Inventor of the Audio Cassette has Run Out of Tape.

[mawnansmiff]

"They are back. I think it was a few years ago now, but more vinyl was sold in Canada than CDs."

Mike, vinyl has been making a comeback over here for some years. I think the music purists were determined that the best available recording medium wasn't allowed to die.

I mean CDs are great for convenience but for pure listening pleasure vinyl played back through a half decent music system really can't be beat.

Regards,

Jay.

 

[mikethompson]

"They are back. I think it was a few years ago now, but more vinyl was sold in Canada than CDs."

Mike, vinyl has been making a comeback over here for some years. I think the music purists were determined that the best available recording medium wasn't allowed to die.

I mean CDs are great for convenience but for pure listening pleasure vinyl played back through a half decent music system really can't be beat.

Regards,

Jay.

Exactly, I've always maintained that vinyl was best for sound quality, and every other 'advancement' has just been to make it more convenient and portable.

 

[RonB]

I disagree with the preference for vinyl over CD's. There have been studies done that show that the warmer sound of vinyl is due to the lack of detail that is delivered by digital CD's. Of course there are probably studies showing something different, haha.

I'm not an audio engineer and can't really offer any further arguments, but I like the sound of CD's played on a good audio system, in a room with decent acoustical characteristics, with great speakers.

Sounds like I'm in the minority, here, though.

 

[jpmcwjr]

Well both vinyl and CDs are poor in terms of what they can capture and reproduce in terms of very high fidelity, Advanced digital formats beat the stuffing out of those outdated formats.

At the same time, if you like the "sound" of vinyl, it's the best. If you think CD's are great, they are the best. And so forth.

 

[fireground_piper]

Also not all vinyl is the same. There's a lot of poor pressings these days on light gram vinyl and there's nothing redeeming about that. You need a heavy gram for the best experience and longevity.

Vinyl has its sound and I think whether that's better or worse is up to the listener. It's a color, not necessarily better, just different. Similar vein to tube based products. They will color your sound in different ways and you should want those characteristics if you are using that particular product.

If I'm using a tube preamp on a vocal and complaining that it lacks a certain crispness, that's my stupidity for using something that generally doesn't give me that. It doesn't make it any better or worse, just a preference.

 

[jpmcwjr]

And there are good, bad and indifferent digital recordings.

A good sound person can color the sound any which way desired, which is great if you prefer a certain "color". Otherwise, neutral is great: As close to the sound of hearing it live as can be made.

Someone mentioned a digitally remastered FLAC file off a good master made years ago, and it was superb.

 

[coming to_falling too]

And there are good, bad and indifferent digital recordings.

A good sound person can color the sound any which way desired, which is great if you prefer a certain "color". Otherwise, neutral is great: As close to the sound of hearing it live as can be made.

Someone mentioned a digitally remastered FLAC file off a good master made years ago, and it was superb.

All of my digital music is FLAC. File size may be larger, but I'm willing to take that for better sound quality.

 

[mawnansmiff]

I have a Marantz SACD player (Super Audio Compact Disc) and a few SACD discs. They were supposed to be the latest thing in home audio when they debuted back in 1999 but they never really took off. Rather like the quadrophonic sound of earlier times, here one moment then gone the next.

Yes they sound great but in my humble opinion, not hugely better than a regular CD though immensely better than the low resolution 'audio files' so beloved by the younger generation.

Regards,

Jay.

 

[fireground_piper]

I remember doing some listening between SACD and DVD-Audio in the early 2000s. I preferred DVD-Audio because of the potential for 5.1 and higher bitrates but I thought SACD would be an easier adoption.

Turned out the masses don't really care either way, even back then, and the trend has continued to today. I'm still involved with discussions on format and quality to the customer, but as much as the minority really loves the higher quality possibilities (and the faces of wonderment when you can sit the public in a listening environment to experience that potential), the masses really just don't care once you hit a certain quality level. They notice when it sucks, but once it's OK, they don't care for great.

The benefit with technology today is you can produce to the highest level, and then distribute to all the fold down levels in the same streaming package. You still need to invest to get to that highest level but there are some savings with automated mix downs from there.

 

[Jaylotw]

I listen to a lot of smaller artists, much of their catalogs are only available on CD. I drive a 2004 Toyota, and it only has a CD player so most of my listening is done on that format.

I do, however have a huge collection of digital downloaded music. It’s just the way it is now. If you pay for a download instead of streaming, you often get a much better product and for a lot of the music I enjoy, it’s more than worth it for me to get a high quality digital copy. For listening to music at work, I don’t really care as much about quality. I grew up listening to bootleg live recordings and quality can be horrible on those.

