Originally Posted By: bridgman
but I fear that we're probably seeing some of the opposite trend - mixing albums to sound good on portable media players with compressed digital content and $3 headsets.



This was true for the last 20 years but this trend of compressed audio and formats such as MP3 is slowly dying. The shift has already occured with manufacturers. There is a shift happening in consumer preferences as well to lossless formats. Economies of scale and dropping prices in storage devices (HDD, Micro-SD cards, SD etc) as well as affordable and quality music players, computers, home theatre PC's is definitely encouraging. Lossless audio formats are a basic feature set on portable players costing less than $40. Now that manufacturers are marketing these features instead of MP3, consumers are now becoming educated on the benefits. This will all lead to a shift to lossless as the standard and in tastes. Affordability is key, and it is already present in the market. It will just better.

If this takes hold, production/mixing will most likely shift as well. It did at least hold true during the "loudness/mp3 wars". Believe it or not vinyl is actually starting to come back in a big way as well.

I’m armed and I’m drinking. You don’t want to listen to advice from me, amigo.

-Max Payne