"That was the trade-off that was put into place at a time when storage was much [less] capacious than it is now," said Jim Willcox, an associate editor at Consumer Reports. "There's a generation who doesn't aspire to better because they haven't been exposed to it."
Although smaller, lower quality files are more economical, they may no longer be necessary given increasing Internet bandwidth and cheaper, larger hard drives and players that can accommodate high-resolution audio files like Code.
"I think pretty much anybody can hear the difference," Mellencamp said. "It's just so much more open. The high end is not so annoying and scratchy."
Mellencamp said utilizing Code is no more expensive than any other recording method. "It should be the standard," he said. "If a guy is interested in his record sounding like [it] did in the studio where they made it, they should be interested in doing this."
But a number of high-definition formats have come and gone, and the jury is out on whether a generation already inured to low-fidelity files will care enough to make the switch -- and whether older demographics will be able to adapt to the new technology.
"I've had people call me up who I know and say the CD doesn't work, and I have to say, 'Do you have the DVD in the CD player?' " Mellencamp said. "I don't know how we could make it any easier."
