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So much effort to play crappy CD's

9K views 122 replies 21 participants last post by  ChrisWiggles 
#1 ·
As we all know CD's are absolute crap compared to records. CD's are an old crap technology invented decades ago.


And then compressed codecs like mp3 take that crap and make it more crappier.


When will there be blu-ray music?
 
#2 ·
^^^


no "we" don't all know that...
 
#5 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by ps24eva /forum/post/19068985


As we all know CD's are absolute crap compared to records. CD's are an old crap technology invented decades ago.

And records were invented when?



Sorry, just seemed ironic...


BD music formats keep getting stalled while they focus on the next latest greatest movie formats, and nobody is quite sure what to do with that much data storage for music besides music vids and huge anthologies ("best of...")
 
#6 ·
^^^


i decided to let someone else hit that one out of the park...



op, the advantage that bd has over cd is storage space... there's no inherent sq advantage to it...


and, bd IS the "same old crap technology" as cd... different color laser and more closely packed together data, but the concept is the same...
 
#7 ·
99.9% of customers do not mind listening 128kbps MP3, and happy with it. Music industry is a business after all. Nobody in their right mind cares about 0.1% of customers, unless they pay 100x more for that privilege. Are you ready to pick up the tab?
 
#8 ·
^ Exactly. Generally, recording methodology and mastering is garbage. That said, I have plenty of CDs that'll blow your hair back.


Until there's a more wide-spread cry for increased fidelity, you can forget about an uptick in sound-quality.


BTW: any modern release that I own that sounds like **** on CD, also happens to sound likesh!t on vinyl.


It's not a coincidence.


James
 
#9 ·
Yeah, it is really about the recording and mastering. As for mastering, compressed dynamics and volume driven to the point of clipping will sound poor on any medium.


I listen to a lot of classical and film scores, and these genres are very well represented on CD. The dynamics and fidelity are typically better than I could ever hope for. The film score labels in particular know how to master an exceptional sounding CD.
 
#10 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by ps24eva /forum/post/19068985


As we all know CD's are absolute crap compared to records. CD's are an old crap technology invented decades ago.


And then compressed codecs like mp3 take that crap and make it more crappier.


When will there be blu-ray music?

Name ONE thing that vinyl records do better than CDs in terms of audio fidelity and accuracy to the original recording.
 
#13 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisWiggles /forum/post/19072038


Also note: I am a vinyl guy myself.


But come on. Let's be objective here. Unicorns don't exist. And vinyl is not a superior format to CD.



The ONLY thing that vinyl does better is the coverart is bigger.

To me, they are two different formats/storage mediums, neither of which are inherently better. Ultimately, it is that subjective realm of personal taste that will dictate what you prefer to listen to. I do enjoy vinyl and have a very nice turntable set-up. Sometimes I enjoy vinyl more...sometimes I dig the digital.


All that aside, there are some recordings that are poorly presented on CD, and the whole issue with the modern mastering methods and the "loudness wars" certainly can make vinyl preferable due to the fact that they simply cannot be mastered to "loudness" standards the same way a CD can.


Even if it isn't objectionably mastered for loudness (as much of today's music is), sometimes it is just a crap transfer. One CD I have that is just a less-than-great transfer is a CD by Gene Clark called 'Echoes', which includes tracks from the 'Early L.A. Sessions' record that I have on vinyl. This is a CD that does not sound better than the vinyl...and it is not subtle. I've done the A/B comparison a couple of times. It feels like you are sucking some of the music into a vacuum when switching to CD. Once again, this really just represents a poorly mastered CD, but is an instance where the vinyl def. sounds better.
 
#14 ·
^^^


while some transfers may be crap, transfers aren't the core issue here...


+1 to chris' post... the only downside to cd's is that they don't come in double album covers for "other uses"...
 
#16 ·

Quote:
To me, they are two different formats/storage mediums, neither of which are inherently better. Ultimately, it is that subjective realm of personal taste that will dictate what you prefer to listen to. I do enjoy vinyl and have a very nice turntable set-up. Sometimes I enjoy vinyl more...sometimes I dig the digital.

Well, we can say that CD is inherently more accurate a format with significantly higher fidelity to the original recording. And in that sense, it most certainly is better. The only way we can judge the quality of a reproduction is to judge its accuracy to an original referent, in this case the original master or recording. And CD is clearly better at that.


But preference in terms of "more preferred" is entirely a subjective thing, and that's where taste enters. And there is no way to assess tastes in any objective way. And I agree with the latter part of your statement, I too find certain things more enjoyable to listen to on vinyl. The sound is just different, sometimes significantly. And the question of whether the CD is more accurate or not (which it is), is not my only metric for enjoyment, as I get an enormous amount of joy listening to vinyl, and there are certain albums I personally feeel sound more enjoyable to me on vinyl. But that enjoyment is in this case not because the sound is more accurate, but simply because I prefer it.


