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August 18, 2009 - 8:17am
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Denon Plant Closing
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The place hasn't been Denon for several years? Maybe the consolidation guru's had a bad business model?
"Americ Disc consolidates its position as a leading independent CD/DVD manufacturer in North America
Drummondville, QC, September 1, 2006 , Americ Disc announces the acquisition of Denon Digital of Madison, Georgia. Denon is an important optical disc manufacturer and full service turnkey provider to companies that utilize CD and DVD.
Claude Raymond, President of Americ Disc, describes this transaction as
Robert,
I guess you could say that making a quality product in 2009 IS a bad business model in light of the downloading craze, but this is not a good thing as this original Denon plant put out quality products.
It might be time for Stereophile to look at the time line of CD/SACD plant closings. Not that Phile needs my help in deciding what subject are worth print comment, but an article about audiophiless having physical software to play is important? If the major labels do what HD Tracks is doing, it might not be as bad as it seems.
I do not mind some of my music being HD downloads, but I would rather have a hard CD/SACD/DVD disc in my possession. It might just be that the physical medium is not long for this planet.
I am curious about what you see in this trend. I hope our future is not in $20-$40 virgin vinyl lps as much as I love playing vinyl. That is not cost savings.
Jim
I agree!
The thought of this makes me think twice, 3 times, about buying a new TT.
Here I am making plans to assemble a whole new system; int amp, tt, cdp and speakers and I have to be concerned if I'll be able to afford a source of music (i.e.,cd's/vinyl).
And if the future trend is to purchase music sources on line and then download to my computer what will be the quality of the music? Will I be able to rip the music to a disc? How will it sound? And will I have to upgrade my PC and/or software to get a decent sounding source of music?
And here I thought the world of computers was supposed to make life easier.
It is becoming clearer to me that we all need to be concerned about a way to make hard copies of what ever music we like in the highest format we can. How do we do this will be the issue.
If you own a DVD-A player you could buy DicsWeldder bronze and burn your own hirez discs that way. If I did go that route I would proably by a back up DVD-A player and keep it in the box for a rainy day.
I could by a Tascam DVRA1000 and put things in DSD, but it is not the same format as commercial SACD. Only another DVRA1000 can play those discs.
Maybe I just buy 1T drives and keep all my music in my computer, buy a BenchMark DAC and a Squeezebox or a Sooloos music server, but that is not really what I want to do.
I am in hopes of another format possibility that I am researching and will be testing out shortly. I will keep you posted on what I find out. It could be no solution, or THE solution. I am concerned that since it is not being done on a large scale that it will not work. If it does work, I will be asking why it took so long for the word to get out.
Jim
This is a sad state of affairs, all around. Of course I hate to see any American plant producing goods by people who care close down. But the bad business model was in the takeover deal!
It was a good deal for all the corporate suits, lawyers, accountants and bankers who probably raked thousands right off the top. But who in their right mind would be out buying up disc manufacturing facilities in 2006! All figures for the past few previous years showed a downturn and projections for the future indicated a worsening trend with piracy at an all time high! But the lure of the deal was just too great for all the players in the conference room to pass up despite knowing otherwise.
One can only wonder if the acquisition had never taken place if Denon would still be happily turning out quality product for a discerning clientele, within their means and turning a profit. They did so for 17 years previous. But in just three short years after the acquisition they are belly up!
Nope, I
I agree. It had been a few years since I ahd been out to the Madison plant as at that time (over 5 years ago) I learned they had just stopped doing small runs of CD and the like. If you weren't in the category of 100K they were sorry.
It may be that the business model for most artists and labels is that the likes of DiscMakers and AMG here in Atlanta are the new business model for CD replication. Very good quality packaging and pressing in runs of 1,000 and up, starting at a $1 a CD in retail packaging.
Unless you are probably on the top 50 of Billboard's charts large qtys are probably now out of the question. More so as most of their customers probably very happy with an MP3 download from ITunes or Amazon. It is a sad day.
