The result is that listeners hear the music as it was meant to be heard, according to the exacting standards of the recording artists and engineers.

ENGADGET: Yamaha's CD-N500 network CD player comes to the States, priced at $800

But as the market for high-end audio products grows, more consumers enter the market unaware of why recording artists, including the producers and sound engineers, make the decisions they make, and how consumer technologies can reproduce the sound just as they created it.

FORBES: Consumer Electronics Deliver Music the Way the Artists Intended

Researchers at Nippon Hoso Kyokai are working with engineers at the Science and Technical Research Laboratories (STRL) to create an "optical disc recording system based on consumer Blu-ray disc technology that can spin as fast as 15, 000 RPM" without worry of a disc experiencing a complete meltdown and shattering within the drive.

ENGADGET: NHK's 15k RPM optical disc recording system utilizes Blu-ray technology