Brave new world

I must admit I am a dinosaur when it comes to this new branch of hi-fi called hard disk players and hires song downloads and all sorts of files like WAV, FLAC, WMA, AAC/M4A and others.

But I am ever willing to jump into this brave new world where the iPod generation reigns and as usual learn as much as I can.

Today I downloaded MediaMonkey version 3.1.1 and had a pleasant surprise - it sounded so much better than the player in LimeWire and even the Windows Media Player.

I have been spending the past couple of hours just playing the MP3 songs that I have in my library.

Even the normal MP3 songs downloaded from LimeWire sounded better when played with Media Monkey and when I played the high-quality recordings from Mapleshade Records and Reference Recordings, there was a certain degree of sonic nirvana even though the images and soundstage were reduced because of the small Altec Lansing computer speakers.

But it goes to show that there is great potential in hires downloads and some people in the industry are already predicting the decline of the CD player and the rise of the hard disk player.

Looks like I have lots more to learn...