Arny Krueger wrote:

Can you tell me (without informing me that I'm a lying, hating Luddite)
why you think that it's not true that most people are not very bothered
about sound quality?

One very big reason is that since CD's became popular and widely available,
music lovers were no longer limited to the problematical sound quality of
vinyl LPs and analog tape. Sound quality at previouisly unobtainable levels
became common and cheap for consumers.

No, that is an *assertion* that CD succeeded as a medium chiefly because
of its superior sound quality. I'm aware you think that. I was asking
*why* you think that.

I think that CD succeeded mostly because CDs were more convenient than
the existing alternatives: easier to store, play and look after, more
durable, and so on.

I don't think that they succeeded because of superior sound quality,
because all the evidence is that before and since the advent of CD the
vast majority of people are quite evidently happy listening to
appalling-reproduced sound, whether it's coming from over-driven PA
systems, badly-tuned radios, scratched records and rubbishy record
players, warbling cassettes or hideously-compressed MP3 files.

On the other hand, most people are fairly quick to ditch less convenient
systems when more convenient ones appear.

Daniele
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