CD, tape or LP?

[mutantllama]

lossless audio, .flac - CD quality in digital format

I'm an expert on these matters, so listen up and listen good - I'll try to keep this simple but it won't be easy, because I am an expert, as I mentioned previously.

Hearing the difference now isn't the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is 'lossy'. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA - it's about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don't want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.

I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange...well don't get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren't stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you'll be glad you did.

 

[Chanakya]

Didn't you just copy the same thing that you had posted a year or two back?

I sort of expected that :/

 

[Cythraul]

I prefer CDs for reasons already mentioned, although I own a few LPs. I used to listen to tapes exclusively because all we had around my house were tape players. Then I got a portable cd player when I was 13 and slowly switched over to CDs. I can say from experience that there is virtually no reason at all to prefer tapes over anything else.

 

[mutantllama]

Didn't you just copy the same thing that you had posted a year or two back?

I sort of expected that :/

It's a well known copy pasta, just figured I'd bring it up.

 

[Krigloch the Furious]

lol at people still buying records

 

[sevag00]

It's a well known copy pasta, just figured I'd bring it up.

I think you copy pasted toenail's post with permission.

 

[Satanstoenail]

Who did what now

 

[sevag00]

I remember you saying that MP3s lose their bitrate each year. I don't recall exactly.

 

[Satanstoenail]

Wasn't me.

 

[Onder]

Sounds like bullshit.

 

[Personified Hatred]

Laugh at MY post.. I'm the one who said it FIRST! >:[

Damn, what a mistake... I deserve to be closed into the iron maiden for this.

 

[mutantllama]

lol at people still buying records

what's wrong with that?

 

[Krigloch the Furious]

what's the point? because it's "cool"?

 

[SentinelSlain]

Actually we buy them for more or less the same reason you'd buy a CD. Which one sounds better depends entirely on your set up.

I've stopped buying vinyl for the moment because I need to buy a better cartridge for the sound quality to be acceptable. My good CD player is at the shop being repaired so I had to connect a cheap DVD player to the amp. It sounds really bad to my ears.

I will admit having the full size physical album art is another reason to buy vinyl, if both vinyl and cd are available.

 

[mutantllama]

what's the point? because it's "cool"?

Looking at the giant album art, it has a nice sound to it and I love the feeling of putting the album on the turn table and putting the needle on the record. You just don't get that nice feeling when you press play on a cd player.

So in the end, it's a matter of preference.

 

[Bitencourt29]

Just to name an album I'd like to get the LP version, it would be Iron Maiden's Powerslave. Not only one of my favourite Maiden albums, but also a beautiful cover full of small details.

I'm really considering getting some LPs.

 

[repetitive electronic music]

LPs (well, vinyl anyway) because honestly at this point if for you buying physical media isn't more of a cultural statement/materialist obsession/way to support the artist than an actual practical method of listening to music youre way fucking behind the times. LPs are more tactile, look cooler and have bigger art so yea

 

[Personified Hatred]

Actually cds have the best sound quality. Audio cassettes have a terrible hiss over the audio (even on original copies) plus they stretch and chew up and LPs have the crackle & pop issue as well as a humming noise which a lot of people mistake for "analogue warmth" which is actually the sound of the electric motor driving the turntable.

What you said is true in some ways... But there are many people who say that the signal amplitude in the CD is inferior than on the LP, with consequent lower sound fullness. There are two theories about this topic, and I ask myself what's the truth. But if I can say my personal opinion, the CD has a perfectly clean sound, but the LP has a fuller (and then better) sound for the matter of signal amplitude.

 

[Personified Hatred]

I wanna add one thing: CD's (just in my opinion) and LP's are better, but the old demotapes are UNIQUE.

 

[AchrisK]

What you said is true in some ways... But there are many people who say that the signal amplitude in the CD is inferior than on the LP, with consequent lower sound fullness. There are two theories about this topic, and I ask myself what's the truth. But if I can say my personal opinion, the CD has a perfectly clean sound, but the LP has a fuller (and then better) sound for the matter of signal amplitude.

The LP is inferior to the CD only in the need for a physical contact for playing, which makes it really hard to play without imperfections. But the fact is, vinyl is an analogue signal of an analogue event. Digital audio is chopped up into tiny pieces and placed in a row, which means the entire original signal is not present. Analog recording captures the entire signal, therefore it is a higher quality sound. For the most part the difference is negligible, but those who recognize the difference are not just imagining that vinyl sounds better.