Riding into the sunset the compact disc music format

I got rid of my CD/DVD/BR's years ago.

Vinyl is making a come back!!!

LT56 said:

Vinyl is making a come back!!!

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Exactly.

I'm still in love with all my vinyls. It sounds real and there was album art, something CDs never quite managed to do well.

And I have 0 intention of getting rid of my CDs or DVDs or even VHS for that matter.

A compressed MP3 file on a phone just doesn't cut it.

I gave away all my vinyl to a buddy.I'll take the sound quality of CD's any day.

Im waiting for 8 track to make a come back

Mr Deeds said:

Im waiting for 8 track to make a come back

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with Quad sound?

My concern is that with the rising popularity of individual downloads and curated sources such as Sirrius channels, we will forsake the concept of albums <--- old fashioned word, I know.

When an artist puts out a record / cd collection of music or songs, there is so much good material that doesn't make the commercial rotation, and frequently, taken as a whole, the album has a story or message that is worth listening to.

I want to retain this concept, and for me, CDs work the best.

I can completely understand CDs working their way to extinction. Really what does it have going for it besides a leaflet for album art? The amount of data contained on it is trivial by today's standards and can be downloaded in seconds, they're also huge for the amount of data on them. I'm not defending mp3s because I don't really like that format. Good for times where sound quality isn't a big issue and you want to pack in 15,000 songs on a small device, but for audio quality a flac or wav of the original CD is best and that can be downloaded.

I'm not on the vinyl band wagon either. I get that people love the nostalgic sound and the huge album art and listening to music ultimately is about the experience and not about distortion numbers. But in a technical sense CD is a superior format. A CD recording of a vinyl album would sound identical to the original album without the worry of wear and tear. The issue is what the sound engineer puts on that CD and then if you have gear good enough to reproduce it - it's not the medium itself. A lot of the new stuff is recorded horribly regardless if you like the genre or the artist, some of the stuff recorded in the 80's is pretty awesome (often better) for sound quality.

Yeah cause you know, BestBuy is like a successful store or something and didn't tank last quarter again
Not just a place where people go to see something in person before they order it off Amazon

Does anybody know if there is any compression done to the original CD quality recording, when converted and down loaded in .wav for example.

Mp3 is OK if you are running, otherwise, sounds like shit.

Vinyl sounds more pleasing because it masks unpleasant artifacts of the recording process, and also naturally occurring unpleasant characteristics copied .

Vinyl sounded superior on all levels, to the original CD recordings.

The vinyl sounding better is more nostalgia than anything else

Depending on how you convert to WAV there may or may not be audio compression (although this is on a much smaller scale than MP3 which was designed to be a small file format and hence loses alot of sound)

Look into lossless recording (FLAC or WMA usually) if you are trying to minimize file size and can not stand how MP3 sounds

TeeJay said:

The vinyl sounding better is more nostalgia than anything else

Depending on how you convert to WAV there may or may not be audio compression (although this is on a much smaller scale than MP3 which was designed to be a small file format and hence loses alot of sound)

Look into lossless recording (FLAC or WMA usually) if you are trying to minimize file size and can not stand how MP3 sounds

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People prefer the vinyl media because as I said,... it masks unpleasant sounds.

A simple way to experience this,... stand a comfortable distance away from a good sound system, listen for awhile, then move quite close to the speakers while reducing the volume to comfortable levels, if you have something better than a computer sound system, and have not lost a lot of higher frequency hearing capability, you will hear a difference.

CD recording evolved from the early technology to today's standards, to reduce the unpleasant artifacts recorded, much like vinyl does naturally.

My point about .wav compression, was to try to establish if there is any quality lost in converting original CD sources through compression.

There is no such thing as lossless recording, if any compression routines are involved, there will be a loss of quality, although I agree that MP3 is an extreme.

With most of the media out there today though, it really doesn't matter what the quality of the recording is.

james t kirk said:

Exactly.

I'm still in love with all my vinyls. It sounds real and there was album art, something CDs never quite managed to do well.

And I have 0 intention of getting rid of my CDs or DVDs or even VHS for that matter.

A compressed MP3 file on a phone just doesn't cut it.

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Feel the same .. minus the VHS, those I gave to several old age homes since I had them on DVD already and some just didn't watch. I have way to many and still buy used to add to my large collection. I've made digital copies of the cd for portability but that's it. My vinyl collection is also large but I have no plans to downsize.

VBB

FAST said:

With most of the media out there today though, it really doesn't matter what the quality of the recording is.

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You might be amazed how many people fail routine hearing tests
It's the fear of getting older claiming that you vision, hearing, and IQ are all higher than the average people

TeeJay said:

You might be amazed how many people fail routine hearing tests
It's the fear of getting older claiming that you vision, hearing, and IQ are all higher than the average people

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Not sure what your point is,... I have not claimed anything regarding mine or anybody elses hearing, vision, or IQ .

Although I have read the Millennial Generation are losing their hearing well before their time, so that would explain them not knowing what a good recording was, if it hit them on their ear drums.

And also explains the degrading of audio recording standards.

FAST said:

My point about .wav compression, was to try to establish if there is any quality lost in converting original CD sources through compression.

There is no such thing as lossless recording, if any compression routines are involved, there will be a loss of quality, although I agree that MP3 is an extreme.

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Flac and wav are just file formats, they don't have any compression associated with them like mp3. You can compress audio and then save it as a flac or wav file, but you can also rip off a CD and store it in one of these two formats and be lossless. This is what I did with my entire music collection, all ripped into lossless flac. The audio is bit for bit just as good as the original. It takes a lot of space as a typical 5 minute song is over 30MB but hard drives are cheap.

brewwguy said:

Flac and wav are just file formats, they don't have any compression associated with them like mp3. You can compress audio and then save it as a flac or wav file, but you can also rip off a CD and store it in one of these two formats and be lossless. This is what I did with my entire music collection, all ripped into lossless flac. The audio is bit for bit just as good as the original. It takes a lot of space as a typical 5 minute song is over 30MB but hard drives are cheap.

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So Flac and wav are just containers, which would mean no compression, would then not reduce file size.

And your point about the size of uncompressed audio files is/was my concern on giving up on CDs.

I have ripped a few of my favourites for easy access, but to move all of my CDs to a hard drive, and then not easily play them back on my system, is not for me.

Thanks for your input brew.

The space actually isn't that bad. I had a look at it when I got home and I have ~900 CDs stored for a total of about 200GB. For me this is way more convenient, I have a HTPC with a high end soundcard to handle the DAC to feed to the amps. I also use a remote and a front end (media portal) with a ten foot interface to control it. So when I sit down to listen to music it is all ready at my finger tips with no compromise on sound quality. For me this works flawlessly, but if you're trying to stick all your music on your phone this clearly isn't the way to go. One perk with it all on a drive in original quality I can do a batch conversion to mp3 if I want some of it on my phone.

A little O/T but I also did the same with my entire BD and DVD collection (again all lossless) which is accessible through the same front end.

FAST said:

Does anybody know if there is any compression done to the original CD quality recording, when converted and down loaded in .wav for example.

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There is no data compression on cd's, they are recorded at 16 bit, 44khz. So if you rip them to .wav files that are 16 bit, 44khz .wav files there will be no loss.