Continuing with CDs?

http://qz.com/103785/hipsters-are-buying-vinyl-records-but-they-arent-listening-to-them/

While vinyl sales have increased at about 30% compounded annually over the last 6 years, turntable sales have remained fairly flat over that time, ranging from 104,000 to 115,000 according to the Consumer Electronics Association. So either the newer turntables purchased are far, far more durable than those in recent memory (they aren’t—high quality electronics companies like Panasonic are discontinuing their units and those that are sold are increasingly cheaper, portable models like this one I bought from Urban Outfitters) or something else is happening with these records.

thousands of people buying OLD turntables. people come in my place and want turntables and i tell them where they can get new ones and they don't want new ones. they want "cool" vintage tables. for, like, a dollar. but anyway, no way to know how many old ones have sold in the last five years. tons though.

> the bonafide copy in my book is the physical copy

fair enough. and i will buy cds if they are comparative in price. but, like i say, sometimes the only alternative is an expensive vinyl copy...

and i realised the other day that it's not just the booklet and sleeve you miss with a digital copy, often you don't even get a catalogue number.

(flac, in my book, is superior to wav in more than just filesize because you can embed metadata to it.)

> Compression or making a file smaller causes loss.

no, you can compress a file losslessly, the same way you can zip a file and unzip it again and not lose any information. flac compression will typically make a file 60% of the original size without loss. mp3s at 128 are about 10% the size of the original wav but are lossy, so some information is lost. the trick is to try and throw away the unimportant data, things you don't normally perceive anyway...

or they inherited one from their parents like i did.
xp

Yeah, I realized that about used turntables as soon as I posted it. My dad's Dual, that he bought in 1977, is still going strong, as is my 20-year-old Rotel.

Yeah seriously it's huge to ignore how many used turntables sell or get inherited.

I got mine, a technics classic style one, off ebay about 5 years ago. £120

It was advertised as a DJ's home unit, which is the classic "One lady owner" of turntables, right? But it was very untrashed indeed.

Tenacity, basically. Took around a year to get one for that price, even then you'd need about £200 to be certain of a decent one.

(flac, in my book, is superior to wav in more than just filesize because you can embed metadata to it.)

was gonna mention this, thanks

thats the stupidest article

Do audio files lose stuff from being copied or transferred to another device (even an mp3 player)? Does compression happen in those instances?

Audio files copied from one device to another are identical, unless there's some kind of freaky error. Loss occurs when a lossless audio file is converted to a compressed format like mp3, which trades reduced audio quality for smaller file sizes. The amount of loss depends on the bit rate chosen for the compression. An mp3 saved with a bit rate of 128 kbit/s will be a smaller file, with greater loss, than an mp3 saved from the same source material at 320 kbit/s.

No new record presses have been manufactured in the last decade or two

I was referring more-so to the playback gear; you know turntables, cartridges, etc All the recent LPs i've bought have looked and sounded beautiful.

you can compress a file losslessly

I stand corrected -- a zipped flac can be returned to it's former greatness.

Do audio files lose stuff from being copied or transferred to another device

Depends on the device; although most take what you give them with no conversion (as long as the device can play the particular format). Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is a program that copies and then compares the copy with the source. Memory can become corrupt and not pass this bit-for-bit data comparison. However, how many times do you think you could copy and paste a file the size of a novel and expect every single letter of every single word to be the exact same as the original? Modern data storage is far more reliable than the old days of making a copy of a copy of a copy of a tape. And what Brad C. said.

While I was typing this other replies have appeared but I'll post it anyway.

When does loss occur in an audio file? I've tried to find succinct explanations but can't.

First of all, both lossy and lossless audio compression are just means to make audio files occupy less space on a storage medium, and have nothing to do with dynamic range compression despite the confusing terms, and the fact that lots of misinformed or outright deceiving articles try to conflate the two.

So, for example, you may have lossless/uncompressed audio files that were subjected to extreme dynamic range compression that sound awful, and lossy audio files sourced from a decently engineered recording that sound great (the preceding assumes that the listener dislikes the loudness war hypercompressed sound, YMMV).