Neil Young had his PONO player, which flopped...but the whole idea was super high quality streaming. No one gave a shit.

At a band mate’s house, we’ve got stacked JBLs, subs and a high quality EQ and receiver and it’s pretty mind blowing how good music sounds over there. The digital remasters of old field recordings (like Lomax’s recordings) are really pretty mind blowing when played through a good set of speakers.

 

[jpmcwjr]

Overly compressed or poorly mixed MP3s are pretty bad, but several levels above what we heard in the 60's and 70's unless you had really high end equipment, And a lot of it was off the radio,

 

[Toast]

Turned out the masses don't really care either way

That's totally where I'm at, my ears & eyes simply aren't good enough that the level of quality over CD (& DVD) justifies the additional cost.

I'm sure there is a percentage of the population who can differentiate & who do care - but given the trash most people listen to their music on I can't believe it's a huge number.

 

[Toast]

People rarely listen to the songs in the order they were set on an album in

I'd never thought of that, but that's so true. I'm definitely from the mix tape generation & I'm slowly replacing my tapes with CDs, that's one additional reason not to go digital (over & above my deep love of stuff - tangible things). Thank you!

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I'd never thought of that, but that's so true. I'm definitely from the mix tape generation & I'm slowly replacing my tapes with CDs, that's one additional reason not to go digital (over & above my deep love of stuff - tangible things). Thank you!

Rock on!!

 

[fireground_piper]

That's totally where I'm at, my ears & eyes simply aren't good enough that the level of quality over CD (& DVD) justifies the additional cost.

I'm sure there is a percentage of the population who can differentiate & who do care - but given the trash most people listen to their music on I can't believe it's a huge number.

Like anything else, it takes untold amounts of critical listening hours to train you ears above a certain level. Most people definitely don't care above a certain fidelity level.

What I think a larger portion of the general population does care about is immersion though. And I think what Dolby(and some others but they impress me most) is doing in the space will be interesting to see how wide it can be accepted by people. Even for people who can't discern fidelity quality, many people can experience different immersion types easily. You can sit a non-audio person in a room and play them the same thing in mono, stereo, 5.1, Atmos on a bar device like Sonos or Amazon Studio and then Atmos on full component and they can differentiate the experiences greater than if you are playing different fidelity qualities all in stereo. Same goes for what they are doing with Mono/Stereo on headphones against the same product on Atmos for headphones. It's a much more receptive door for entry that an unskilled listener can experience. It's interesting at least, even if it ends up never being the next mainstream format.

 

[mawnansmiff]

"the masses really just don't care once you hit a certain quality level. They notice when it sucks, but once it's OK, they don't care for great."

And there Fireground Piper has it in a nutshell. The kids of today have no appreciation of what is actually available, they are quite happy with the most basic of quality where it comes to music just so long as their idol is on the playlist ?

Regards,

Jay.?

 

[Toast]

Even for people who can't discern fidelity quality, many people can experience different immersion types easily.

That's a really good point. I still vividly remember Forest Gump mainly because it was the first film I'd heard in surround sound - & it completely blew me away.

Sort of the same experience with HD TV, except in reverse - that made things more unreal - I swear it has more pixels than real life does.

 

[STP]

Hearing sensitivity generally peaks between the ages of 18-25. The frequency range is commonly between 20 to 20,000 Hz. After 25, this range starts to narrow, particularly in the higher frequencies. Most on here could not discern the differences between audio sources... myself included. I like the convenience of CDs and other digital formats (MP3, AAC, WAV, FLAC, etc.). The right equipment can make just about anything sound good ?

 

[fireground_piper]

The things you start to experience at higher fidelity are subtle. If you were able to sit down in a good listening environment with the same album, 1 at CD quality (16bit/44.1K) and 1 at say 24bit/48K, the things you start to notice are the minute details. Sustained sounds on your higher frequencies like guitar resonance and symbol trail, longer reverb decay, etc. These things begin to disappear at lower digital qualities or become more noticeable at higher qualities using CD as your baseline. The bitrate, in my opinion, is more important from 16bit to 24bit than the jump above 44.1khz as it lets the digital file capture the more nuanced details.

The 44.1k of CD is a great baseline because it allows capture of frequencies up to 22,050hz, which as you mention is just above the highest average human perception. If you did a digital wav file at 22.5K instead of 44.1k, it would drop out anything above 11,250hz. Going higher allows you to capture more for a better overall representation, but it's diminished returns.