GoodBye CD; Hello Flash Drive

[Rich]

I have been saying for a while now that I can't wait for the CD to be replaced by the flash drive as a music medium. Smaller and easier to store lots of data, including high-resolution formats. And players with no optical drive or moving parts. Sounds like an awesome step forward to me. And bands have already begun to slowly jump on this bandwagon, selling USB flash drive albums as this story describes:

Flash drives offer new choices for music fans

What do you guys think? Is this the way we are headed, or merely a dead end technology soon to be superseded?

 

[sleepysurf]

No mention if the drive comes with the full WAV, lossless FLAC (or equivalent), or a higher bit-rate MP3. Regardless, digital music is clearly the future.

 

[amey01]

Sounds more like an "interim" step to me - physical media - period - is dead. Downloading is the future - in any bitrate/quality you like.

And I'm not talking about the internet per se - it won't take off while you need a geeky computer / operating system and all that crap - we need a nice, simple to use, reliable device that just happens to be network connected. Sort of like the Apple TV, but without all the DRM crap and unnecessary lack of features.

But the manufacturers will work all that out eventually. Hopefully in the not too distant future.

 

[kach22i]

Similar to the original Star Trek series.

 

[JonFo]

While I applaud a no-motion based, instant access media. I wonder about persistence.

If I leave a flash drive on a shelf for 30 years, will it still read; will the connector and protocol formats still be valid?

The one thing optical media still has going for it is standards, well established and supported standards. I have no concerns that I can obtain a playback system for CD or DVD in 30 years. It might be a 2 second; one pass laser scan that reads the entire disc to a RAM cache, but it will be read and decoded properly.

Flash and its alternates are not quite in the same realm of standards (yet).

While I agree with Amey01 that physical media is on its way out, the download picture is still fraught with problems. Again, standards and DRM are two huge obstacles.

At least a FLAC file is looking like it will have some serious long-term persistence, as long as the underlying storage system is kept up to date. (i.e. moving the files to newer and newer NAS topologies).

Still missing is a good standard container format for high-rez multi-channel, DRM-free, audio. (I could be wrong, but off the top of my head, I come up with nothing).

 

[amey01]

While I applaud a no-motion based, instant access media. I wonder about persistence.

If I leave a flash drive on a shelf for 30 years, will it still read; will the connector and protocol formats still be valid?

The oldest CDs are not 30 years old yet and the first examples are not readable. Just a thought.

That said - this is what happnes when you trust something as important to us as music to the computer industry. Downloading / digital is the future, of course, but it needs to be as simple as "Place CD in tray, press play, hear music" for it to take off.

We're a group of techy geeks (sorry guys, but we are, aren't we) and I'm in the IT industry and if it even frustrates me, what about the masses? Just think of a single standard like USB, how many different connectors there are - standard, mini, micro, square, rectangle, propriteary - and that's just *ONE* standard! The masses won't stand for that crap. Nor will I.

Then what's going to happen when people start thinking "Let's release our music on CF card", no, "Let's release our music on Memory Stick" or no, we'll be really smart "Let's release our music on SD Card" because it's superior because it will read 1/8 second faster!

And I haven't even touched on the FLAC, ALAC, WMA Lossless, MP3, WAV, et al. yet.....and worst of all, Next year's big craze of a format with which no "current" hardware will be compatible........This has the potential for a very big mess!

 

[Craig]

In the meantime, vinyl somehow survives.:music:

 

[Rich]

All good points and I agree with the issues you guys present. It seems to me that there is a need to come up with a storage medium that will (1) allow storage of lots of high-res files and metadata in a small space; and (2) exhibit longevity of life both as far as data integrity and also standardization of format is concerned. As for downloads, they will still need to be stored somewhere. And hard drives really aren't a great long-term solution due to their own longevity issues.

Flash media (or something similar) is a good possibility for buying individual albums or even collections of albums, if they develop it in the right way. I think thus far, flash media has been developed to try to get more data on a smaller footprint with faster read/write times. Little effort has been put toward longevity of the data storage. However, I don't think it is too far-fetched to think this same technology could be tweaked to have a read-only drive that has excellent data longevity properties. And if the interface for this device was established as an industry standard, then even as computers and audio playback devices evolved, you could always have an adapter included to hook up a reader for this type of card -- much like the universal readers for flash cards now hook up with a USB connection.

