pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

i'm just really insecure

i'm not a huge metal listener at all and i don't really know grayson currin's writing, but dude is reviewing like 10 metal albums a week there -- is p4k's demographic that interested in metal?

notice all the other metal content on the site, show no mercy, etc. i know they've been covering metal for a while now, 7-8 years, but it seems like a good %30 of the coverage on the site is metal-related?

seems like metal is something it's not really worth covering in a half-assed way, so it's probably a good thing that they're going all in (at least objectively, i don't know what the quality of their coverage is)

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/29-vinyl-records-and-digital-audio/

One thing that was not in question, especially in the early days, is that CDs sounded better than LPs. Hi-fi magazines, especially then, were notorious for their number-crunching. Reviews of gear would include graphs that showed the frequency range of the sounds produced, measurements of things like channel separation (how much the information from the two stereo channels could be kept isolated from each other), signal-to-noise ratio, and dynamic range (the difference between the softest and loudest sounds the source was capable of reproducing). And every possible measurement of the sounds-- which are, after all, vibrations in the air that are quantifiable-- suggested that CDs were superior to LPs. There were still some holdouts, especially among those who had spent thousands of dollars on turntables, but the consensus was that CDs had gone a long way toward "solving" sound.

Yeah, idiot, of course Stereophile thinks a CD sounds better than an LP. Idiot.

There's nothing idiotic about that quote.

vinyl sounds warmer

vinyl sounds way way way better

i enjoyd that vinyl post, mark richardson is righteous, i love that guy's writing, both for pfk and his tumblr. one of my favorite music writers.

Maybe you should write for pitchfork

that quote is an accurate summary of a certain set of views at the dawn of the CD era.

There's nothing idiotic about that quote.

― wk, Thursday, August 1, 2013 11:24 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I am a total hoser

― wk, Thursday, August 1, 2013 11:24 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Thursday, August 1, 2013 4:35 PM (24 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why dont you explain whats so dumb about that quote

I already did check out my explanation below the blue box

Basically if you get a bunch of nerdy number crunchers in a room they will "decide" that CD's sound better than LPs

There's nothing idiotic about that quote.

― wk, Thursday, August 1, 2013 11:24 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Thursday, August 1, 2013 10:35 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I am a human garbage pit.

― wk, Thursday, August 1, 2013 11:24 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Thursday, August 1, 2013 10:35 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― frogbs, Thursday, August 1, 2013 4:42 PM (20 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Here comes that awkward moment when once again it comes to light that the person we're shitting on for their pitchfork article is also a regular ilm poster who will come along in about 10 minutes and engage with us politely about our criticisms.

warmerface

that quote is an accurate summary of a certain set of views at the dawn of the CD era.

― stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover)

There's nothing idiotic about that quote.

― wk, Thursday, August 1, 2013 11:24 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Thursday, August 1, 2013 10:35 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― frogbs, Thursday, August 1, 2013 11:42 AM (1 second ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"criticisms"

Just saying that O'course an Audiophile Nerd O Rama magazine is going to think that kind of thing, but if he had done some legwork and asked around he would have discovered that not everyone thinks CDs sound better

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question487.htm

A digital recording takes snapshots of the analog signal at a certain rate (for CDs it is 44,100 times per second) and measures each snapshot with a certain accuracy (for CDs it is 16-bit, which means the value must be one of 65,536 possible values).

This means that, by definition, a digital recording is not capturing the complete sound wave. It is approximating it with a series of steps. Some sounds that have very quick transitions, such as a drum beat or a trumpet's tone, will be distorted because they change too quickly for the sample rate.

In your home stereo the CD or DVD player takes this digital recording and converts it to an analog signal, which is fed to your amplifier. The amplifier then raises the voltage of the signal to a level powerful enough to drive your speaker.

A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform. This means that no information is lost. The output of a record player is analog. It can be fed directly to your amplifier with no conversion.

This means that the waveforms from a vinyl recording can be much more accurate, and that can be heard in the richness of the sound. But there is a downside, any specks of dust or damage to the disc can be heard as noise or static. During quiet spots in songs this noise may be heard over the music. Digital recordings don't degrade over time, and if the digital recording contains silence, then there will be no noise.

that quote is an accurate summary of a certain set of views at the dawn of the CD era.

― stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover)

waterface I daresay you spectacularly missed the point there

http://www.stereophile.com/content/accuracy-not-answer

Before 1982, when the Compact Disc arrived, I didn't love LPs. Analog was already very old tech, and while every trick in the book had been applied to turntables and LPs, they still wowed & fluttered at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute. Vinyl's deficiencies were legion: warped LPs were more common than truly flat ones; surface noise, clicks, and pops sang along with the tune; LPs rarely had perfectly centered spindle holes; inner-groove distortions popped up at inopportune moments; and each time an LP is played, its sound quality degrades, if only ever so slightly. The LP format? Imperfect sound forever.