Lossless compression is, like many above have stated, the same principle as a .zip file: you have an original file, you compress to save some disk space and delete the uncompressed original, then unzip it and get the original file back exactly as it was. Lossless audio compression is ideal for archiving. Examples of lossy codecs are FLAC, WavPack, ALAC, etc.

Lossy compression achieves much higher compression ratios (IOW, much less space is needed to store the compressed files) at the cost of irreversible information loss. Unlike lossless, you can not get back the original file from the lossy file.

Why would anyone use lossy? Because by saving more space, they can keep a lot more music on the limited space of their hardware player, and despite the scary sounding "information loss" the reality is that, with reasonable settings, modern lossy codecs produce transparent files. A lossy file is transparent if a listener can not distinguish it from its lossless source. Examples of lossy codecs are MP3, Vorbis, Opus, AAC, Dolby Digital, etc.

So, to really answer your question: assuming everything is working correctly, loss in an audio file only occurs if you deliberately compress it with a lossy codec. An exmaple would be ripping a CD (uncompressed audio data) to .mp3 files.

If you lossily compress a file multiple times, damage accumulates and eventually the result will be an unrecognisable mess when played back (although some lossy codecs detect previous lossy compression and do nothing when input with a lossy file). There is incremental generational loss.

If you losslessly compress an already losslessly compressed files, nothing will happen to the audio data. The file size may change, metadata may not be preserved, but lossless is lossless, the audio data will remain intact.

If you losslessly compress a lossy file, will you NOT gain back any quality nor further degrade it, but you WILL increase its size for no benefit whatsoever.

By just playing back an audio file or copying it to another device no damage is incurred, be it a lossy or lossless file, no matter how many times you do it.

super into cd-r releases rn seems like the absolute coolest way to put out music in 2015

lol here's my own redundant version of those posts

no, digital data doesn't suffer generation loss when you copy it because all you're doing is taking the clear and very finite sequence of 1s/0s that represent the song and reproducing exactly the same sequence somewhere else, like copying a list of numbers from one piece of paper to another. human error (and borges) aside, your second piece of paper will contain exactly the same information as the first.

compression--making data smaller--sometimes degrades and sometimes doesn't, because sometimes what you're doing is taking data out, actually removing numbers from your list (what happens when you rip a cd to mp3) and sometimes you're using clever formulae to express lots of numbers as fewer numbers, from which the original unchanged set of numbers can still be determined by running the formula in reverse (what happens when you rip a cd to flac, or compress a wav file to flac -- actually these are the same thing since when you "rip to flac" you really rip to wav and then compress). it's the difference between cutting bits off of something and folding it in on itself: they both make the thing smaller but only one actually degrades it. (also the former, obviously, can make something a lot smaller than the latter.)

these days i copy flacs or oggs directly to a ipod nano mounted as a regular removable drive and running "rockbox" instead of apple's firmware, so i'm actually not sure what happens when you copy files to a normal ipod using itunes -- i know it changes your filenames and directory structures and the files that appear on the ipod are cryptically named and organized but i don't know if it actually recompresses anything. i assume the files are the same but maybe they are processed somehow first.

i own a lot of cds i've never played -- i buy them, flac them, then look at the liner notes while i listen to the files.

it's the difference between cutting bits off of something and folding it in on itself

excellent analogy!

I've bought like 40 cds in the last month. But I can't seem to find the ikea CD shelves I've been depending on :(

My biggest worry is access to discmans when my present one breaks, which might be relatively soon, heaven forbid! It seems the only ones you can get in stores (and I'm basing this on the last time I looked, which was over 6 years ago) are bottom line ones which sound like shit and eat your batteries in under 10 hours. Ones on amazon or whatever seem to be marked up, whether due to scarcity or because people still think it's 2002 and that they have Ny retIl value at all. Normally I use a CDJ at home, but I've been travelling a lot this last year, and so have depended on my current discman to listen to music during that time.

hey ed.b, when you dj are you mostly using cdjs?

