I agree completely with NoAndThen. Provided you have a semi-decent sound system/headphones, anyone should be able to tell difference between itunes quality and studio master quality.
To give my answer to the question - I honestly don't know. If the whole music industry DOESN'T get behind it and promote it, it won't happen. Last time Sony et al. were behind SACD, and Warner et al. were behind DVD-Audio and it didn't work. So many other things went wrong at the same time too though, including the rise of portable mp3 audio, and so it was a disaster.
I reckon they will see if blu-ray succeeds first - but if it doesn't succeed "as much" as DVD did - which I fear is likely (although I hope not) - they may not go ahead with it and HD music downloads will take over instead. They already exist with linn records, itrax and music giants. And frankly I don't care, I'm getting a HTPC as soon as Asus HDAV1.3 comes out.
As a side note, it's a shame that it almost seems it must be a Sony format in order to have any chance of success - DVD-Audio was my choice last time. But blu-ray is the most superior disc format I've ever seen. (Yep, i think I'll always have a love/hate relationship with Sony. :| )
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.â€
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I agree completely with NoAndThen. Provided you have a semi-decent sound system/headphones, anyone should be able to tell difference between itunes quality and studio master quality.
To give my answer to the question - I honestly don't know. If the whole music industry DOESN'T get behind it and promote it, it won't happen. Last time Sony et al. were behind SACD, and Warner et al. were behind DVD-Audio and it didn't work. So many other things went wrong at the same time too though, including the rise of portable mp3 audio, and so it was a disaster.
I reckon they will see if blu-ray succeeds first - but if it doesn't succeed "as much" as DVD did - which I fear is likely (although I hope not) - they may not go ahead with it and HD music downloads will take over instead. They already exist with linn records, itrax and music giants. And frankly I don't care, I'm getting a HTPC as soon as Asus HDAV1.3 comes out.
As a side note, it's a shame that it almost seems it must be a Sony format in order to have any chance of success - DVD-Audio was my choice last time. But blu-ray is the most superior disc format I've ever seen. (Yep, i think I'll always have a love/hate relationship with Sony. :| )