hills you are willing to die on

[rms]

It's not mere semantics when modern day colloquial speech equates "digital" to computer files rather than actual physical CD's. Erik will not die in vain upon this hill here, my friend.

you crotchety fucks are acting like digital is the first word where it's literal meaning has shifted in your lifetime

 

[einride]

you crotchety fucks are acting like digital is the first word where it's literal meaning has shifted in your lifetime

i think you're misunderstanding the issue

digital still means digital, that is, data represented by discrete numeric values. but it ALSO means "not physical" somehow. so a cd is digital, unquestionably -- but it is also not digital?

see how that is a problem? it's not that the meaning has shifted, it's that both exist at the same time and in this case are mutually exclusive. you can't take "digital" and suddenly take it to mean "things that are digital, other than this particular digital thing"

it's like if someone decided a particular shade of blue in the spectrum is now called hörkenbörk and while it is by any reasonable definition near indistinguishable from other blues, this particular blue shade is no longer blue because fuck you that's why

 

[einride]

or to get more philosophical about it, here's a scenario:

* you buy and download a set of FLAC files from bandcamp -- this is a "digital download". it's just a bitstream.
* you save these files on a hard drive, a physical, digital, magnetic storage medium, or an SSD, a physical, digital, solid state storage medium. it is still unquestionably a digital download stored on a digital storage medium. still just a bitstream.
* now you burn these files onto a cd. a cd is also a physical, digital, optical storage medium. by any reasonable standard, nothing has changed. still just a bitstream.
* you give this cd to a friend. now he has it in a physical format.
* does the friend have the album "on digital"? if not, where in the chain of events did this change?

 

[J.]

Im sure you kids with DAC, DIC, FLAC, CACK, and all that other shit are listening to the same crud as my hair laden ears upon pressing play. Im just in too deep at this point, and mentally whether its all psychological or not, I couldnt get the same erection from buying a high quality rip off Bandcamp as receiving a physical package of some luscious polycarbonate in the mail. It would just be shallow, less intimate.

Blood Bros we are. Fuck off nowadays non physical digital FLAC FUCC.

Keepin it real OG CD since '92 mothafuckas and I will die upon this hill with a smile on my face and my dick in my hand

 

[J.]

And fuck off people who think a download is part of a collection. Tha fuck outta here.

If thats you, you are a false and need to leave the hall

Im going to bed

 

[Krilons Resa]

And fuck off people who think a download is part of a collection. Tha fuck outta here.

This I can agree with.

 

[rms]

i think you're misunderstanding the issue

digital still means digital, that is, data represented by discrete numeric values. but it ALSO means "not physical" somehow. so a cd is digital, unquestionably -- but it is also not digital?

see how that is a problem? it's not that the meaning has shifted, it's that both exist at the same time and in this case are mutually exclusive. you can't take "digital" and suddenly take it to mean "things that are digital, other than this particular digital thing"

it's like if someone decided a particular shade of blue in the spectrum is now called hörkenbörk and while it is by any reasonable definition near indistinguishable from other blues, this particular blue shade is no longer blue because fuck you that's why

I'm sorry, I've never heard anyone in normal conversation talk about digital, like you explained, in the first paragraph.

I work at a bank as a software engineer and don't even think I see digital in that context. In fact, "digital banking" is entirely a bank that exists in/on (see! Another one) the internet. Not that banking is made possible because of a network of applications that support their services etc



Digital now means non physical in this context. Idk see any examples in my life and maybe it only exists in academia ?

 

[rms]

or to get more philosophical about it, here's a scenario:

* you buy and download a set of FLAC files from bandcamp -- this is a "digital download". it's just a bitstream.
* you save these files on a hard drive, a physical, digital, magnetic storage medium, or an SSD, a physical, digital, solid state storage medium. it is still unquestionably a digital download stored on a digital storage medium. still just a bitstream.
* now you burn these files onto a cd. a cd is also a physical, digital, optical storage medium. by any reasonable standard, nothing has changed. still just a bitstream.
* you give this cd to a friend. now he has it in a physical format.
* does the friend have the album "on digital"? if not, where in the chain of events did this change?

