appleburger17 t1_j1zltlx wrote
Reply to comment by Opus-the-Penguin in Wiil CD's make a comeback like Vinyl? by trukises
Nobody that’s serious about vinyl as a high quality playback medium prefers hum, crackle, or compression. How was CD sound quality “off the charts better”? Especially when they first came out and digital recording was relatively new?
Opus-the-Penguin t1_j1zt4cl wrote
No distortion. Wow and flutter listed as "below measurable limits". Look, all of us who were alive and purchasing for the transition IMMEDIATELY recognized how much better the CD sounded. It wasn't even close. The so-called "golden ears" of the industry confirmed it. Why do you think we switched? Why do you think we bought $500 CD players and started buying recordings--even recordings we already owned on LP--for $14.99 when they were $7.99 on LP? This was not a mass delusion causing us to prefer a sonically inferior medium.
appleburger17 t1_j1zu06x wrote
Convenience. That’s all. Same reason people switched to lower quality (at the time) MP3s from CD.
Opus-the-Penguin t1_j1zuxk5 wrote
Dude, did you read what I wrote? CDs were not "convenient". They were expensive. And the equipment was expensive. We didn't go to all that trouble for convenience. I'm telling you, as a witness from that time, we did it because the sound was NOTICEABLY superior. I remember one classical DJ calling CDs "the silver drug". A friend called them "audio crack". It was hard to keep from buying more BECAUSE THEY SOUNDED SO MUCH BETTER THAN WHAT WE'D BEEN ABLE TO GET BEFORE.
This was nothing like the later switch to low-quality MP3s. That was a different generation of listeners who did prioritize convenience over audio quality.
PossibilitySuperb465 t1_j1zzy6r wrote
What are you going on about? CDs were an order of magnitude more convenient, and using them in your car is a prime reason to make the switch.
Opus-the-Penguin t1_j20ptwj wrote
No. Almost nobody had a car CD player. Too expensive. If we wanted to listen to a CD in the car, we usually recorded it onto a cassette. There was also this thing that plugged into the cassette deck and to your portable CD player's headphone jack. Those worked but they were a little bit fussy and your CD player had to be portable. Not at all convenient. Convenience was 100% NOT the reason we switched. We switched because CDs sounded better. Ask anyone who remembers the transition.
PossibilitySuperb465 t1_j20r6v1 wrote
I... am... someone who remembers. And CDs in cars were rad.
Opus-the-Penguin t1_j20uirg wrote
When was this? I didn't get a CD player in the car until the 2000s. In 1987 almost no one had one. This was NOT what drove the switch. If you remember the transition during the 80s, you remember that.
PossibilitySuperb465 t1_j20v44s wrote
I mean the late 80s I guess is what I'm talking about. *Shrug*
Let's be reasonable though--CD players were always small (compact disk) and portability was very much the point as much as anything. They really were alternatives to tapes more in my mind I think in that regard. There were also those weird tapes with aux cables.
Opus-the-Penguin t1_j20wa9o wrote
Portables were fine as competition to the Walkman, but they weren't more convenient on that front. You couldn't go jogging with them. Even your car hitting a bump in the road could derail your listening experience in a situation where the cassette would just keep chugging along. Nevertheless, the sound was so much better that many people made the switch.
However, I don't think it was portables that drove the sales. Maybe I'm wrong, but my impression is that most people were buying full sized players for their home audio systems. Home audio was a much bigger deal back then and everybody wanted a good stereo system.
PossibilitySuperb465 t1_j20wvr1 wrote
>You couldn't go jogging with them
Loolllll man, takes me back. They were really fine in cars though in the 80s (unless you hit a bumpy patch, it would for sure skip lol). Honestly and truly, the few people who I knew back then who were obsessed with audio were still clutching vinyls and eyeing CDs with suspicion. I honestly do remember there being multiple camps on this topic back then though, so the discrepancy in our recollection is frankly unsurprising.
Opus-the-Penguin t1_j20y8x8 wrote
Yeah, I remember the holdouts who claimed that vinyl sounded "warmer". I also remember the articles in magazines like Stereo Review where the audio engineers were proving objectively that the CD was delivering more and more accurate sound information to your earballs. They said the "warmth" you were hearing in the LP was an artifact of deficiencies in the recording and playback process and meant that you were hearing sound that was somewhat different from the sounds that had been recorded.
Meanwhile, the so-called "golden ears" of the industry were confirming subjectively that what they were hearing from the CD was closer to hearing a live performance than anything they'd heard out of an LP.
So I figured, yeah, go with the experts and go with what my ears were telling me.
Fluffy_Little_Fox t1_j229wzn wrote
Warmth really just means "Extra Midrange Presence" and "Less Sharp Treble."
Very easy to simulate "Warmth" and even "Extra Stereo Separation" by using the RC20 VST.
That thing has MANY options.
Wow, Flutter, Wobble, Crackle, Distortion.
If you wanna make a digital recording ripped from a CD sound like it was recorded from a Vinyl, you totally can.
