CD, LP or MP3?

Definitely CD. I hate MP3s, even though they made a lot of music more accessible, music that I would have never heard of any other way. Besides the poor quality of the songs, I hate the fact that albums are losing importance and they're making the music focus just on single songs. I love listening to albums as a whole, not just as a bunch of songs put together, I guess you know what I mean being prog fans. But it seems to me that concept is being lost, people just download their favourite hits from some bands and the listen to them on random order.

With the amount of dosh I've spent on my sound system, I certainly don't wanna be listening to compressed files like MP3! Though I do have a 'Creative Zen' MP3 player, which is more than adiquate for walking around the shops.

Vinyl is a nicer sound to listen to as digital recording can't register the whole sound wave due to it's shape. But CD's can sound great. As long as the original recording has been mastered properly. Badly mastered recordings are all but unlistenable.

I still have most of my vinyl and play a lot of it regularly. The old days of buying an LP and going through the sleeve notes whilst giving it's first listen are much missed.

cds i guess

Well, Mystic Fred is a big supporter of Vinyl. I am not.

You can argue all day long on which sounds better, but it comes down to opinion. Vinyl doesn't sound 'better' than CD, nor does CD sound 'better' than Vinyl. They just sound 'different' from one another. They have their own distinct sound qualities.

And before I get blasted as not caring about quality, or being of an ignorant digital generation that doesn't understand this that and the other thing, allow me to say this: I own Vinyls. I listen to them. They are horrible to maintain. You have to have a good cartridge  and needle, a good analogue turntable for manual adjustment, an area that won't be affected by any vibrations, special equipment for cleaning the discs to eliminate the crackles and pops, etc. Without all of those elements, Vinyls aren't going to live up to their potential sound-wise

For CDs, all you need is a player.

The plastic on CDs prevent the foil inside from degrating and corroding like Vinyl advocates claim they will, and, also contrary to pro-Vinyl, anti-CD buyers, Compact Discs are capable of capturing the same sound quality as Vinyls. How do I know this? Because I made a recording of one of my Beatles Vinyls (Abby Road), and put it onto Disc. I then played my CD recording up against the live Vinyl, and couldn't tell a bit of difference. So it isn't that the technology behins CDs is inferior or incapable of capturing the same sound quality; it's simply the fact that the physical Vinyl itself adds a certain extra quality to the music which many people prefer. As long as you can record a Vinyl onto a Compact Disc, that sound is retained in the digital recording just fine.

p0mt3 wrote:  . . . oh, and . . . .MP3s are sh*t.

All depends on the rate that they are recorded in, my friend.  Some others will be along later to jump all over you for saying that.


Edited by Slartibartfast - September 10 2009 at 21:45

Definitely CDs. LPs are too big and can easily being ruined, get dirty or scratched, CDs instead don't damage so easily, or the damage usually doesn't make it sound bad. And well, mp3s are great for discovering new bands, listened to the albums before you decide to buy them, getting albums I would never get on cd or listen on the mp3s player wich is of course easier to carry on your pocket everywhere compared to a discman and a lot of cds, but it's just a compressed audio format, and there's no album artwork, it would never replace cds for me.

Edit:
By the way, I totally forgot I already posted a few posts before ;)

SgtPepper67 wrote: Definitely CD. I hate MP3s, even though they made a lot of music more accessible, music that I would have never heard of any other way. Besides the poor quality of the songs, I hate the fact that albums are losing importance and they're making the music focus just on single songs. I love listening to albums as a whole, not just as a bunch of songs put together, I guess you know what I mean being prog fans. But it seems to me that concept is being lost, people just download their favourite hits from some bands and the listen to them on random order.

Edited by SgtPepper67 - September 10 2009 at 21:19

I'd just like to say that I'm perfectly content to take along copies of my cds on my little Zune just about anywhere and leave my hard copies safe (hopefully) at home.  Is it lossless? No.  Is the artwork there besides the cover, not likely at this time or anytime soon and I'd go blind trying to watch it all on a small screen anyway.  Can I take my whole music collection (for the most part) anywhere and have access in a way that was never possible with cassettes, 8-tracks, etc.?  Hell yes!  Are typical MP3's (actually to be technically correct: digital music files) not of the same level of quality as some other media, particularly in the environments in which they are typically enjoyed?  Of course. 

But imagine if you will going to a gym.  They play music you don't care for on their system.  Even if you can't block out that crap totally at least you can ignore it much more easier.  That is the beauty of portable players.  Eh, probably my opening chapter in the now defunct book, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Zune, Uhm, Digital Music Player.


Edited by Slartibartfast - September 10 2009 at 21:44

WalterDigsTunes wrote: p0mt3 wrote: Slartibartfast wrote: p0mt3 wrote:  . . . oh, and . . . .MP3s are sh*t. All depends on the rate that they are recorded in, my friend.  Some others will be along later to jump all over you for saying that. I could care less that there are different levels of sh*ttiness. They're still sh*t. The majority of the music I have on my Zune are lossless audio files. So I take it there's about 20 albums in your multi-gigabyte device, then?

It's an 80gb Model.

I have 1347 Songs on there so far, and I've only used 20gb. And yes, they are all lossless.

Take THAT, smarty!


Edited by p0mt3 - September 10 2009 at 23:01

MP3 for me. 

^ or a Winamp library with all your albums readily available.