This thread might interest you in regards to MP3 and other audio formats.

I was divorced three years ago and along with my favorite Golden Retriever my wife took ALL of my(Our)CDs. On the bright side I got the audio gear and the Subaru. So I'm trying to build up my CD collection again after so many years and it is during this time that I bought my IPOD. I was given Rolling Stone's 500 best Albums of all time for Christmas last year and although they are dead wrong in a few places my goal is to base my library loosely around their list. With the advent of DVD music I hesitate to dive too deeply into this collection for fear that blu-ray or hddvd will release some audio only stuff that kicks the cans off currently formatted CD's. Of course the Professor is right about vinyl being king but for convenience and other reasons I'd never go back. Once again thank you so very much for your able assistance and patience explaining things. I looked at your wedding pictures somewhere and I don't know if you have children but you will make a fine dad.
Peace

DVD offered the potential for a true step up from CD, but that potential has largely crumbled. Either DVD-Audio or SACD could have supplanted the CD, but the war between the two significantly slowed consumer adoption (probably worsened by the simple fact that the benefits would simply not be audible on something like a boombox or basic Home Theater in a Box). While DVD-A and SACD fought for dominance, the iPod took an existing trend (people ripping CD's to MP3 for convenience and eventually portability) and brought it to the masses. In many ways, it's a shame: SACD and DVD-Audio both offer great platforms for delivering truly high-quality content, but at this point DVD-A is nearly dead and SACD is almost solely a niche market (similar to LaserDisc alongside VHS back in the 90's).

Blu-ray and HD-DVD can match or possibly even top DVD-A/SACD: up to eight channels of high-bitrate PCM, in addition to lossless codecs (TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio) that one might consider the successors to DVD-Audio's MLP. (In fact, TrueHD basically is an updated form of MLP, the lossless compression format used by DVD-Audio.) Does this mean that we'll see a lot of music content released on these formats? Personally, I doubt it. Oh, we'll get some - from what I've been reading this week, Trent Reznor has already tried to set a new benchmark for quality by releasing a concert video disc on DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray. If the trend established by DVD holds true, we'll at least see an assortment of good concert recordings, but at this point I don't see anything on the horizon that I can point to and call a likely replacement for the audio CD. With a few exceptions (such as the Genesis SACD releases planned for later this year and an assortment of other classics that have shown up on SACD and DVD-Audio), it's a pretty safe bet to go with CD still.

Thanks for the kind words, by the way - at present, our two-year-old daughter Kate is napping while I try to avoid working on a big project. Off to try to mark up part of a floor plan now...

I just came home from the music store. I was able to find several DTS releases that were used and I got each one for nine-dollars. So perhaps there is something to be said for obsolescence. I can remember when they tried for quadraphonic sound in the early seventies. History does repeat.

This question is not exactly related to this area but I don't know how to start a new section. Can the second-room output be used to feed an audio tape recorder instead of the tape outut jacks? Advantage: effectively being able to tape stuff separate from what you're listening to, as was possible with well-equipped stereo gear. But: (1) Is the signal fixed-level (good) or affected by the volume control (NG)? Also can the phono input be used for this? The manual says "line level inputs" but I don't know why the phono input would be different unless the phono preamp circuits don't feed the second room output, which seems like a pity if true.

Two things that you need to keep in mind about the second zone. First, it does have a volume control (not a fixed line level output), although it is independent of the main volume control. Second, the phono input is available at the second zone.

Oh, and if course the second zone (like the tape output) only works with stereo analog inputs.

Some info on Minidiscs...

I don't believe that CDs and MiniDiscs should be grouped together as far as quality.

Minidiscs use a Sony compression called ATRAC3 which I think is lossy.

Most minidiscs now also natively support MP3s without converting them to ATRAC3.

This info might be out of date. I haven't used my MD equipment in years.

That refreshed my memory a bit - here's something I e-mailed to a co-worker last August (thanks to Google Desktop for turning the message up):
My co-worker ended up getting a used Hi-MD player to record concerts, which is probably why I had PCM stuck in my head. Hi-MD should be a good match for CD, but you are right that the original MD and the ATRAC-formatted recordings would be closer to MP3 than CD. Good point!

Excellent memory gonk. ATRAC originally sounded awful. Much worse than 64K MP3 by comparison. It wasn't until ATRAC3 that they actually sounded good. I had various minidisc recorder/players over theyears, inlcuding one for the car, but I got rid of it all as it seems to be an abandoned format by everyone but Sony. With flash memory and harddisks being cheap, not to mention convenience and size, I think minidiscs aren't long to stay around. One big problem they have, which is why they never took off for data storage, is they are very slow.