Vote

Vinyl sweetness from digital kit is all I need to make be happy.

also recording capability

I say you can't beat the sound of a simple, good-quality stereo setup: amp, CD, & speakers. The bells and whistles don't improve the experience.

mtv rock Mtv is so cool!

I'd like to see a higher sampling rate. 44.1kHz just doesn't cut it. Too bad that that was the standard. We've lost a generation of music to this poor standard. Can it ever be recovered?

Better sound quality is necessary but insufficient. If any new format wants to survive, it will quickly have to come up with software priced like "Red Book" CDs and hardware priced under $1000.

Better sound is important but surround sound is the next step as stereo was from mono. The sound quality improvement was not the sonics but the illusion of being there.

I'd be happy with better sound quality for all of the recordings. We have to spend too much money just to get a little bit more out of today's high end gear.

If it doesn't sound good in two-channel, how can it sound good in multichannel? Quality is what it's all about.

After 20 years of digital "perfection" we still don't have a truly perfect-sounding, portable, very cheap music-reproduction medium. And someone want to start it again? Give me a break! Multichannel, yeah! Still can't make a system with two good channels, so . . . Apart from Sony, who thinks that people will buy another player just for better sound?

Formats are not really important to consumers on the whole, because the former keep changing. Thus I feel that deep down what all of us want is a player/recorder that can handle all formats, and which is upgradeable and doesn't become obsolete easily.

Plentiful availability of hardware and software at a reasonable price, and some degree of back and forward compatibility, would be the keys for me. While features would be nice, they should be useful, and actual steps forward (unlike original CD's well-touted "Perfect Sound Forever," which proved to be neither; how many reissues/remasters do you own?).

WE NEED A DIGITAL FORMAT THAT SOUNDS ANALOG.24-96?

I would like to see more of the four-channel material from the seventies released as Dolby Pro Logic.

Better sound, always, so good that you think it's real!

Better sound quality....and oh yeah, I have to be able to afford it ya know...

it would be nice if DVD-Audio would be 100% compatible with the system I've already purchased. I am surprised that they could not even support coax or optical digital out from the DVD-A drives. And you have to use six-channel ANALOG out for this new standard!?

I'm buying dual-layer SACD disks, but I won't go for the hardware until there is enough software to make it worthwhile. I own 10 SACD disks now. I'll buy a player when I own 50 or so and new releases are coming in at a rate of more than 3 or 4 a month.

It depends on the artist. For some, it would be better sound quality, like acoustic jazz or blues. With pop music, I think being able to access videos or behind-the-scenes features would be interesting. Actually, the sound quality should be number one. But then, that has more to do with the engineers and producers of the music.

Like all audiophile people, we are looking for the closest reproduction to live music we can get. DVD-Audio and SACD are the next step with the technology that is available today.

Have heard SACD. Not really much better than CD.

Multichannel would be OK if it was done right, but I don't want recordings where I am sitting in the middle of the band.

*A system that has studio-quality sound and the ability to play, record, and store many thousands of albums with MiniDisc-like access. This would enable me to record all my LPs, CDs, etc. and catalog them for playback in any order of preference. This system would also be portable to play in the car, but could be data-reduced. The main point is to have full bandwidth to listen in my home, with instant access to any of my current albums and future purchases (whatever format they may be). I think Linn has a similar idea in planning.

I am all for making audio reproduction as close as possible to the original sound, and the only way to do that is have an infinite number of bits and no end to the frequency response. Well, 24-bit/96kHz is far from the desired numbers, but it is closer. Plus, this may allow for high-end "regular" CD players to become cheaper. Sometimes economics is more important than authenticity.

unified format + better than vinyl sound with multichannel, video and recording ability.

Additional A/V information on the recording technique, biographical info on the performers similar to what is on many DVDs.

Longer playing time would definitely be a bonus so I can burn more songs on one CD. Of course, if MP3 player prices come down and have larger storage space (i.e., the new IBM 1GB mini-hard drive), then SACD and DVD-Audio won't matter to me at all.

I voted for better sound quality just to assert that I don't care about multichannel. The old SET maxim of "I'd rather have two good watts than 200 bad ones" can be slightly modified to apply here: "Who wants six channels if you can't get the first two right?" The mass-market-junk–consuming mega-chain-store shopper, obviously. Most people I know with home-theater systems don't really care about music; it's background, not a focal point. Music is usually downright unpleasant to listen to on their systems. Also, I really don't want the "state of the art" major-label recordings (like the much-maligned Santana album) in six-channel—two are bad enough! Give me some good Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash reissues that sound like the master tapes, and I'm happy. I won't buy anything until the "universal" players arrive anyway.

But only as a standard and reasonably priced.

I don't care so much about a new format just as long as it sounds good. I would much rather have the engineers do better recordings than SACD or even DVD-Audio. What's the point of having all of this high-quality playback if you can't have high-quality recordings? The playback would only show off the flaws of the recording. Many people (99%) don't even realize how good their sound can get with a little better equiment. I don't really care about the features either. I've listened to DVD-Audio in 5.1 and it sounds very stupid, to be frank. And I don't care to read things on TV when I listen to music. I'd rather read the booklet.