for me the "ritual" is *about* focusing on the music - i'm consciously putting stuff on, i'm consciously keeping a loose queue of shit i wanna listen to soon. i'm more aware that i'm listening to something and i really enjoy that. to be clear, it's streaming and before that MP3s that (for me) really failed at this. it's like vinyl >> CDs >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the other options. i also overwhelmingly listen to older stuff, so "as the artist intended" has to include things like "this song is meant to close out side A with a full stop afterwards."with longer sets, this can break down but also be helpful. all the side changes CAN be a pain, so double and triple LP releases have to really be all-killer no-filler or i will ultimately let them go from my collection. i've recently purged some 90s/00s hip-hop releases which are great albums but (between the wide bassy grooves and a preponderance of skits) have like 3 songs per side. that's a little too much ritual for me, and single CDs would legit make a lot more sense here. OTOH with, like, a 3-disc box set of some 60s singles artist, the side changes do keep me paying attention, and encourage me to listen in more manageable batches. one huge disc or playlist and i might never actually get to the last third! this is just all about personal styles of listening and how we relate to stuff; i'm not trying to convert anybody, but to make it clear that vinyl enthusiasm does include things beyond material fetishism, nostalgia, and anecdotal accounts of subjective aural phenomena.
― The creator of Ultra Games, for Nintendo (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, 23 February 2022 17:22 (two years ago) link
OTM x2
― bulb after bulb, Wednesday, 23 February 2022 17:24 (two years ago) link
xp That's a really good rule of thumb. Ofc a lot of 12" singles from after 1990 sound great but one could say that's how those particular mixes were supposed to be consumed.
― Josefa, Wednesday, 23 February 2022 17:26 (two years ago) link
in many ways, we are in a golden age of hifi. the market forced a lot of higher end companies to make entry level stuff, components got cheaper, streaming as a convenient/portable format compared to cassette...not even a contest. there are great turntable options around 250-300 that are fantastic, quality DACs are super affordable, new CDs that are done right sound better than ever, hi-rez streaming is mainstream... it's never been easier or more affordable
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 23 February 2022 17:39 (two years ago) link
for me the "ritual" is *about* focusing on the music - i'm consciously putting stuff on, i'm consciously keeping a loose queue of shit i wanna listen to soon. i'm more aware that i'm listening to something and i really enjoy that.to be clear, it's streaming and before that MP3s that (for me) really failed at this. it's like vinyl >> CDs >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the other options.
to be clear, it's streaming and before that MP3s that (for me) really failed at this. it's like vinyl >> CDs >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the other options.
yeah this is very otm for how i relate to this stuff. a big part of my turn back to CDs in the last 5 years was coming to grips with realizing how streaming & mp3 were not as convenient as I had convinced myself they were.
― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Wednesday, 23 February 2022 17:45 (two years ago) link
Humans can perceive tones down to around 16 Hz. 20 Hz is just a nice round number to pair with 20 kHz.
― Sassy Boutonnière (ledriver), Thursday, 24 February 2022 17:40 (two years ago) link
Generally I don't give a shit what format music is in. Digital is most convenient, but I'll take CDs, vinyl, cassette, 8-track, open reel, and shellac. If there were many wire recordings, I'd get a player for that too.
― Sassy Boutonnière (ledriver), Thursday, 24 February 2022 17:45 (two years ago) link
Generally I don't give a shit what format music is in.
Exactly. Also, formats that are cheap/affordable and available, which is why i've felt soured on buying vinyl recently and been back to buying used CDs and, to my surprise, even new cassettes (Angel Bat Dawid and Poison Ruïn). I'm old enough to have been buying new records at KMart or wherever as a child, and then also bought tapes and then CDs as I had players for them. But in the late 80s/early 90s when I found thrift stores and used record stores (as opposed to the mall's Sam Goody), vinyl was cheap and plentiful. And digging for it was exciting, in being able to find known things and spend little money to take a chance on unknown things. The last few years, it has felt rare to dig and find a deal. More often than not I'm thinking "do I want to drop $25/$40 on some used record anymore?" And I've missed so many new records by not jumping on an order the day it's announced. Or it's a shitty pressing. My teenager is now into thrift stores, and while there has been zilch in terms of anything worth buying on vinyl I've been able to find great CDs for $1. I'm continuing with everything I guess. I'll still buy new records as I can (direct or through bandcamp) to support the artists though.
