asshole sent me a broken CD.

[Satanstoenail]

I still use my old CDJ decks at home to play music and I have no desire to sell all my cds just because they’re not the format of choice anymore. If anything I’ll be buying more old stuff that I’ve had stolen off me because people are offloading their cds to second hand stores for cheap.

I think cds are still a worthy format and the argument that they are plastic and easy to break is flawed. Sure, jewel cases break easily but they’re also easily replaceable. The CD itself is pretty difficult to break and it takes a fair bit of mistreatment to render a CD unplayable.

I think Bluetooth is the way forward for in-car technology though. Fuck carrying a bunch of cds in my car all the time when I can just play shit off my phone.

 

[Slammed]

10-15 years ago Cash Converters used to be a great place to get second hand CD, they'd pay some poor sap next to nothing for them and then on sell them for $5-10, then more people realised how little they were getting, the numbers dwindled and their prices went up. After that Cash Converters seemed to disappear.

I was always going to buy one of those cheap Chinese head units for the car with shit loads of storage and all the whizzbang shit. Then I decided to build a carPC and get the same whizzbang shit how I wanted it. Then I changed cars and thought fuck it all it's too much work and now days I just run a BT speaker off the phone and charge each of the second battery whenever it needs it.

But I wont stop buying physical media while I can and then ripping it into other formats for when I'm not at home.

 

[The Ozzman]

My car has a USB port in it so all my music in my car is on thumb drives

 

[Krow]

I go old school MP3 player in my car. I use one Of those FiiO Asian music players. It’s pretty good but the wheel is wonky after a couple years of use.

 

[Harleyy]

While true, CDs still hold significance as the only physically collectible form of digital media. I would think that most people who still buy CDs are probably only doing so for their media collection. They also still provide the only way to get a digital copy of select albums (older) that cannot be obtained legitimately otherwise. Some people still listen to physical CDs, mostly in cars I would presume, though personally I usually keep CDs for archival/collective purposes only these days.



USB CD drives can be had for as cheap as the price of the average CD and are easily obtainable. They are still even making new models to reflect OS and hardware changes such as USB 3.0 and such.



I hate paying for mp3s because they are a compressed form of the final digital release. Makes me feel like im getting ripped off, especially considering how easy storage space is to obtain. An audiophile concern perhaps, but wouldnt you rather buy an original piece of art than a pixelated print of the same work? When buying digital media I prefer to get the lossless form if given the option.



lol

Yea, CDs are definitely on the way out. The only people I know who actually buy them are enthusiasts, and most people dont even bother with downloads when they can just stream instead. Digital downloads are definitely the future for enthusiasts, but I imagine that CDs will stay around (at least in the underground scenes) for quite a while still.

I like CDs mostly because I have the music in a physical form and I can use the disc to rip the audio off of it in the best quality possible and put them on my phone.

 

[Onder]

I hate paying for mp3s because they are a compressed form of the final digital release. Makes me feel like im getting ripped off, especially considering how easy storage space is to obtain. An audiophile concern perhaps, but wouldnt you rather buy an original piece of art than a pixelated print of the same work? When buying digital media I prefer to get the lossless form if given the option.

This is a thing that I frequently think about. All this audiophile shit is quite a controversial territory so I will say something before going into this. I refuse the notion that vinyls have more sound quality than digital media. I believe that it's physically impossible and that people who claim that are posers. (However, I do like vinyls for other reasons, and if I had to choose, I would probably go for collecting vinyls because of the sentimental value, and because it's like having stone tablets from Moses instead of reading ten commandments on Kindle).

There are various opinions on the quality threshhold that human ear can recognize. I regularly have arguments about this with some of my online friends and I've never actually conducted a blind test which I was meaning to do for quite a while. I have recorded some music myself though, back in the day, and I know that if you export a 128kbps MP3 and a 320kbps one from the master then you can fucking hear the difference (if you're not deaf). Therefore I try to have my MP3s in 320kbps quality and I buy them like that.

I met a girl who's a real music fan and she told me, the first time (and the last time we met), when we had a fiery discussion about how music should be appreciated, that basically you're a dum dum if you don't listen to music in FLAC, because only then the sounds "shine through so magnificently" and other shit like that. And while I'm not convinced by her blabber, I do feel like I need to conduct some experiments.

The store where I recently bought some (pretty bad - sound quality-wise) classical MP3 offers them in FLAC as well for a higher price, and I would like to know if I can hear the difference. I will need to buy some of the tracks in flac as well, and then maybe convert them in lower bitrate as well, 192kbps probably, and then see if I can tell the difference if I put them in a tracklist randomly. My best setting currently is probably my external NI sound card plus RHA in-ears. It's not audiophile mahagony minus dick ohm bullshit, but it's more sensitive than my ear and didn't cost me a dick.

Once I finally conduct this experiment, I will be able to say "you boy, who listens to contemporary classical in your car in 128 kbps, are kinda full of shit" and "you girl, who claims only FLAC can release your vaginal juices flow, are also full of shit". Or maybe not.