How nice it would be to have the entire collection of Beatles albums on one flash card complete with metadata, album art, etc. Then you could have a giant server box that you could plug in several hundred of these flash cards at once and voila, your entire music collection on a server with no moving parts in the playback mechanism. Add on a great software GUI interface, and it is every audiophile's dream. Given the rate at which we are moving technologically, I don't really think we are more than ten years away from realizing this.

 

[Rich]

This has the potential for a very big mess!

Look at us on this forum: Guys listening to their favorite music on Vinyl, CDs, SACDs, DVDAs, and computer servers on high end incredible systems with some of the best tube and solid state gear and electrostatic speakers ever built! Contrast that to thirty years ago, when all you had for a listening medium was the vinyl and tape. This glass isn't half-empty; it's half-full and the potential is endless! I am absolutely excited about the potential technological advances in music storage and playback over the next few years.

 

[Rich]

In the meantime, vinyl somehow survives.:music:

Yeah, that's just because of a few nostalgic old farts.


Just kidding! I'm kidding, I swear!


The only reason I believe vinyl does survive is that we still haven't developed a digital medium that can produce a completely smooth-sounding analog playback. If we get there, vinyl will go by the wayside too.

 

[amey01]

How nice it would be to have the entire collection of Beatles albums on one flash card complete with metadata, album art, etc. Then you could have a giant server box that you could plug in several hundred of these flash cards at once and voila, your entire music collection on a server with no moving parts in the playback mechanism. Add on a great software GUI interface, and it is every audiophile's dream. Given the rate at which we are moving technologically, I don't really think we are more than ten years away from realizing this.

It's here - It's called a Squeezebox with your entire collection on a NAS. If you're really against moving parts, we're already starting to see solid state storage appear. You could do it now if cost wasn't an object.

I disagree about vinyl though - we've surpassed vinyl too - ever heard a properly mastered, DSD recording? To me, it surpasses vinyl!

For some strange reason, vinyl survives.

 

[Rich]

It's here - It's called a Squeezebox with your entire collection on a NAS.

Yes, but this technology is in its infancy. The software interface will get much better. And I don't think today's hard drive technology is a great long term storage and retrieval system. I do think solid state storage will be the key, but it has a long way to go too.

But along those lines, no sooner has Toshiba decided to drop the HDDVD format than they team up with SanDisk to invest 16 billion dollars into two new NAND flash memory plants, which will quadruple production. I expect this will bring prices down on flash memory and they will keep evolving the technology so storage space, read/write speed, and hopefully longevity will all improve.

 

[C.A.P]

I
I disagree about vinyl though - we've surpassed vinyl too - ever heard a properly mastered, DSD recording? To me, it surpasses vinyl! I totally agree. I have heard many a digital source done right, (Here comes the Vinyl guys in droves, You have to build around both mediums to maximize it). I see a future in a new concept but optical beam will still prevail for a while its to popular right now.

For some strange reason, vinyl survives.

Its a warm distinct sound that has a nostalgic feel. Most Vinyl people like the warm bass and mid range . They usually like tubes too ........Nostalgic !

 

[ralflar]

Anyone investing in flash memory will pay heavy early adopters fees. I remember buying 8GB CF cards for $450 and 4GB SD cards for $240 (so I could take reasonable amounts of music with me for playback on my Dell Axim x50v PDA). That was perhaps two years ago. Now 32GB CF cards go for $150 or less and 64GB models are around the corner.

 

[Rich]

Anyone investing in flash memory will pay heavy early adopters fees.

I agree. It is way too early to rely on this technology for music storage / distribution right now. It is too expensive, evolving too quickly, and still has a way to go before it is ready for prime time. But I do believe we are headed that way quickly. Solid state drives and flash drives are going to be the standard storage mechanisms in computers, media servers, and video cameras before you know it.

Here is another example announced today of the rapid development of this technology:

Mtron developed a new 128GB-1.8 Inch high capacity SSD

 

[Steve]

damn...as much as I'd like, I can't pass up this topic. For data longevity, no existing medium lasts very long, at least not in terms of decades. Even CD's degrade and eventually become unreadable. The key is to ensure redundancy that does not degrade the original content. I would suggest ripping files to a loseless digital format and storing on a RAID array locally, or storing with a service that provides guaranteed data backup. Codec support will always be there, and will continue to be ported to new platforms in order to maintain compatibility to legacy data.

IMHO, transport mediums (all of them) will eventually to the way of the dinosaurs. That's why this whole HDDVD/BluRay format war has been so amusing to me. BluRay won, but what exactly have they won? The right to be the last medium put out of business by streaming and locally stored digital content...