― city worker, Thursday, 24 February 2022 18:37 (two years ago) link
I think it's neat to enjoy music in the format in which it was most widely consumed at the time. highway 61 revisited sounds good on CD but sounds great on vinyl! says someone who was born in the 80s. that's sort of been my philosophy - buy music from 80s and before on vinyl if you can find it, 90s onward on CD. I grew up with Substance on CD but the BLT 12" sounds absolutely fantastic on my system!
― eatandoph (Neue Jesse Schule), Thursday, 24 February 2022 18:52 (two years ago) link
yes, from 1988 to 1990 I bought all the new Fall albums on cassette because they had more tracks
― bad milk blood robot (sleeve), Thursday, 24 February 2022 19:04 (two years ago) link
This may be more a question for "Not continuing with CDs" – but why is it that when streaming from Amazon Music through my new Sonos speaker, "Ultra HD" (24-bit) FLAC sounds so much better than "HD" (16-bit)? In other words, 16-bit may be "CD-quality," but those tracks definitely do not sound as good as CDs to my ears (granted, I have not hooked up an actual CD player to the speaker, to see how CDs sound when played through it).
― Not Dork Yet (alternate toke) (morrisp), Thursday, 24 February 2022 19:59 (two years ago) link
likely intentional to upsell you the "UHD" versions but who knows, could be any number of variables:
are they even derived from the same master? if so, are they volume matched?
can you download the raw "UHD" and "HD" tracks to your PC to properly ABX them?if you can, can you ABX them after volume-matching and up-converting the 16-bit one to 24-bit?it you still can, what about only the "UHD" track against a 24 -> 16 -> 24-bit version of itself?
― chihuahuau, Thursday, 24 February 2022 21:34 (two years ago) link
Well, these are different albums altogether... newer releases tend to be UHD, maybe they are taken from a more "direct" source/master than legacy (HD) albums? They all just sound noticeably better, brighter, clearer, etc.
― Not Dork Yet (alternate toke) (morrisp), Thursday, 24 February 2022 21:40 (two years ago) link
(There's no "upsell" involved, fwiw... Amazon Music Unlimited includes both HD & UHD)
― Not Dork Yet (alternate toke) (morrisp), Thursday, 24 February 2022 21:42 (two years ago) link
Cassettes were the best-selling format in the '80s and in some ways were a privileged one (they had extended versions and extra tracks before CDs did).
― eatandoph (Neue Jesse Schule), Thursday, February 24, 2022 1:52 PM (four hours ago)
fair enough! maybe I'd say instead, the most widely consumed format for audiophilic consumption :) since I'm guessing a large part of the popularity of cassettes was driven by introduction of the walkman / it being the first truly portable format...
― 龜, Thursday, 24 February 2022 23:08 (two years ago) link
I just sniped a Dr. John CD, first time I’ve done that in ages. Got it for $1.05, so shipping was triple.
― Three Rings for the Elven Bishop (Dan Peterson), Friday, 25 February 2022 05:35 (two years ago) link
xxxp to myself – now listening to a brand-new (just released) r&b track that's only "HD" quality, and it sounds similarly not-great to the older HD ones. So there may be something more to it than newness/source.
― Not Dork Yet (alternate toke) (morrisp), Friday, 25 February 2022 21:40 (two years ago) link
without full disclosure of the technical specs used for the streaming audio, it's all just speculation. maybe they rip the originals at a higher bitrate for the UHD, who knows.
that being said, a separate thread for streaming audio quality actually seems like a good idea? I would follow even tho my interest is minimal.
― bad milk blood robot (sleeve), Friday, 25 February 2022 21:58 (two years ago) link
Yeah - there was a little of that in the Continuing with Spotify thread (ppl wondering why Qobuz sounds “better” than others, etc.)