Fluffy_Little_Fox t1_j229arb wrote
Home Stereos. Even the goofy Wal-Mart systems with the big gaudy speakers that looked like something out of a sci-fi fever dream -- were a BIG business market back in the late 90s and early 2000s.
The ones with the 6 tray Automatic CD Changers. And later they compacted that into a Cartridge form.
Fluffy_Little_Fox t1_j1zxwfz wrote
The technology has also gotten much much much better.
When I was 12 years old and I had a Koss PP125 little Auto Reverse cassette player, I had cheap drugstore headphones! Those things probably sounded like shxt, but did I even care at the time??? Nope! All I cared about was jamming to my Duran Duran tapes I found at the Junk Yard when I was scrounging with my Dad! (mutual benefit, I helped him take off parts, he let me dig for tapes). Those tapes were probably moisture damaged all to hell from sitting in wrecked cars, but I didn't care.
All of my school friends were into 2pac & Biggie and my wierd goofy ass was gushing over 80s Synth Rock. (I didn't get into Rap til way way way later).
Then CD came around and I remember getting a ton of those through BMG or Columbia House Records or whatever. The "Get 10 CDs for a Penny" deal, remember that one??? I got Prince Greatest Hits for my mom and Duran Duran -- Decade for myself. And it sounded way better than any tape I had (but like I said, my tapes were dug out of junked cars at my dad's work!).
Technology improved. Things got cheaper. And my hearing -- admittedly -- probably got crappier! I don't have the same ears as 12 year old me. But even back then I don't think I cared. I don't care now either!
MP3 320 KBPS, FLAC, ATRAC. It all sounds pretty much the same to my ears.
The purity isn't all that important to me -- the important part is to just enjoy the music. If I play an old Nintendo game --- it doesn't matter to me if it's a real cartridge on real hardware, or if it's playing off a hacked Wii with an SD card, or a hacked SNES Classic Edition, or an Emulator on Windows PC.
To me, it's still the same game.
Opus-the-Penguin t1_j20t9ch wrote
> MP3 320 KBPS, FLAC, ATRAC. It all sounds pretty much the same to my ears.
FLAC and ATRAC should be sonically identical to what the original CD puts out. Those formats are lossless. They compress the CD info but they don't lose any of it. They're like audio ZIP files. All the info is there and it all gets played back. Anyone who claims to hear a difference is high on something and wouldn't be able to pass a blind test to identify which is which.
The MP3 is "lossy". Some information does get discarded in order to save space. The goal is to discard information that you wouldn't really hear anyway. And at 320 kpbs, that goal is easily met. You shouldn't hear any difference between an MP3 at that bitrate and the CD it was ripped from. MAYBE on a state of the art sound system some people could hear a tiny difference if they knew what to listen for. I doubt I'm one of those people.
The difference between CDs and LPs, on the other hand, ANYONE can hear. We all heard it in the 80s and made the switch as soon as we could afford to. The only problem in the early days was the recording engineers didn't always know how to use the new technology. They'd put the mics too close or something. I've got a recording of Vaughan-Williams' oboe concerto that is both breathtaking and maddening. The sound is crystal clear... and I can hear every single click and clack of the oboe's keys. It's like I'm sitting on stage instead of a few rows back in the audience.
Fluffy_Little_Fox t1_j20w2v8 wrote
Mixing & Engineering definitely plays a factor. There is an ELO's greatest hits CD (that I also had on tape as a kid -- it's the one with the Military Medal on the cover) that sounds ~nearly~ monophonic, whoever mixed that compilation did it very weirdly.
But the "Light Years" 2 Disc compilation has MUCH better mixing, it doesn't sound anywhere near as "narrow" as the old War Medal version.
Fluffy_Little_Fox t1_j20cfdu wrote
The first MP3s were usually all 128 KBPS (at least, that was commonly what Napster and other P2P clients had).... Which is honestly not great. Then as the format grew it got better over time. Also the individual person's hearing plays a lot into it. And then there's the Device playing the files, what kind of Headphones or Speakers etc.
Just out of curiosity, I ripped a CD to FLAC & 320kbps MP3, and even though it goes against what most of the internet believes --- I can't even perceive a difference or benefit.
What I ~CAN~ do is run quieter mixed albums like say: Pretty Hate Machine or License to Ill through RC20 to help bring them up a little and add more "richness" (better Midrange Presence).
That is something I ~CAN~ perceive. I can A-B it (turn the effect On & Off). I can't really do that with a format or Bit-Rate. I don't have a magic green button in Adobe Audition that will let me flip between FLAC & MP3, all I got for that is good ole Winamp.... (it really whips the Lamma's ass!) And even with playing two copies of the same song -- one in FLAC & one in MP3 320kbps, ~I~ personally can't perceive a difference.
Opus-the-Penguin t1_j20r0mb wrote
Sounds right to me. I've always read that 320kpbs was plenty good enough for most systems and most ears. Maybe on a state of the art sound system in perfect conditions you'd hear the difference. But not on a home theater and definitely not on a pair of earbuds.
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