But I need to stay realistic.

 

[Slammed]

For true sound quality all can enjoy you need to stand at the back of a venue, preferably behind 5000 taller people, record the concert on your cheap throw away phone and then upload the sound in FLAC format for all to enjoy. Anything else is poor quality audio!

 

[EternalMetal]

This is a thing that I frequently think about. All this audiophile shit is quite a controversial territory so I will say something before going into this. I refuse the notion that vinyls have more sound quality than digital media. I believe that it's physically impossible and that people who claim that are posers. (However, I do like vinyls for other reasons, and if I had to choose, I would probably go for collecting vinyls because of the sentimental value, and because it's like having stone tablets from Moses instead of reading ten commandments on Kindle).

Yea, vinyl doesnt have more sound quality than digital, but there are a number of old vinyls that are said to have been mastered better than their digital counterpart. Most people who have any sort of valid argument for vinyl usually just say that they like the warmth of the analogue sound over the cold clinical precision of digital media. Personally I do enjoy the analogue sound quite a bit, but it would wrong to claim that it has a greater capacity for detail or dynamic range (digital is undoubtedly superior in these metrics). Some claim that harmonics in the inaudible regions are why analogue media is better, but most equipment clips the signal around 20khz so I do not believe this. I do like the sound of select vinyl and cassettes over digital, but the reason is more because of warmth and/or grittiness and not because it has superior SQ.

There are various opinions on the quality threshhold that human ear can recognize. I regularly have arguments about this with some of my online friends and I've never actually conducted a blind test which I was meaning to do for quite a while. I have recorded some music myself though, back in the day, and I know that if you export a 128kbps MP3 and a 320kbps one from the master then you can fucking hear the difference (if you're not deaf). Therefore I try to have my MP3s in 320kbps quality and I buy them like that.

I met a girl who's a real music fan and she told me, the first time (and the last time we met), when we had a fiery discussion about how music should be appreciated, that basically you're a dum dum if you don't listen to music in FLAC, because only then the sounds "shine through so magnificently" and other shit like that. And while I'm not convinced by her blabber, I do feel like I need to conduct some experiments.

The one problem that I have seen posed for a/b tests is that the brain cannot "remember" subtle details such as those you would be looking for in such a comparison for more than a couple seconds. In my experience the difference between a 320kbps file and a lossless one is so subtle that I would not be able to tell which one was used if I were to randomly pick without knowing. However in experimenting a bit I have been able to discern qualitative differences between the two. The difference in sound is additional clarity (slightly less muffled sounding), noticeable in the higher hz range. I can without a doubt notice the difference in the two on Candlemass's Nightfall album for instance. The music seems more "airy" and clear with the higher bitrate. At this point you arent looking for more details in music, but the quality of them - if that makes any sense. I have noticed that audiophile elitists tend to over emphasize the differences they hear, when in the end the gains are marginal at best. This is assuming your mp3s are at least 320kbps or V0 variable bitrate.

The store where I recently bought some (pretty bad - sound quality-wise) classical MP3 offers them in FLAC as well for a higher price, and I would like to know if I can hear the difference. I will need to buy some of the tracks in flac as well, and then maybe convert them in lower bitrate as well, 192kbps probably, and then see if I can tell the difference if I put them in a tracklist randomly. My best setting currently is probably my external NI sound card plus RHA in-ears. It's not audiophile mahagony minus dick ohm bullshit, but it's more sensitive than my ear and didn't cost me a dick.

I would be willing to bet that you will notice the quality drop of a 192kbps mp3. 192kbps should crush the dynamic range enough to be noticeable in classical, though I don't have any examples to work with to confirm this. In the end it will come down to how sensitive your ears are and the quality of your equipment.

Once I finally conduct this experiment, I will be able to say "you boy, who listens to contemporary classical in your car in 128 kbps, are kinda full of shit" and "you girl, who claims only FLAC can release your vaginal juices flow, are also full of shit". Or maybe not.

But I need to stay realistic.

Realistically I probably wouldnt recommend spending more on FLAC than a 320kbps mp3. Differences in detail are miniscule and only necessary for those who border on OCD regarding sound quality. Unless you have audiophile grade equipment you may not even be able to notice or care about the difference. In the end lossless is really only as good as your equipment. Don't even consider the snake oil that is 24 bit audio though; im pretty sure no human is biologically capable of telling the difference by quite a margin. If file size is important for portability, mp3 is fine. There really isn't any good reason to settle for less than 320kbps mp3 or V0 VBR unless you have to though.

The reason why I stick with FLAC is mostly because I can, but I also see no reason to settle for less (in most cases; I have purchased mp3s where there were no options for lossless). If their is a bottleneck in my setup, I can easily get rid of it being the source file without spending a dime. Storage drives are so big these days that filesize is an irrelevant argument for my applications. I no longer need or want to carry around my entire music discography on a portable device because scrolling through gets to be tedious.