― Not Dork Yet (alternate toke) (morrisp), Friday, 25 February 2022 22:33 (two years ago) link
Qobuz is one of the streaming services that used to (probably still does?) sell watermarked Universal tracks
rest assured, the watermarks are audible (trivially ABX-able) because they're placed well within the most sensitive frequencies to prevent removal without totally ruining the music, of course
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=89818.0https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=111198.msg917267#msg917267https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=117462.0
― chihuahuau, Friday, 25 February 2022 23:02 (two years ago) link
thank you for that, yes ilx poster Jon Not Jon has posted extensively about those UMS watermarks, I forget exactly where
― bad milk blood robot (sleeve), Friday, 25 February 2022 23:11 (two years ago) link
Yeah I’m still pissed about that but haven’t posted about it for awhile. As far as I could determine, there was nowhere in the digital marketplace one could buy non-watermarked UMG files - I even bought lossless files from UMGs own web store which were audibly affected. Also I have not checked in a couple of years but there never seemed to be any re-uploading/replacement of the defaced UMG material after they stopped the practice in (?2014?)… new things released to digital no longer had the issue but the vast body of UMG stuff already released just stayed that way. At least as of a couple years ago.
― covidsbundlertanze op. 6 (Jon not Jon), Saturday, 26 February 2022 21:58 (two years ago) link
Different mastering and possibly mixing techniques. If the audience is expected to play the music on better equipment, then they can master it with a wider frequency profile, use more or less compression, and so on. People who consume "HD" audio can be expected to be upscale consumers, not playing the music on shitty earbuds. This means that they don't have to shovel important content into the earbud-friendly frequency range for a 16/44.1 master, and it's gonna sound better on a good stereo.
― Sassy Boutonnière (ledriver), Sunday, 27 February 2022 20:01 (two years ago) link
Such techniques apply just as much to 16/44.1 audio as they do to 24/96 or whatever, so it's not an intrinsic quality of the format.
― Sassy Boutonnière (ledriver), Sunday, 27 February 2022 20:03 (two years ago) link
If you want a valid comparison, use an audio editor to convert HD audio to CD-quality digital audio and compare. If you have a friend who can administer an ABX test, do that too.
― Sassy Boutonnière (ledriver), Sunday, 27 February 2022 20:06 (two years ago) link
It's also possible that the Sonos applies its own EQ curve to HD audio, so I cannot account for that possibility.
― Sassy Boutonnière (ledriver), Sunday, 27 February 2022 20:09 (two years ago) link
Finally reconnected my (secondhand) higher end DAC into the hifi signal chain, listening to some of Autechre’s NTS Sessions and it sounds so good I am just grinning to myself like an idiot
― assert (matttkkkk), Sunday, 13 March 2022 05:46 (two years ago) link
Not sure if this is the best place to post this but I'm having trouble burning FLACs downloaded from Bandcamp to CD (using K3b on Linux). The burn process completes fine and the CD will play but the tracks are silent!
I've just made a comp with a mix of Bandcamp files plus files procured elsewehere and the latter play fine. Very weird. If anyone has any ideas, appreciated. As far as I know they're not high res files.
― millmeister, Tuesday, 22 March 2022 14:34 (two years ago) link
Not sure if this is essential, but I always convert FLACs to WAVs prior to burning them to CD.
― joni mitchell jarre (anagram), Tuesday, 22 March 2022 14:40 (two years ago) link
Good suggestion thanks. I'll give it a try.
― millmeister, Tuesday, 22 March 2022 14:45 (two years ago) link
...and then burn it as an audio CD, not a data CD.
― joni mitchell jarre (anagram), Tuesday, 22 March 2022 14:45 (two years ago) link
Would imagine the burning software does that routinely anyway but there could be something a little "off" about the FLAC headers which means they don't get unpacked properly.
Here's an old forum thread about the same problem:https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=225063
Unpacking to WAV first might be the way to go, as annoying as that extra step is.
xxp
― Michael Jones, Tuesday, 22 March 2022 14:51 (two years ago) link
Yeah, I’ve had problems with burns having glitchy spots when I burn them without converting to WAV first.
