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Another theory - CDs popularity was always mainly about convenience and not sound quality. They lose out massively to streaming on this. Streaming leaves music
by klelatti 5y ago
Another theory - CDs popularity was always mainly about convenience and not sound quality. They lose out massively to streaming on this.
Streaming leaves music fans with money left over to spend and they buy vinyl to have something nice looking to put on the shelf (and play occasionally).
- WalterBright 5y agoI prefer CDs to vinyl because: 1. higher dynamic range needed for classical music 2. don't have to clean the disk every time I play it 3. doesn't skip 4. no snap crackle pop that happens even on the first play 5. vinyl takes up too much space 6. the needle doesn't turn into a furball after a few plays 7. the needle doesn't need to be replaced after 300 plays 8. the speakers don't cause feedback with the needle 9. you don't need to tread softly lest the needle picks that up mp3s, however, trump CDs.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago> dynamic range > mp3s, however, trump CDs. What? If CD's have better dynamic range than vinyl then how does mp3 trump CDs?
- WalterBright 5y agoWith high quality mp3s, dynamic range is no longer a perceptible difference.
- KennyBlanken 5y agoBecause at a certain bitrate it is impossible for listeners to distinguish it from the uncompressed audio. I think at 160kbit for mp3 damn near 99% of the population couldn't tell even with a very high quality set of gear. With AAC and other modern codecs it's probably closer to 128. For me the biggest annoyance is that some bluetooth audio codecs are pretty trash (thankfully most everything supports the ones that are decent), you can't configure any of it or even tell what codec has been negotiated between your phone and stereo, and I don't think any car company publishes what codecs their radios support.
- klelatti 5y agoI used to agree with this but even with my (quite old) ears can hear the difference between high bitrate compressed audio and lossless on (eg) Apple Music - I wonder if other aspects of the audio have improved and no longer mask the differences?
- WalterBright 5y agoYou could write a program that did a double blind experiment on you to verify your perceptions.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoThere was a foobar2000 plugin that I used for this and I could tell a difference but it was not easy. I had to listen intensely to higher frequencies like hi-hats. If I did not know that I was being tested I would never know the difference. I collect/archive music in FLAC but convert down to mp3 when syncing to devices.
- klelatti 5y agoApple Music switches between lossless and compressed depending on bandwidth and tells you on the screen whether it's on lossless or not. I find myself feeling that audio quality mid track has worsened and look at the screen to have it confirmed that it isn't lossless any more. Of course I don't know what the compressed bitrate is - so it could be quite low in these scenarios - but subjectively the quality isn't awful, just a bit worse.
- kaetemi 5y agoThought experiment. WAV vs MP3 at the same bit rate. At a low bit rate, which one is better? At a high bit rate?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoHigh bitrate mp3 == flac/wav/cd rip in terms of listening experience. I don't get why they would say mp3 was better, is it better because sound quality is essentially equal but is significantly smaller?
- klelatti 5y agoIf you buy vinyl to put on the shelf 5. becomes an advantage and the others are purely theoretical!
- WalterBright 5y agoI have a lot of vinyl. The consumption of space in my house is a significant problem. The CDs are much less of a problem, and streaming/mp3s are no problem at all.
- xeromal 5y agoYeah, but you could just store uncompressed files on a few hard drives and you'd save even more space
- Taniwha 5y ago-You don't have to turn them over halfway through -you can't hear the previous groove play through into th current one