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EDN Europe's Editor Graham Prophet posts a selection of comments and insights prompted by the many items of industry news and rumour that cross the editorial desk or are gathered on his frequent travels to interviews, press conferences and events around Europe - and further afield - and somehow never find their way to the magazine or the web site, recovering some of the information otherwise lost in the noise level...

Monday, January 02, 2012

For the record

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Here we are in 2012; a new year and – hopefully – a new set of opportunities for interesting and rewarding explorations in electronic technology.
I have always been wary of the business of making predictions, as people are fond of doing at this time of year, but I always try to make a note of those I see issued by the less cautious among us.
One rather depressing forecast I have seen is that 2012 may see the demise of the CD as a mass-market music distribution medium. Depressing because it implies a backward step in the quality of recorded sound, as the vast majority of downloaded files are high-compression-factor and the quality is variable. Variable from not-very-good to really-pretty-dreadful.
Yes, I know that high-quality download sites do exist, lossless-compression files can be had, but this is likely to remain special-interest territory.
After a century (and a bit) of development in which recording technology has been able to offer an unbroken progression in the quality of recorded sound*, we have reached the stage where the buying public has told us that it just doesn't care. Any noise will do, as long as you can download it fast, and keep more of it in your pocket than you could listen to in a lifetime. Isn't progress great?
*That was not an invitation to start a correspondence about how vinyl-to-CD was itself a degradation!
However, if you have seen any predictions or forecasts for our industry for 2012 that strike you as ambitious, rash, or just ridiculous, please send them along to my usual address (gprophet@reedbusiness.fr) and I'll expose them for collective enjoyment here.
A Happy New Year to all.

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