― spastic heritage, Tuesday, 22 March 2022 16:18 (two years ago) link
I always convert first, otherwise it's just putting more work on the computer during the burning process (converting on the fly) that increases the likelihood of burning any errors.
― birdistheword, Tuesday, 22 March 2022 17:32 (two years ago) link
Thanks all, that worked. Never occurred to me to convert a lossless file. Convoluted but worth it.Michael J - thanks for the link. Glad to hear I'm not the only one.
― millmeister, Tuesday, 22 March 2022 17:44 (two years ago) link
Bandcamp's great for allowing multiple downloads. I've replaced .flac downloads with .wav, and pulled .mp3s for the car, off the same purchases.
― the body of a spider... (scampering alpaca), Tuesday, 22 March 2022 18:52 (two years ago) link
CD news - based on Discogs trends:
https://blog.discogs.com/en/cd-trend-popularity-sales-2022/
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 19 July 2022 10:20 (two years ago) link
Lol so literally just an ad for Marantz
― zacata, Tuesday, 19 July 2022 13:43 (two years ago) link
Listening to Siamese Dream in the car today, I realized that I’ve been throwing this particular CD around for 29 years – in and out of dorm rooms, apartments, boxes, bags, CD racks, hot cars – and I can still just slap it in a player, it sounds as good as ever, it’s as “compact” as ever, perfect-y sound forever (or long enough). Good format!
― “Lawman,” Slick (Grunt) (morrisp), Wednesday, 20 July 2022 22:30 (two years ago) link
I imagine the popularity of Discogs has increased in that period... really meaningless without vinyl stats to compare with?
― maf you one two (maffew12), Wednesday, 20 July 2022 22:49 (two years ago) link
yaaa literally an ad, only stated at the bottom. Laaame
― maf you one two (maffew12), Wednesday, 20 July 2022 22:51 (two years ago) link
Siamese Dream is definitely an outstanding sounding CD
― brimstead, Wednesday, 20 July 2022 23:21 (two years ago) link
It sounds so good! I was wondering if I should check out the 2011 remaster at some point, but it's hard to imagine it sounding better enough to be worth it...
― “Lawman,” Slick (Grunt) (morrisp), Wednesday, 20 July 2022 23:32 (two years ago) link
Nah, I'd stick with the original CD. The 2011 remaster squeezes the dynamics a bit. Not terribly so, but it doesn't improve things either.
― birdistheword, Thursday, 21 July 2022 00:11 (two years ago) link
can anyone recommend a place to buy digital major label catalogue albums that isn't amazon.com?
― ミ💙🅟 🅛 🅤 🅡 🅜 🅑💙彡 (Austin), Sunday, 7 August 2022 16:29 (two years ago) link
so i wanted to hear shadows and light and it's basically the same price for a used cd+postage as it is on itunes/amazon/etc. i'm not complaining, it's just ... big sigh, i don't want the cd but i want to be able to hear the album as i please and not give my money to itunes/amazon.
― ミ💙🅟 🅛 🅤 🅡 🅜 🅑💙彡 (Austin), Sunday, 7 August 2022 16:43 (two years ago) link
Qobuz lets you buy downloads too. You can check first if an albumIs for sale there.
― Are U down with the BVM (Boring, Maryland), Sunday, 7 August 2022 16:50 (two years ago) link
Poster ufo steered me toward a place called 7digital in another thread - in the context of major-label releases that aren’t on CD (“7digital is where you want to go to buy mp3s from artists that aren't on bandcamp”).
― Disarm u with a SMiLE (morrisp), Sunday, 7 August 2022 17:13 (two years ago) link
i think the best way to do it is by going to joni's site. you can click on the amazon link from there in order to make here a little commission in addition to whatever else.
better still, you could get the files on slsk and put the money you save towards a t-shirt on her web store
― budo jeru, Sunday, 7 August 2022 17:16 (two years ago) link
make her*
― budo jeru, Sunday, 7 August 2022 17:17 (two years ago) link