New decade, end of the CD?

Meh i enjoy having the cd more than the download because it's like "hey i bought the cd yesterday." Oh cool i downloaded it" not the same effect ya know i would rather have the cd but i would also rather have the vinyl than the cd soooooo..... It's like this-MP3  CD  VINYL- least to greatest but the portability is a factor so in that case mp3 wins and overall more people want that

When there's a thread on audio quality everybody refers to the 320 kbps constant bitrate encoding as the best MP3 has to offer. I've always known that the maximum variable bitrate is the best.

Not that my speakers would be able to make a difference of the two, though

Henry Plainview wrote: idiotPrayer wrote: I believe that physical media will be around a long time from here, even though the popularity will become smaller. There will always still be an audience for physical marketing in music. I mean, it's like owning a piece of art (CD/vinyl) or then just have a picture of the painting on your computer (mp3 and all that sh1te). Plus CDs and vinyls sound much better than mp3 and 99 % of computers today are too retarded to play FLAC and other uncompressed music files. And most people are too retarded to make their computers FLAC compatible. Some people don't feel the need to own art. :P And I have never been able to tell the difference between a high quality MP3 and the CD. Maybe I'm just deaf...

Nah, you ain't deaf Henry (though yer tastes suck bigtime) Higher resolution just means clearer and cleaner crap with a bigger bottom end. (scuse the pun)

24 bit is not dissimilar to satanic messages in metal, if you tell the listener they exist, voila, they can suddenly hear them. What we need are higher fidelity compositions and composers not another 500 media formats.

I have just been listening to my iTunes stuff through headphones on my laptop.  A little Arthur Brown.  A little Captain Beefheart. The laptop is incapable of delivering any of the songs at a reasonable volume. without distortion.  It's okay for background music.  I prefer to feel the music as well as hear it.  I don't get that from the iPod or the computer. 

I gave my last vinyl to a guy in the local pub yesterday. It was  Frank Zappa's "Apostrophe'. I was drunk and it seemed like a good idea at the moment... I don't even remember the guy's name...

I hope he doesn't mind the smell of mold... We had a accident of flooding the cellar a couple of years ago and now everything I stored in the cellar has a nice musky smell of mold...including the Zappa vinyl...I hope the guy don't get sick...

Wait... I have a Wigwam vinyl still left.. I think I keep that.

By the way, a brother of one of Wigwam's members is working in the same place as I am :)
This band, by the way:

http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=657

By the way, you would need a helluva box to put your CD's under the bed, Slartibartfast :)






Edited by Rottenhat - March 06 2010 at 00:23

Rottenhat wrote: I am not a big fan of removing a round piece of plastic from a square piece of plastic, putting the round piece of plastic in a squarish kind of sled, playing and then repeating the process  in the opposite direction. It think my CD's already dead. At least they are already in a plastic box under my bed, and they are not moving. I have ripped them all to my harddisk. Now I just have to move my mouse I little bit and press a mousebutton to play. That is what I call scientific progress!

Now see, you're not dealing with the issues regarding scratches and needle noise or the album covers.

Petrovsk Mizinski wrote: I wonder how many people bothered reading the whole thread before posting. I bring up reasons why the death of the CD would be a good thing because in its place could be a much better sounding format, but half you guys still want CDs for f**k sake Why would you still want CDs when you could have better options that would sound significantly better? 16 bit is something that should have been phased out in physical mediums years ago. A 320Kbps Mp3 of a recording done at 24 bits will wipe the floor with a 16 bit depth CD (which all Red Book standard CDs are anyway).

Understood, but where do I buy the 24 bit 320KBps mp3s of my favourite albums?

The main choice today is usually between a CD or a relatively low bitrate mp3 download.  As long as that remains the case, I'll have the CD.

If I could never hear the difference using 24 bit, I wouldn't record at that format.
Regardless of whether something has a lot of dynamic range or not, 24 bit just sounds better, which is why everyone has moved over to it in the digital realm (among other benefits too.
The biggest issue with 24 bits is people who record things and use bad gain staging and make stuff sound mushy and horrible as a result.
I tend to make sure my mixes stay at about -18dBFS maximum before I 'master' them.
If one is to track at really hot levels and mix too hot, you defeat the purpose and benefits of recording in 24 bit digital in the first place.
Hopefully more people do bear that mind and learn about that when (and if) 24 bit physical mediums become more popular

I wonder how many people bothered reading the whole thread before posting.
I bring up reasons why the death of the CD would be a good thing because in its place could be a much better sounding format, but half you guys still want CDs for f**k sake
Why would you still want CDs when you could have better options that would sound significantly better?
16 bit is something that should have been phased out in physical mediums years ago.

A 320Kbps Mp3 of a recording done at 24 bits will wipe the floor with a 16 bit depth CD (which all Red Book standard CDs are anyway).

We can record at 24 bits now in the digital medium, so what is the point of just squashing it back down to 16 bits to fit the Red Book medium when we shouldn't have to?
Why is there such fear to moving towards a better sounding physical format? You guys don't want better sound?
The sooner CD dies and we can have a 24 bit, 44.1KHz sample rate physical medium standard (which surely could just be in the same size as a CD as to not alienate current CD owners), the better.
24 bits has become the current standard. Practically NO ONE uses 16 bits anymore in the digital realm for recording anymore.

^ you can't tell mp3 and CD apart though - tests have shown that. So why should I spend more money on CDs for the same listening experience? Merely knowing that the files contain more information is not important to me.

So even if mp3 becomes a thing of the past and everyone starts using lossless formats, it's highly unlikely that the players will not support mp3 anymore - and since - if properly encoded - the old mp3 files sound just as good as the new ones, I don't see a problem.