Don't even have to make this about Bandcamp. CDs are a physical representation of a digital application. No one says, when they buy a CD, that their digital collection is now growing. As I assume most music is digitally captured and stored on CDs in production (maybe totally wrong, who knows)

 

[einride]

first of all:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio

this is not academic or obscure terminology, analog vs digital in the context of audio has been used in common parlance for at least as long as cd vs vinyl has been a thing, so at least since 1982-ish

Don't even have to make this about Bandcamp. CDs are a physical representation of a digital application. No one says, when they buy a CD, that their digital collection is now growing. As I assume most music is digitally captured and stored on CDs in production (maybe totally wrong, who knows)

naw, no one uses cds or dats or anything like that during production (anymore), it's all on hard drives

but if cd's are a physical representation of a digital application, then how is that different from storing files on a hard drive or sd card or anything? these are also physical things with digital data stored on them.

it's not different. digital audio is digital audio.

i'm not trying to play dumb, i understand the distinction between buying a physical item (a cd with digital audio on it) and downloading the files. but the distinction is CLEARLY not between digital and analog, it is between physical and non-physical.

digital banking is digital because it is performed with computers instead of pen and paper. very, very different. cd players have been computers interpreting digital data since day 0.

 

[rms]

digital banking is digital because it is performed with computers instead of pen and paper. very, very different. cd players have been computers interpreting digital data since day 0.

but digital banking existed before front end applications were made for user friendly things. Mainframe computing has existed since what, the 60s? It's all digital data, maintained in COBOL language to aid in whatever needs they had.

this is not academic or obscure terminology, analog vs digital in the context of audio has been used in common parlance for at least as long as cd vs vinyl has been a thing, so at least since 1982-ish

I'm just saying , what kind of people use this language? I know analog v digital wasn't academic at some point in time...but now? Maybe hipsters with vinyl? I've transitioned from cassettes to CDs to mp3s in my life as well as vhs/DVD/Blu ray/UHD and the only thing that keeps digital in pure meaning was probably Dolby digital surround sound? Maybe Dolby is mad as fuck they gotta rebrand, but honestly that's not information for the average Joe

Film making has a similar thing, the transition from film to digital. But movies, music, games, banking is all branding digital as not-tangible -- so the hill has been left in the dust!

 

[einride]

but digital banking existed before front end applications were made for user friendly things. Mainframe computing has existed since what, the 60s? It's all digital data, maintained in COBOL language to aid in whatever needs they had.

i mean clearly if you are talking about the flow of the money through the global banking system then yes that has been digital for a good long while and no one would argue otherwise. but that's not what the term digital banking is about.

it's about joe q. sixpack paying his bills on his phone instead of going to a bank and filling out forms. this is a very clear example of a formerly "analog" (not the right word) process going digital. digitalization of society is a thing that exists and is valid. however, you cannot digitalize something that is already digital. you can say that THE PROCESS OF ACQUIRING MUSIC has gone digital, in the same sense that accessing a bank has, but you don't "get an album on digital".

I'm just saying , what kind of people use this language? I know analog v digital wasn't academic at some point in time...but now? Maybe hipsters with vinyl? I've transitioned from cassettes to CDs to mp3s in my life as well as vhs/DVD/Blu ray/UHD and the only thing that keeps digital in pure meaning was probably Dolby digital surround sound? Maybe Dolby is mad as fuck they gotta rebrand, but honestly that's not information for the average Joe

Film making has a similar thing, the transition from film to digital. But movies, music, games, banking is all branding digital as not-tangible -- so the hill has been left in the dust!

i mean maybe it's just because i am a nerd but i feel like you would have had to live under a literal rock in the forest to not have heard people talk about analog and digital music formats. vinyl still sells a shitton and analog vs digital is still a HUGE debate wherever music nerds congregate.

film making is different because it is going from film (analog) to file (digital)
banking is different because it is going from paper (analog) to computers (digital)
the video games thing is as dumb as the music thing, which i addressed in the OP alread
music is going from digital (cd) to digital (file) -- it's not a process of digitalization, that shit happened already in the 80's. it is ONLY a process of moving from physical distribution to network distribution. it has literally nothing to do with it being digital.