So in the days leading up to the introduction of the CD, digital looked like an instant cure for all of analog's ills. It had to sound great. We would finally have a truly quiet format with dead-on speed accuracy, wider dynamic range, razor-flat frequency response, and no wear issues. Digital's implicit promise was of a 100% transparent recording medium that would add to and subtract from the signal nothing at all. Digital had no sound. Music was about to be liberated from analog's gross colorations.

Or that's what I wished for. A few minutes into listening to my first CD (footnote 1), my heart sank. It certainly sounded different—but not dramatically better than an LP. I was confused. Why didn't this hyper-accurate new format produce more realistic sound? Maybe some analog distortions still lurked in the pits of my shiny new CD? Yup, that was it—a lot of early CDs weren't pure, all-digital recordings. Recorded and mixed in analog, they were only mastered digitally: AAD. Whatever, my highly imperfect LPs sounded better. I smelled a rat.

I had to wait a little longer to hear an all-digital—recorded, mixed, mastered—CD. But when that day arrived, my hopes were again dashed. A DDD CD was no better than an AAD or ADD CD. Not only that, pure-digital discs weren't all that much quieter. The low-level noise was still there, but this time it wasn't tape hiss or record-surface noise—it was mike-preamp noise, or the ambience of the recording venue. It was clear then, and it's still true: LPs' musicality trounces CDs'. If anything, my pro-digital bias should have favored CDs, but their sound couldn't hold my attention.

That took two minutes

from the p4k post, which is one of the major points of the article?:

"Few aesthetic experiences are as subjective as sound. When an iPhone has a retina display with more pixels per inch, you notice it. But what we desire in sound is much more of an individual thing. Some people want "accuracy" and some people want a lot of bass; some people only care that it's loud enough. Plus, we're very good at fooling ourselves when it comes to making distinctions between sounds. At this point, you have your computer or your mp3 player/smart phone, you plug headphones into these devices, and you listen to what comes out. The tangle of variables behind a vintage stereo system has largely been boiled down to: What kind of headphones am I using? The small differences between sources of sound reproduction are, for most people, pretty hard to differentiate, and wholly personal. "

science!

for the 200th time, i am promising myself that i will never open this thread again

that quote is an accurate summary of a certain set of views at the dawn of the CD era.

― stefon taylor swiftboat (s.clover)

There's nothing idiotic about that quote.

― wk, Thursday, August 1, 2013 11:24 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Thursday, August 1, 2013 10:35 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― frogbs, Thursday, August 1, 2013 11:42 AM (1 second ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― Z S, Thursday, August 1, 2013 3:44 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you guys realize you're rehashing the analog/digital debate, already one of the most played-out, hackneyed arguments, with waterface, right

is this really how you want to spend your day

Gonna start a dog v. cat poll after lunch

honestly waterface otm - no one ever argued that cds didn't have higher potential frequency range or better signal to noise, the problem he doesn't address is that outside of stuff that performs really insanely poorly on those scales (like idk wax cylinders and shit), nobody uses that as a measure of actual listenability.

sorry, that article has been bugging me ever since people started reposting it

But ok I guess I didn't read the article closely enough sorry brothers and sisters--

WF

he being dude that wrote the article obv

Aw thanks Triple J

so you would have preferred a paragraph like "well, hi-fi magazines were able to graph out exactly why CDs sounded better, but some people just thought they didn't sound right". essentially the argument is "mastering engineers didn't know how to adjust the levels properly for compact disc" which I think is pretty common knowledge. hell I think that Mark has said this numerous times himself.

essentially what you c/p'd up there reads like those articles that champions FLAC over MP3 even though almost nobody can spot the difference between a properly encoded MP3 and a FLAC in a double blind test. I mean yeah, some people disagree, but it goes against the point of the article and it doesn't have the science to back it up, so why mention it? he says straight up that different people look for different things in sound. what's your point?

The tangle of variables behind a vintage stereo system has largely been boiled down to: What kind of headphones am I using?

LOL

Yeah that's even dumber than the shit I posted

i get that some people prefer vinyl - similar to how some people love Beats Audio because it distorts and cranks the bass so much - but yer kinda barking at a cloud here

i fucking hate speakers, man

honestly waterface otm - no one ever argued that cds didn't have higher potential frequency range or better signal to noise, the problem he doesn't address is that outside of stuff that performs really insanely poorly on those scales (like idk wax cylinders and shit), nobody uses that as a measure of actual listenability.

but again isn't this the whole point of the article? that although cds are technically better, lots of people prefer vinyl

I honestly can't figure out the point of the article, it's too fuckin dumb or maybe I'm too fuckin dumb

anyone who questions pitchfork is racist

the problem with the article is that it tries to cut both ways, mixing some sort of hey people like the sound of different things *shrugs* conclusion with statements like "One thing that was not in question, especially in the early days, is that CDs sounded better than LPs." thats some pretty wonky logic there!

iirc the point is basically just "everyone thought cds would be the ultimate playback model because they have the best fidelity technically, but lots of people are going back to vinyl because technical fidelity is not always most important to the listener." which isn't a mind-blowing point or anything, but it's not a pro-CD article.