Claude

As I said, SACD is quite successful on the classical market, but classical itself is just a small niche on the music market, in terms of sales. The RIAA figures probably include US sales only, but most classical labels releasing SACDs are european. If the figures only include single layer SACDs, they are not telling the whole picture. The best selling SACD titles have been hybrids. For example, check the classical charts on the page of the JPC store (one of the largest in Germany). 6 discs among the top 20 are SACDs: http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/charts/-/nooffers/1/page/1

One thing is certain: as almost all SACDs released in the past 3 years are hybrid discs, you won't need to throw them away in case there are no longer SACD players available. You can play them in every CD player. In fact, the labels which release SACDs usually have a single inventory policy, i.e. they issue the titles as hybrid SACDs only, with no CD version available.

eBooks are a different story, because they are not very convenient. You can't print out a ebook as easily and cheaply like burning a CD-R from a music download. One day when "digital paper" will be ready for the market, that could however change very quickly.

The comparision with Betamax is too harsh. SACD is doing quite well on the classical market, which has a much larger proportion of audiophiles than pop or jazz. There is a consistent flow of new releases. From the recent BBC Music Magazine awards (which is not a hifi mag), half of the awarded discs are SACDs. Significantly, it's the large companies that have abandonned SACD, while for the small labels the format seems to pay off.

For the moment, download-only is an option to keep music available which does not sell enough CDs. To release music as downloads only (new recordings or new reissues) won't work, especially not on the jazz market, since many buyers still completely ignore downloads. I think new CDs will be released for many years to come. Just because CD sales are going down and downloads are going up doesn't mean CD is dead. It's still the dominant format, by a wide margin.

You don't need to keep the music on your hard drive. I downloaded thousands of OJC albums during the Emusic "all you can eat" days, and I keep them on DVD-Rs. Given the low bitrate of these files (back then), more than 100 albums fit on one disc. Most DVD players now play MP3 files from CD-R and the newer ones also from DVD-R, so the music can be played directly from the backup DVD-Rs also without using a PC.

I've had dozens of brand CD-Rs (Fuji) which were properly stored but became unreadable after just 3 years. I don't believe that any cheap CD-Rs on the market can offer very long lifespans (20 years and more). So don't keep important and rare recordings on one CD-R only. I make backups in lossless compressed formats on DVD-R (a dozen or more CDs on one disc).

I don't think so. Downloads are still far behind CD sales.

That is very strange indeed, especially since your book shows up in second position of the search results. There is no occurance of "roscoe" in the book, and only one of "mitchell", so that cannot be the reason. There are 42 occurances of the word "jazz", the only link to Roscoe Mitchell in the Concordances word list I could think of, but that doesn't explain the result.

I have A/B'ed a few titles, and didn't notice an improvement. I really listened carefully, with volume compensation, as the new CDs sound a lot louder than the OJCs. At least one RVG (Yusef Lateef) has clipping bass sound, for that reason I prefer the OJC. Apart from that the RVGs sound well balanced, like the OJCs. No strange mastering choices as on many early Blue Note RVGs (reduced stereo spread, treble boost). The problem with this RVG series is that most of the OJCs already sound very good, and that the RVGs don't come close to other "audiophile" treatments of these albums (DCC, XRCD). As there are no additional tracks, there is little reason to upgrade.

It's not that we're dumb , but rather that we're too busy , too harried as a result of the increasing prioritization of work at the expense of leisure required by American competitive consumerism . I read the article as an attempt to demonstrate that the collateral damage from this not only impairs our ability to discharge our familial and civic responsibilities , but extends into our ability to appreciate art . As to why it matters whether one exercises one's aesthetic sense or not , I suppose that might depend on whether one feels that art stands in a reciprocal relation to The Divine , in the sense that art can be a gateway to spirituality , a spirituality which can itself inspire artistic achievement . Well, I think the result would have been a lot different if Bell had chosen a different location and time. You can't blame people for being busy in the morning on their way to work. It's a question of priorities, and has nothing to do with the lack of appreciation for art. If instead of the metro at 7:50 AM (where and when people have no thoughts for leisure and art and no minute to spare) he had played on a market plaza at lunch time, I'm sure many more people would have stopped to listen. Maybe some would have skipped their usual lunch break routine. But you can't expect them to risk arriving late at work and tell their boss that they had to listen to Joshua Bell ... Would Joshua Bell have stopped if he were late for a very important business meeting and Sonny Rollins was playing saxophone solos on the sidewalk?

Louder! Louder!

Peter Herbolzheimer's bands were considered an institution in Germany in the 70's and early 80's, comparable to the status of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. His later albums were not well distributed, because they were released on small labels. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Herbolzheimer (discography) http://www.peterherbolzheimer.de (homepage) http://www.myspace.com/herbolzheimer (a couple of tracks to listen to)

http://www.jazzdisco.org/wes/dis/c/

http://www.talkingcows.nl

I didn't notice any specific technical problem either, but my attention faded after the first concert, which is a captivating theatrical video clip. The second part is just a regular concert caught by TV cameras, with inferior sound and picture quality.

EMI has stopped using Copy Control but hasn't replaced the copy-controlled CDs (unlike the Sony rootkit, Copy Control is harmless), so it would indeed take some time until non-protected re-pressings become available.

It will be released when the mission is accomplished You can get the european pressing, but it is copycontrolled: http://www.amazon.de/Basra-Rvg-Pete-Roca/dp/B00076NYB4/

Wow, that's amazing. At least the Wes and Mingus circulated before, but if the sound and picture qualtiy is as stellar as on the first Jazz Icons series, it will be a huge improvement over the bootlegs (most of which seem to have been taped from TV re-broadcasts in the 80's or 90's)

It could be an error. CD Universe list it with a release date of today, but it's backordered. To me, it looks like the 2000 reissue (liner notes by Keith, remastering by Mark Wilder). http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?...=lk_organissimo

It's impossible to generalize in that respect. It all depends on the quality of the mastering (of the CDs vs the LPs) and pressing (LP). I've found that many ECM albums I had on CD sound better on LP, even on a turntable that only cost 1/3 of my CD player. The ECM pressing quality is extremely good, and the CD mastering sounds sort of distant and "colourless". But I've also heard many reissue LPs which sound horrible compared to the CD reissues, for which the original tapes were used.

Depending on where you live, you are forced to spend much more. The two room appartment (not a house!) I bought is worth 8 times my annual income, and I did not take excessive financial risks. A parking space in the common garage would already have cost almost one annual income at that time. The housing and personal debt situation is actually much worse in Spain, where young people are forced to take 50 year loans, in order to cope with the monthly paybacks.

There is definitely a vinyl trend, but it's not sure how long it will last, because much of it is based on fashion and hype, and not on objective advantages of the format. After all, the most important trend in music formats is in favor of MP3 and other compressed files, which are more portable than CDs and LPs but sound much worse.

If the site has nothing to sell, it is indeed strange why the owner would do this. Google ranking is a science in itself. All the time, webmasters are trying to push their rankings with new tricks, and Google is trying to become immune against those tricks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb

huh? whaddayamean?