Jim
This has been a very interesting thread. I am an admitted technophile/early adopter and find this trend to file-based audio very exciting. I made the switch last May and, after a lot of knashing of teeth (especially the tedious process of ripping and tagging a sizable CD collection), am now enjoying the audiophile hobby a lot more than I have for several years. Over the last few days, I've downloaded free, full track, samples of very high quality content (24/176.4 and 24/192) from Reference Recordings and 2L of Norway. Based on the outstanding quality of these downloads, I'll certainly be purchasing content from both these vendors in the future. Samples streamed from HDTracks catalog pages are in 16/48 format and sound much better than the MP3 samples offered elsewhere. Once I've chosen to buy, it's just waiting though a download before having the chosen albums a few mouse clicks away. These shopping experiences would be very difficult to equal with physical media. I could go on and on about all the advantages...
The sound of many of these hi-rez files are clearly (pun intended) significantly better that any other format I've heard. I'm in a condo these days where I'm aware of my neighbor's vacuuming schedules, so most my listening is on headphones (HD600s). I hope that a house with a reasonable listening room is in my not too distant future, and I can include a new system to better render this content with the mortgage.
It's also exciting to see that a few high-end vendors are responding to the need to provide to audiophiles the convenience iPod listeners have been enjoying for years but with the levels of fidelity we expect. The Linn DS players, the Naim Uniti and HDX and the T+A Music Player are some the most exiting, innovative products I've seen in some time. I think the future of high end audio has a lot to gain from this format.
One of the most significant impacts of this new paradigm is that the cost to deliver very high quality content to a large number of consumers is very low. Many orchestras now offer downloads of their performances through their web sites. There will be considerably more high quality content available in the future thanks to this music as a file model.
Fran,
I agree. My worry is that there are all too many MP3 download sites and so few hirez, or even redbook download sites, which hurts audiophiles if this trend continues.
I like HD tracks, but their catalog is too limited. There are too few Hirez sites to help us right now. That could change, except that the damand is going in the direction of MP3s and not our way.
I will be 62 on Friday and wonder if physical media will be gone before I am? Then, the crash of hard drives will be the death of music collections for some. Maybe the new catch phrase is "show me your backup HD".
The hope might be that new technology will come along that will allow huge HDs to be toally solid state with no moving parts to wear out or crash. Can a 160 gig to 1T flash drive be far away? Probably not in my lifetime.
Jim
Never say never...
1 TB Flash Drives on the Horizon
Can Your USB Flash Drive Store 1 TB of Data
As you know, Jim, there are so many MP3 sites because that is what the majority buys. And the "majority" are the younger consumers who don't see past tomorrow.
Yes, HD tracks has some excellent material but,as you said, their catalog is lacking. Again, it is what sells the most is what will be fed to the buyer. What will come after MP3...MP4...who knows.
May I be the first to wish you a Happy Birthday!
I'm not far behind you, chronologicaly, and whatever system I do put together will most likely be my last. So, with any kind of luck whatever format I choose will still be in existance for a while to come. It wasn't my plan to buy an amp with USB, MP3, etc., etc. capabilities but the more I think about it that may be the wise thing to do...so as to be ready for what may come.
Technology advances so quickly I'm sure you'll be around to see such a device.
Now what did I do with that Maganavox record player?
Fran,
Thanks for the BD wish. Yes, it is remarkable that it has seemingly come full circle with lp reemerging. Thanks in no small measusre to MF for sure.
I think the next year or two are going to be very exciting for high end audio. It will be interesting to watch the likes of Ayre, Boulder, Chord, BenchMark, Cary, Bryston, Quad, Musical Fidelity, and Cambridge Audio and see where they take us.
I want to see who is the first to add Firewire digital in to their disc players for routing your computer into your CD player/DAC by something other than USB. Just because you are not disc spinning does not mean you should leave it sit idle. With all the digital ins the Quad CDP-2 has it should not be that hard. Why can't a laptop have an S/PDIF coaxial out?
Time will tell.
Jim
Revealing my lack of technilogical sophistication...So, I have a device that can store 1TB of data. That's a lot of music, I know that much, but does this amount of memory mean I will be getting good/better sound (as opposed to, for example, what an MP3 delivers)? Or does the quality of the final product depend on more than just the flash drive? (Yes, I know the better the speakers/electronics the better the sound but I'm refering to just the source of the music.)
With that amount of storage capacity there would be no need to use the inferior lossy file format. Instead any of the lossless formats could be used despite their larger file size with fidelity equal to the original.