What would you choose, CD or digital format, for music?

[Le fishe au chocolat]

CD contains high quality of sound, meanwhile stream service has a wide range of selection.

I really love playing a CD, because it sounds the best with speakers.

In other hand, a lot of songs don't have their own physical form. That's why I play them via Spotify. But, somehow these Spotify songs sound weird on speakers despite they sound well with headphone. I'm sure it isn't my speakers' problem because it goes well with FLAC files ripped off from CD.

Because of that, I always choose CD when a new album released.

How about you?

[Hobbit XIII]

Escrito originalmente por Ulfrinn:

Escrito originalmente por Hobbit XIII:

what is wrong with MP3 ?

It's compressed meaning you lose details in the music as a sacrifice to get the file size down.

Escrito originalmente por Hathaway:

Escrito originalmente por Hobbit XIII:

what is wrong with MP3 ?

Its just theoretically not as good, but the codecs been under open development for so long its been refined to the point where its impossible for a normal person to tell a high bitrate mp3 from the newer lossy ones.

That being said its lossy so its better to go flac.

People nerf it all down to bluetooth audio when they listen anyways, these are just archival concerns.

I learn something new every day.

[Ulfrinn]

Escrito originalmente por Hobbit XIII:

Escrito originalmente por Ulfrinn:

It's compressed meaning you lose details in the music as a sacrifice to get the file size down.

Escrito originalmente por Hathaway:

Its just theoretically not as good, but the codecs been under open development for so long its been refined to the point where its impossible for a normal person to tell a high bitrate mp3 from the newer lossy ones.

That being said its lossy so its better to go flac.

People nerf it all down to bluetooth audio when they listen anyways, these are just archival concerns.

I learn something new every day.

Yeah, if you want to learn more, the bits of music that are loss when compress to smaller file sizes tend to be parts of the music that are quieter. So for digital streaming a lot of the modern music you hear on those platforms is mixed with excessive compression built in so that there aren't that many quiet parts to get clipped. This is actually a similar reason to why the loudness wars began in the 90's in the first place to prevent details from being loss over the radio where quieter bits might get lost in static for example.

The more compressed the audio gets, the less difference there is between the peaks and valleys in the soundwaves, and the less instrument separation, depth, soundstage, etc you will get. Resulting in music that sounds very flat. So uncompressed, pre loudness wars stuff will sound much fuller, much richer, and it's that stuff that people often attribute to vinyl sounding better, not the format itself and that's because the way vinyl works it cannot support the louder, compressed mixes without ejecting needles.

Here's a visual representation of what has been happening to our music since the 80's, and why an original CD manufactured in the early 80's sounds way better than that same album pressed in the late 90's does, or any CD, FLAC, or streaming audio derived from a modern mix.

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z3mngupO1S0/SR77AK_mQOI/AAAAAAAAABw/khvDRVHxSAM/s1600/3+Decades+of+Hypercompression.jpg

[Hobbit XIII]

Escrito originalmente por Ulfrinn:

Escrito originalmente por Hobbit XIII:

I learn something new every day.

Yeah, if you want to learn more, the bits of music that are loss when compress to smaller file sizes tend to be parts of the music that are quieter. So for digital streaming a lot of the modern music you hear on those platforms is mixed with excessive compression built in so that there aren't that many quiet parts to get clipped. This is actually a similar reason to why the loudness wars began in the 90's in the first place to prevent details from being loss over the radio where quieter bits might get lost in static for example.

The more compressed the audio gets, the less difference there is between the peaks and valleys in the soundwaves, and the less instrument separation, depth, soundstage, etc you will get. Resulting in music that sounds very flat. So uncompressed, pre loudness wars stuff will sound much fuller, much richer, and it's that stuff that people often attribute to vinyl sounding better, not the format itself and that's because the way vinyl works it cannot support the louder, compressed mixes without ejecting needles.

Here's a visual representation of what has been happening to our music since the 80's, and why an original CD manufactured in the early 80's sounds way better than that same album pressed in the late 90's does, or any CD, FLAC, or streaming audio derived from a modern mix.

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z3mngupO1S0/SR77AK_mQOI/AAAAAAAAABw/khvDRVHxSAM/s1600/3+Decades+of+Hypercompression.jpg

nice an actual jpeg not a fraked up webp pile of goo.

makes a ton of sense, listened to a cd michael jackson back in late 80s or early 90s the sound was amazing and wasnt mine figured it was just the setup of the cd player.

[Ulfrinn]

Escrito originalmente por Hobbit XIII:

Escrito originalmente por Ulfrinn:

Yeah, if you want to learn more, the bits of music that are loss when compress to smaller file sizes tend to be parts of the music that are quieter. So for digital streaming a lot of the modern music you hear on those platforms is mixed with excessive compression built in so that there aren't that many quiet parts to get clipped. This is actually a similar reason to why the loudness wars began in the 90's in the first place to prevent details from being loss over the radio where quieter bits might get lost in static for example.

The more compressed the audio gets, the less difference there is between the peaks and valleys in the soundwaves, and the less instrument separation, depth, soundstage, etc you will get. Resulting in music that sounds very flat. So uncompressed, pre loudness wars stuff will sound much fuller, much richer, and it's that stuff that people often attribute to vinyl sounding better, not the format itself and that's because the way vinyl works it cannot support the louder, compressed mixes without ejecting needles.

Here's a visual representation of what has been happening to our music since the 80's, and why an original CD manufactured in the early 80's sounds way better than that same album pressed in the late 90's does, or any CD, FLAC, or streaming audio derived from a modern mix.

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z3mngupO1S0/SR77AK_mQOI/AAAAAAAAABw/khvDRVHxSAM/s1600/3+Decades+of+Hypercompression.jpg

nice an actual jpeg not a fraked up webp pile of goo.

makes a ton of sense, listened to a cd michael jackson back in late 80s or early 90s the sound was amazing and wasnt mine figured it was just the setup of the cd player.

Vinyl has a "loudness limit" to it, so it forces music that has been mixed for it to be more like the earlier 80s mixes. Which gives people the impression that vinyl sounds better and they attribute that to the analog nature of vinyl. Truth is, it's just a medium that forces a better mix. In my tests of music that began in the 80s, I also included vinyl. The CDs actually sounded as good as vinyl back then.

Our music really has gotten worse.

[Amuro0079]

Escrito originalmente por Jolly Devil:

Digital. Why would I want to carry around CD cases when I can just turn Spotify on my phone and play 1000 different songs on my playlist? I can't even remember the last CD I bought.

Yes, streaming has become so convenient now. My multi-room setup has builtin support for Spotify, Apple music, Amazon Music, anything you can think of, so who still buys music these days when you can stream? Even if you do want to buy, it makes more sense to just buy the tracks digitally instead of whole physical album, which you then can burn on to CDs 1411 kbps uncompressed if having something physical is what you want.

Anyways, I still keep a collections of old CDs that I bought from the 80s and 90s till early 2010s, but I haven't bought any music, digital or physical for at least 4 years now, haven't bought CDs for at least a decade. My new PC case now doesn't have a drive bay so my previous internal 16X Blur-ray burner which I used to burn and rip CDs has become useless. I don't even have a standalone CD player anymore. If I want to listen to my old CDs I would have to use my UHD blu-ray player which means my TV would have to be on as well because I use eARC from the TV to my sound system.