CD Verse download

[richardw]

My oldest boy is 19 years old, a typical young fella for his age, into playing rugby, drinking beer and driving round in cars. Gives me a hard time about playing CD's in the car, 'only old farts listen to CD's dad, so last century blar blar ... Noticed lately that when he plays music from his iphone it sounds so tinny and lacks depth of sound, he uses Spotify Premium which the kids say is the best quality sound.  So on Saturday i said to him download the Gorillaz Humanz album and will put it up to the CD of the same ive got, we played both at the same time and the downloaded music didnt even come close in sound quality , even he admitted the huge difference, the CD player is a Alpine CDA 117E with 500W JVC speakers so its a very good unit.
I realize now there's a whole new generation of young people who will never get to listen to truly high fidelity music thanks to downloading.

[steev]

True that, nor have they any clue of how much vinyl is better than either tape or CD's; my turn-table is late 70's, widely recognized as the zenith of mass-market vinyl-playing quality; I'll segue into produce, in which they'll only know color, not variety. I have no claim to being a serious audiophile, but I do take my food seriously, ever more so as my appetite shrinks; as I eat less, I'm more tuned in on what I'm eating; I could bitch about the coarsening and dumbing-down of so many areas of our patrimony/matrimony, but what's the point? Those who can hear (and taste) are nearing the end of the gang-plank and those too ignorant to hear (or taste) have no experience of what they're losing. Damn, I sound like an old fart! "When I was a youngster, Sonny, we chipped our Iphones out of obsidian; now THAT was google glass, young'un. Harumph. Is there any more of that tasty mush? Would you spoon it into my toothless maw?"

[richardw]

Been ready up about when comparing bitrate, or the amount of data transferred per second, High-Resolution Audio’s bitrate (9,216 kbps) is nearly seven times higher than that of CDs (1,411 kbps) and almost 29 times higher than that of MP3s (320 kbps). And the higher the bitrate, the more accurately the signal is measured. So if High-Resolution Audio is 7 times bitrate i wonder how that compares to vinyl? for me i never liked the snap-crackle- pop of needle on vinyl

[steev]

Ya gotta have vinyl that hasn't been used for frisbees; of course it's scratchy if people have cleaned their boots on it.

[richardw]

I remember the vinyl's didn't take much at all to scratch. Back in those days i would only play the vinyl when recording onto the tape which was listened too. Had a reply back inquiring if i can buy downloaded high-resolution audio here in NZ, no luck so far, damm living downunder, gees you would think gravity would help the down hill flow of data.

[prairiegardens]

Vinyl scratched if it wasn't cared for but tapes stretched, which gives a whole other audio experience There was once a truly hysterical tv episode of a singer hoping to impress a producer coming to see her show at a convalescent veterens hospital in the South Pacific somewhere and her backup music was on tape. Either the machine or the tape had been affected by the heat/humidity and it either dragged or raced beyond the right tempo as she frantically tried to match it and look cool doing it. One of the few tv shows ever to have me in tears of laughter.

It's a quick way to ruin your day when a favourite tape is eaten by the player which also happened fairly frequently. Otoh someone I knew was once in tears because she'd transported some cherished records on the shelf behind the back seat of the car, and even in their jackets they'd all warped beyond redemption from the sun. 

CDs for me all seem to develop hiccups, something they're not supposed to be able to do.
The kids don't even get the real sound  from live shows since they all seem to be shouting and screaming all the way through them, something I don't understand. If I pay $100 or more for a show I want to hear the people I paid to see. Apparently that's an old fashioned concept. 

[richardw]

In what way do your CD's seem to develop hiccups prairiegarden the only problem ive had with then is starching, but are easy polished off using a brown paper bag

[prairiegardens]

Starching? What's that?
I've had a few cds skip just like records do sometimes, consistently miss chunks of content. I was told you can scratch them just like records and that can cause it. It's not a huge deal, most of the time I listen to the radio actually. No fussing about changing anything or figuring out what I want to listen to when it really doesn't matter., it's mostly background. Then there's a whack of cassettes and a few cds for times something specific is wanted. All my records got swiped in a move some years ago, two full apple boxes of them which was very sad and taught me not to trust local movers advertising in the newspaper.So now I don't have a record player anyway.
It was interesting to see record players for sale in a box store recently (well, one anyway) perhaps some outfit is counting on nostalgia to spawn a resurgence. A niche market for sure.

[richardw]

These so called nostalgic purest seem happy to pay big money, i see Technics sell a turntable for $US 4.000

Starching on CD's has little or no effect on some of the 'better' players, i bought a Philips www.dutchaudioclassics.nl/philips_cd850_cdplayer/ 28 years ago to celebrate getting out of a bad marriage, still works well today and has still never skipped,only thing wrong with it the CD table has to be manually operated, apart from that its been a amazing unit even though i paid a small fortune back then.

[prairiegardens]

Most of my tapes and CDs were used hard in vehicles and subjected to a much more mobile and therefore accident prone life than most which may explain their problems.
I'm not doing that now so radio stations work fine, I used to be travelling long distances the radio would only pick up static, often on roads which were still in a state of infancy, difficult for machines.