Continuing with CDs?

"Surface noise," warp, sibilance, pops, "warmth" (that just means artifacts the artist didn't intend)--I never understood the "romance' of vinyl.

That John Peel quote in defense of vinyl over CDs -- "Listen, mate, life has surface noise!" -- always bugged me. Yes, life has surface noise...so why add more?

Despite being mostly a vinyl guy I'll admit that the people who praise the "physical ritual" of vinyl vs CDs have always confused me because, unless someone invents some kind of thought-activated music player, every format has some amount of proscribed physical activities that lead up to you hearing the music - taking the CD out of the case, opening the tray, hitting play, etc. They can like the particular physical ritual of vinyl listening, but its not like that one format has a monopoly on physicality.

I feel like people are responding to arguments not being made in this thread

I don't know any collector who likes surface noise, I've never heard anyone irl or on discogs do anything but complain about it

I will say that if you handle your records like a normal human being, have a decent needle and use a brush from time to time, you'll experience very little to no surface noise. it's often only noticeable between songs

as for warmth I think there are quirks to how vinyl rolls off certain frequencies that sounds very appealing and non fatiguing, I read someone say "the sound of vinyl is a series of happy accidents"

but CDs can sound great too, especially modern reissues done with care. streaming can sound great too with a good DAC. reel to reel tape sounds great. Spotify on earbuds doesn't sound great, but it's million more times better sounding than a Walkman and frankly with a decent pair of Bluetooth speakers comparable or better to an average home setup from the 70s or 80s

but I maintain a great vinyl pressing through a good setup is an amazing thing

UMS OTM. I'm format agnostic: whatever format makes most sense for a particular release (though I try to avoid cassettes as much as possible). Vinyl problems way overstated by the naysayers. Ritual applies to CDs over streaming as well.

the only thing that nags me is I wish I could turn however many thousands of CDs I have from the 90s and 00 into vinyl so I could sell them for shitloads of money

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!

i have memories of buying 80s music on CD that quite frankly sounded like shit (for some reason the early metallic albums stand out in my head - particularly kill 'em all). I'd bet the same release on vinyl was killer! I know this is because nobody knew how to master, and I'm sure scik mouthy will show up to talk about loudness wars and how a really flat CD is actually great because just turn up the volume, etc. etc. - still, no thanks!

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.

OTM x2

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.

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

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.

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.

Humans can perceive tones down to around 16 Hz. 20 Hz is just a nice round number to pair with 20 kHz.

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.

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.

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!

yes, from 1988 to 1990 I bought all the new Fall albums on cassette because they had more tracks

Humans can perceive tones down to around 16 Hz. 20 Hz is just a nice round number to pair with 20 kHz.

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).

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?

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.

(There's no "upsell" involved, fwiw... Amazon Music Unlimited includes both HD & UHD)

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...

I just sniped a Dr. John CD, first time I’ve done that in ages. Got it for $1.05, so shipping was triple.

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.

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.

Yeah - there was a little of that in the Continuing with Spotify thread (ppl wondering why Qobuz sounds “better” than others, etc.)

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=89818.0
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=111198.msg917267#msg917267
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=117462.0

thank you for that, yes ilx poster Jon Not Jon has posted extensively about those UMS watermarks, I forget exactly where

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

It's also possible that the Sonos applies its own EQ curve to HD audio, so I cannot account for that possibility.

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

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.

Not sure if this is essential, but I always convert FLACs to WAVs prior to burning them to CD.

Good suggestion thanks. I'll give it a try.

...and then burn it as an audio CD, not a data CD.

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

Yeah, I’ve had problems with burns having glitchy spots when I burn them without converting to WAV first.

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.

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.

Bandcamp's great for allowing multiple downloads. I've replaced .flac downloads with .wav, and pulled .mp3s for the car, off the same purchases.

CD news - based on Discogs trends:

https://blog.discogs.com/en/cd-trend-popularity-sales-2022/

Lol so literally just an ad for Marantz

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!

I imagine the popularity of Discogs has increased in that period... really meaningless without vinyl stats to compare with?

yaaa literally an ad, only stated at the bottom. Laaame

Siamese Dream is definitely an outstanding sounding CD

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...