line segments between points as the vertical distance between them increases 2 or 3 fold. That's when you start noticing sound quality degradation, but most people never get there.

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Re: The music business

Post by cronus » Tue Feb 26, 2013 8:31 pm

256kbs or 320kbs and a reasonable amp+graphic equaliser with 24bit....4 or 5 speakers with a good solid wood sound. There isn't much between that and full CD stereo quality. Resolution is improved by the sound set-up not the feed at reasonable volumes, above 196kbs....or even 160kbs, maybe classical requires more albeit I find that stuff too bombastic generally for home listening. Unless it is easy listening Einaudi or Chopin piano etc I am not keen on most classical - designed for a different much larger context to a living room...just never feels right in a living space.
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Re: The music business

Post by Sean Hayden » Tue Feb 26, 2013 9:41 pm

...
meh, forget it - link not working
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Re: The music business

Post by Jason » Tue Feb 26, 2013 9:45 pm


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Tero
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Re: The music business

Post by Tero » Tue Feb 26, 2013 9:45 pm

We have instruments in chemistry that collect digital data of what was a spije type peak in analog data. It takes the dots on the sides of the peak and calculates where top of the peak would have been, if there were more data points. You cant do this data smoothing with sound?

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Re: The music business

Post by Jason » Tue Feb 26, 2013 9:56 pm

Getting out of my depth a bit here, but these two wiki articles might help.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_theorem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing_filter

It's my understanding that it creates a 'fuzzy' boundary around the calculated point. TA probably knows all about that stuff.

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Re: The music business

Post by Sean Hayden » Tue Feb 26, 2013 9:57 pm

Făkünamę wrote:
:ask:
Thanks, I was trying to get it 60 seconds or so in. But anyway I've strayed from the pub unawares again.
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Re: The music business

Post by cronus » Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:04 pm

Speakers are cardboard or similar....they won't notice the digital side. Quality bookcase speakers are ideal for a normal sized living room.
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Tero
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Re: The music business

Post by Tero » Tue Feb 26, 2013 11:01 pm

Făkünamę wrote:Getting out of my depth a bit here, but these two wiki articles might help.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_theorem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing_filter

It's my understanding that it creates a 'fuzzy' boundary around the calculated point. TA probably knows all about that stuff.
Yes, I can see there is a problem with superimposed waves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CPT-s ... rcycle.svg
nice visual.

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