The first in an occasional series in which we invite anyone, famous, infamous, or just plain furious, to get it off their chest. This month: producer Pascal Gabriel formats an opinion...

Cassette, CD, DCC, MiniDisk, super CD... what's going on?

I've just reviewed all the above formats for a feature in Esquire magazine. The evaluation was conducted at Real World studios with the help of bands and engineers from various parts of the globe. We did some blind tests, with a CD, a DCC/MiniDisk and an audio cassette running simultaneously, switching between them without revealing the medium to the listeners. The CDs always came out on top (no surprise there), followed by audio tape and then by the new digital formats. What came out of this analysis was that even though most of the listeners recognised analogue tape, they seemed to prefer the 'feel' of it, along with CD, much more than DCC/MiniDisk. Sure, all formats have different qualities, but it's important to remember that whatever the format, it's the music that matters.

A recording that feels right isn't necessarily the cleanest one: a listener's emotional response is something you can't digitise (not yet, anyway). The collective view during our analysis - and my own - is that by flogging their back catalogues in these new formats the major record labels are trying (and failing) to create an artificial boost in sales.

It's an extremely short-sighted move, and surely the fortune spent on promoting, marketing and releasing these new formats would be better spent elsewhere. For instance, developing new artists and allowing acts to mature, instead of terminating the career of those who don't break even with the first album or first few singles - which is the norm with most majors these days.

There is still a lot of scope for new CD technology, and with CD-i, CD-ROM, 32-bit Gold CD, Kodak photo-CD etc. well underway, most people have or will have a CD player of some kind. Vinyl is dying, sure, but CD sales are rising, so it doesn't make any sense for anyone to bring out not one, but two new digital formats nobody wants. And it does seem that nobody wants them: I heard from a reputable source that two acts who both topped the album charts this year with CD/vinyl/cassette releases sold only 50 MiniDisk and DCC versions between them! You can't fool the pop generation...

Pascal Gabriel has produced hits for Bomb The Bass, S-Express, Coldcut, Jimmy Somerville, Erasure, EMF, Inspiral Carpets and many more... as well as the essential sample CD Pascal Gabriel's Dance Samples, Volume 1 of AMG's HitSound Producer series.