That is a crucial distinction between accuracy/fidelity and preference that one must distinguish.
 
#18 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisWiggles /forum/post/19077603


Well, we can say that CD is inherently more accurate a format with significantly higher fidelity to the original recording. And in that sense, it most certainly is better. The only way we can judge the quality of a reproduction is to judge its accuracy to an original referent, in this case the original master or recording. And CD is clearly better at that.


But preference in terms of "more preferred" is entirely a subjective thing, and that's where taste enters. And there is no way to assess tastes in any objective way. And I agree with the latter part of your statement, I too find certain things more enjoyable to listen to on vinyl. The sound is just different, sometimes significantly. And the question of whether the CD is more accurate or not (which it is), is not my only metric for enjoyment, as I get an enormous amount of joy listening to vinyl, and there are certain albums I personally feeel sound more enjoyable to me on vinyl. But that enjoyment is in this case not because the sound is more accurate, but simply because I prefer it.


That is a crucial distinction between accuracy/fidelity and preference that one must distinguish.

Well stated. That being said, the one thing that analog may have an edge on is upper end frequency response. It is my understanding that redbook CD pretty much contains no information above 20khz. Vinyl on the other hand, theoretically has the ability to reproduce frequencies far above this. This, of course, opens up the whole argument about whether this adds anything meaningful to the sound and we probably shouldn't go there. At the very least, we could argue that digital isn't more accurate in EVERY respect.


That being said, digital is ultimately a more accurate means of capture...to a point. In my original comment about digital and analog being different but not inherently better mediums, I wasn't necessarily referring to CD vs. vinyl. There is good digital (high end DAC/ADC such as might be found in a state of the art recording facility) and bad digital (the digital chip in your answering machine), just as there is good and bad analog. The quality of the recording that is made with my answering machine at home is not better OR more accurate than a top of the line Nagra analog recorder.
 
#20 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by centurymantra /forum/post/19077699


That being said, digital is ultimately a more accurate means of capture...to a point. In my original comment about digital and analog being different but not inherently better mediums, I wasn't necessarily referring to CD vs. vinyl. There is good digital (high end DAC/ADC such as might be found in a state of the art recording facility) and bad digital (the digital chip in your answering machine), just as there is good and bad analog. The quality of the recording that is made with my answering machine at home is not better OR more accurate than a top of the line Nagra analog recorder.

The main advantage of digital media is that it can be copied infinite number of times without ANY loss of quality. This can not be said about ANY analog recording.


As for CD vs LP, here well made CD always sounds better than well made LP. The problem is that CDs are not always well made, but it also can be said about LPs.
 
#21 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by centurymantra /forum/post/19077699


That being said, digital is ultimately a more accurate means of capture...to a point. In my original comment about digital and analog being different but not inherently better mediums, I wasn't necessarily referring to CD vs. vinyl. There is good digital (high end DAC/ADC such as might be found in a state of the art recording facility) and bad digital (the digital chip in your answering machine), just as there is good and bad analog. The quality of the recording that is made with my answering machine at home is not better OR more accurate than a top of the line Nagra analog recorder.

senseless comparison... even given a product that is "inherently better" (i.e. cd), you can always find some other product that is "better", especially if you pick a particularly crappay example of the "inherently better one"...
 
#22 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by ccotenj /forum/post/19077937


senseless comparison... even given a product that is "inherently better" (i.e. cd), you can always find some other product that is "better", especially if you pick a particularly crappay example of the "inherently better one"...

Actually, I'll admit that comparison is going a little off track - more appropriate for a digital vs. analog discussion. We're supposed to be talking about CD vs. vinyl here, which is a related, but different topic.


That being said...I like CDs and vinyl - and don't really feel either is "better".
 
#23 ·
^^^

i'd never tell anyone what they "like"... i'm glad some people still like vinyl...


for me, the day i got my first cd player was the last day i cared about vinyl... but then again, that was WAY back in the day, and my "record player" wasn't exactly audiophile grade...



every now and then i get the idea to get back into vinyl... then swmbo says, "don't even think about it, it's not worth the effort to do it 'right'"... and as she is extraordinarily tolerant of everything else, i'm not gonna press that issue...


edit: the only reason i jumped into the thread was the obvious silliness of the original post (the premise that cd's were absolute crap compared to vinyl)... besides the op thinking that bluray would somehow provide "superior" sound quality to cd, and that it was somehow "new" technology... i'm guessing he was expecting a lot more people to agree with him, since we haven't seen him come back...
 
#25 ·
^^^


after being married for 20 years, i've learned that my wife is ALWAYS right...



besides the fact that she owns the "golden ears" in this family...
if she thought she'd like it better, she'd be "damn the torpedoes, straight ahead, and get out your amex card"...
 
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