 

[Krilons Resa]

 

[rms]

it's about joe q. sixpack paying his bills on his phone instead of going to a bank and filling out forms. this is a very clear example of a formerly "analog" (not the right word) process going digital.

cd's are digital audio, therefore "digital" music is not the opposite of physical media. streaming or downloaded music is. it's IN THE NAME. compact disc digital audio; digital since 1982, in the most literal sense of the word. it is as digital as anything on the internet.

idk man, if it's all about how the end user (joe six pack) accesses something (a website for his bill paying), I have no idea how that definition isn't the same as me saying I can access music on a website. maybe i'm misunderstanding, but losing some interest in this anyways

 

[einride]

idk man, if it's all about how the end user (joe six pack) accesses something (a website for his bill paying), I have no idea how that definition isn't the same as me saying I can access music on a website. maybe i'm misunderstanding, but losing some interest in this anyways

well... the difference is that whether joe sixpack buys a cd in a store or downloads it from bandcamp, it's digital by definition in both cases. i think it's pretty clear cut.

but yeah i'm repeating myself and i've already made it clear that i intend to die on this hill so

peace and love brother

 

[Reign in Acai]

And fuck off people who think a download is part of a collection. Tha fuck outta here.

If thats you, you are a false and need to leave the hall

Im going to bed

Right the fuck on. This whole mentality is a coping mechanism for laziness. "Wahhhhhh I cant be arsed to pull a cd out of a case and push play waaaaah, I need immediate access to 10000000000 songs because of my ADHD waaaaahhhhh." I dont listen to individual tracks, so one play = one album. An "artist isnt getting one red cent unless they can be assed to put shit on a physical tangible medium. Ill rip your shit for free elsewise. All you vunts blowbanging the cocks of FLAC n DAC are enabling more piracy. So when Billy Jew cant afford to pay for his studio apartment in the plains of Des Moines, dont come crying to me about supporting artists. Die starving or tour your arse off, not giving up my cambio to this soulless shit. I dont give af if the CACK is ripped in such digital quality the throbbing audiogenic phallis rips with eveyr DAC wrinkle. My ears arent sucking that shit. Dont be whores to convenience ye fooqin heebs.

 

[SonOfNun]

I buy everything on physical media unless it's basically impossible to find or doesn't exist. Even so, I do rip all of my CDs to the computer and spend a lot of time listening to the files. This is partly due to convenience, but also because I don't have a house, let a lone a music room to set-up and display all my media for easy access. I have had access to my record player lately so I've been throwing on some vinyl from time to time.

 

[dorian gray]

This thread is awesome. The picture of Henrik Main walking around with a beer transportation bag is five stars.

 

[Doom]

And fuck off people who think a download is part of a collection. Tha fuck outta here.

I don't think people really do this anymore with streaming. I've never heard anyone say "I've got X many albums in my Spotify collection". I think the only people who talk about collections these days are genuine collectors, which yeah, probably wasn't the case 10 years ago where there was more middle ground, and people used to include CD-Rs or whatever as part of their "collection".

 

[einride]

ive got 7 500 000 albums in my apple music collection

 

[J.]

I don't think people really do this anymore with streaming. I've never heard anyone say "I've got X many albums in my Spotify collection". I think the only people who talk about collections these days are genuine collectors, which yeah, probably wasn't the case 10 years ago where there was more middle ground, and people used to include CD-Rs or whatever as part of their "collection".

The main reason I said that is because discogs has a flac, kack, dac option in its "versions" of an album that you can "Add to Your Collection"