Obviously you can be better than CDs. The signal is sampled 44100 times per second, each sample being stored as 16 bits (twice, to have stereo). Increase either of these numbers and you’re immediately better than CDs. Increase the former and you’ll be able to store higher frequencies, increase the latter and you’ll have a higher dynamic range.
None of that answers why you would want to carry around a case of physical media though. With today’s tech it’d be easy to put high res audio on sd cards or create a new medium (and yes, please use the minidisc form factor for that). But with the storage capacities of rewritable memory being easily in the terabyte range even for consumers and broadband connections being widely available, why would you want to create the distribution network this would require instead of just letting people stream and download the music? Especially as you’d be limited to releasing new music that has been mastered in high res (as you obviously can’t get higher resolution data from CDs), so you’d only have a few artists on board and a few albums available.
You’re conflating my intentions with wanting to replace streaming or what you carry on the go. I do not want to replace streaming with CD’s. I want to replace owning my own music with streaming and I don’t like that the most prevalent option for purchasing physical copies of music is CD’s and vinyls - both of which have drawbacks in my eyes.
So I’m day dreaming about a new format that is essentially a cool SD or thumb drive in disguise that could host an album or an artist and be accessible via my phone in a way that vinyl and CDs are not.
You’re writing a lot about a topic I’m not talking about. CD’s are coming back, I don’t love CD’s, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a better version of physical music we could buy. That’s the whole Convo.
I still don’t get it. If you want a small device to physically store your music, why don’t you copy your music to a small sd card or thumb drive? If that’s inconvenient you could just buy it digitally and move it to a drive without having to rip it first, there are a bunch of providers for drm free high res music files.
Physical media had their time when read only media could be produced much cheaper than writeable storage. With people routinely buying thumb drives that could store their entire music collection and having data plans that could transfer said collection within half an hour, I fail to see where physical media (beyond what’s already there) would have any advantage. That doesn’t mean I don’t see any appeal. Having a small case for a bunch of sd cards you could just insert into your phone to listen to some music would offer a tactile experience. But with the cheap and available rewriteable media you could just do it yourself while I guess few to no people would be willing to spend 20 bucks on a 500 MB thumb drive just because it has a tiny album artwork printed on it.
I stand by my point that the MD was peak physical media and the CD offers all the quality humans could possibly need. If you’re so keen on physical media but want to be able to literally insert them into your phone, there are USB-c drives that are barely bigger than your phone’s port. Get one, put your music on it and plug it in. I still don’t see who would buy single albums on overpriced thumb drives instead of getting a single one for the price of two or three albums and putting enough FLAC files on it to keep them listening until they’re pushing daisies.
Obviously you can be better than CDs. The signal is sampled 44100 times per second, each sample being stored as 16 bits (twice, to have stereo). Increase either of these numbers and you’re immediately better than CDs. Increase the former and you’ll be able to store higher frequencies, increase the latter and you’ll have a higher dynamic range.
None of that answers why you would want to carry around a case of physical media though. With today’s tech it’d be easy to put high res audio on sd cards or create a new medium (and yes, please use the minidisc form factor for that). But with the storage capacities of rewritable memory being easily in the terabyte range even for consumers and broadband connections being widely available, why would you want to create the distribution network this would require instead of just letting people stream and download the music? Especially as you’d be limited to releasing new music that has been mastered in high res (as you obviously can’t get higher resolution data from CDs), so you’d only have a few artists on board and a few albums available.
You’re conflating my intentions with wanting to replace streaming or what you carry on the go. I do not want to replace streaming with CD’s. I want to replace owning my own music with streaming and I don’t like that the most prevalent option for purchasing physical copies of music is CD’s and vinyls - both of which have drawbacks in my eyes.
So I’m day dreaming about a new format that is essentially a cool SD or thumb drive in disguise that could host an album or an artist and be accessible via my phone in a way that vinyl and CDs are not.
You’re writing a lot about a topic I’m not talking about. CD’s are coming back, I don’t love CD’s, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a better version of physical music we could buy. That’s the whole Convo.
I still don’t get it. If you want a small device to physically store your music, why don’t you copy your music to a small sd card or thumb drive? If that’s inconvenient you could just buy it digitally and move it to a drive without having to rip it first, there are a bunch of providers for drm free high res music files.
Physical media had their time when read only media could be produced much cheaper than writeable storage. With people routinely buying thumb drives that could store their entire music collection and having data plans that could transfer said collection within half an hour, I fail to see where physical media (beyond what’s already there) would have any advantage. That doesn’t mean I don’t see any appeal. Having a small case for a bunch of sd cards you could just insert into your phone to listen to some music would offer a tactile experience. But with the cheap and available rewriteable media you could just do it yourself while I guess few to no people would be willing to spend 20 bucks on a 500 MB thumb drive just because it has a tiny album artwork printed on it.
I stand by my point that the MD was peak physical media and the CD offers all the quality humans could possibly need. If you’re so keen on physical media but want to be able to literally insert them into your phone, there are USB-c drives that are barely bigger than your phone’s port. Get one, put your music on it and plug it in. I still don’t see who would buy single albums on overpriced thumb drives instead of getting a single one for the price of two or three albums and putting enough FLAC files on it to keep them listening until they’re pushing daisies.