 

[amey01]

damn...as much as I'd like, I can't pass up this topic. For data longevity, no existing medium lasts very long, at least not in terms of decades. Even CD's degrade and eventually become unreadable. The key is to ensure redundancy that does not degrade the original content. I would suggest ripping files to a loseless digital format and storing on a RAID array locally, or storing with a service that provides guaranteed data backup. Codec support will always be there, and will continue to be ported to new platforms in order to maintain compatibility to legacy data.

IMHO, transport mediums (all of them) will eventually to the way of the dinosaurs. That's why this whole HDDVD/BluRay format war has been so amusing to me. BluRay won, but what exactly have they won? The right to be the last medium put out of business by streaming and locally stored digital content...

Exactly as I said - physical mediums are dead - period. Who wants to dik around stuffing discs in and out of transports? Do you have to go and find your Microsoft Word CD every time you want to type a document, find the Internet Explorer CD every time you want to look at MLO?

OK - we're far from perfect as yet - and I wouldn't want to bet on codec support being "always there" - things can change very very quickly - and when one codec becomes the "next big thing" all others will be forgotten about - just try to open up a WordPerfect 5.1 document on your current PC - any luck?

I also don't think we really need compression (lossless or otherwise) any more - with 1TB available for pocket money why compress at all?

 

[Dreamer]

As a graphic designer who hasn't worked for 18 months in my field (mostly because I've been displaced by computer geeks and code-monkeys who just happen to have a copy of Paint or PhotoShop, and therefore feel they can call themselves "web designers"), I can only shake my head ruefully at the proposition of completely media-less music distribution. An entire segment of the music industry will potentially be eliminated with this idea--the graphic designers who design album covers.

Of course I'll admit more than a LITTLE self-interest in this specific aspect of the music industry, but I feel that the divorce of music from the visual arts is an aesthetic tragedy, and we, as consumers should demand that if we are going to be, in the future, permanently denied the ability to own physical permanent copies of music, then at the very least, the music industry should include high-res graphics with these downloaded albums. We, as consumers, write the checks--we should be able to make the rules...

The divorce of visual art from recorded music is a dire proposition indeed. Album art for vinyl was an iconic example of popular art in the mid-late 20th century. Not may people could recognize a Rauschenberg, Calder, Klee, or Magrite painting, but show 100 people on the street half a dozen popular rock albums with the names blocked out, and I'd venture that they'd all get at least 75% of the bands correct...

The Grateful Dead, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Herb Alpert, Kansas, Boston, The Capitol Steps--some of the most iconic art of their period was album covers.

And that medium is, as we speak, vanishing. The CD cut the surface area of music packaging to 1/4 the size of an LP album. Digitally distributed music rarely even comes with any art at all, and when it does, it's usually a very low-res JPEG.

No, I cannot have ANYTHING good to say about a distribution method for music that 1) does not provide me with a permanent, physical copy of my purchase, and 2) divorces music from the visual arts.

I pray for the future of the music business. We are headed for the days of pre-album music distribution--when the 45rpm single was king, and people bought their music one song at a time--usually the ONE song that the RECORD COMPANIES thought you should be hearing. This is a sad, uncreative, and VERY dire state of affairs, as far as the future options available to music consumers is concerned.

--Richard

 

[risabet]

Its a warm distinct sound that has a nostalgic feel. Most Vinyl people like the warm bass and mid range . They usually like tubes too ........Nostalgic ![/COLOR]

Nostalgia my a*&. It actually is about sound. I listen to SACD and DVD-A and CD but only SACD, and only really good ones at that, compare to vinyl. When they come out with a format that is as musical, revealing, and emotionally rewarding as the 50 year-old vinyl format I'm all over that.

Flash memory is a long way down the road and currently way to expensive. How much memory will you need for a music at SACD quality which is the minimum digital format for high-end sound IMO? 4.7GB per. So let's assume that you have a 32GB CF card @ $150.00 with 6 titles on it @ $20.00 per title you've got something that cost ~$270.00, not exactly a mass market price point.

 

[Rich]

I disagree with your gloom and doom predictions, Richard. Musicians will always need to market themselves and their material and I think this will continue to be done using the graphics arts. The new technology will just result in innovative ways of providing and accessing that art. Look at the new multimedia content included on CD's and the bonus features included on DVDs just in the past few years.

Album art and lots of other graphics art and extra features will continue to be a staple of the new digital age. In fact, the additional storage capacity of the new media, and the ability to stream video and audio clips along with static pictures and to link to web pages, should create lots more jobs for enterprising graphics artists for years to come.