i dunno, it seems really silly not to continue when legal downloads are half the quality at twice the price of buying a CD off Amazon?

the only time i've bought legal downloads is when the explicit version of the album doesn't physically exist, or when i'm paranoid that it does not

like, i could not find an explicit hardcopy of the charli xcx album, and all the flacs i soulsought went "BEEP YOU, SUCKER!" which suggests that nobody else could find one either

(and i wanted to buy it cuz i felt bad for her)

xposts: My dj set up at home (and since I don't ever have the opportunity to dj out, that's it for me) is 2 turntables + 2 CDJs, so it could go any way. I'd say I use vinyl and CDs (which is like, store-bought CDs, i.e. albums and comps, not burnt cds or usb keys) about equally, unless I'm making some fancy, presentable mix, in which case I use audacity on my laptop.

the only time i've bought legal downloads is when the explicit version of the album doesn't physically exist, or when i'm paranoid that it does not

agreed.

CA$H by Nasty Rox Inc is one the rarest ZTT cds ever, yet they re-released it quietly in digital for a few years ago.
they kept it quiet due to fears re the samples.
(and yes, in good old ZTT form, one of the extra tracks is f*cked up with digital glitches ... hence why i am still on the lookout for a decent cd edition of it).

that was when i succumbed.

that and 'happy families' by blancmange as the reissued edition was deleted within hours of edsel pressing it making the hard copy version f*cking stupid prices should you ever see it available.

so, i am not totally adverse to doing the digital only thing, just that, i do like to have something to put on my shelf when i spend a tenner.

ty xp

i dunno, it seems really silly not to continue when legal downloads are half the quality at twice the price of buying a CD off Amazon?

^ This basically. Also suggests another possibility for those with more time than money: buy a cheap CD copy, rip your own soft copies [lossy with different codecs and bitrates, lossless, whatever takes your fancy] and immediately sell the CD.

not only that.
but i genuinely have bought cds/boxsets off amazon with their glorious autorip extra, where it is cheaper to get the cd/free digital version than it is getting the digital only option.
go figure.

!!

all of my cds are in the garage except a select few which I have in the house. I've whittled them down as much as I can, but the remaining 700 are not going to net me more than ten cents a piece, I think, so it's not even worth taking them in to sell (I sold all the ones of any worth, DCC things etc). I do have a nice vinyl collection, maybe about 500 records; it's a fetish for sure for the most part but I always listened to records growing up and there is something comforting about the sound of them, even with the surface noise. But I've recently sworn to not rebuy any music, it's a huge fucking waste of money; if I have something on Cd i'm not going to go out and pick up a remastered vinyl version anymore. I was about to pick up a nice copy of Rumors, of all fucking things, and remembered I have a perfectly good sounding deluxe cd of that in the garage.

The vast majority of my listening is still to digital files streaming off a home server or on a portable though. Sad but that's the way it is.

CDs do not get 'quiet' over time, that is a preposterous assertion. Some do get rot though.

eg : the recent 4 cd edgar froese boxset.

that said, i think i got the boxset/autorip when they had it mispriced.

xp.

CDs do not get 'quiet' over time, that is a preposterous assertion. Some do get rot though.

agree.

the only cds i have had the dreaded rot from are PDO cds : wiseblood/foetus, orbital, and neutron 90000 so far.

http://www.brainwashed.com/rot/

but the option to send them back is dead and buried.

lol at the "hipsters aren't listening to their records" thing.

turntables also last a fuck of a long time. my technics SL-QD35, handed down from my dad, was still going strong until the cat knocked it over a couple months ago. every thrift store in the country has at least one kinda shitty table and maybe some better ones. most people i know listen to vinyl on really awful tinny little plastic things, dunno if it's the cartridge or the shit speakers or what but their records sound like shit. but they love it! listen to 'em all the time! what a bad article.

Thanks for the information guys! Life seems slightly less scary.

I moved my CDs to binders a few years ago and don't regret it at all - okay maybe a teeny tiny bit for nostalgic reasons for certain CDs that it might be nice to still have the complete packaging/artwork/etc. for - but I don't regret it overall. The amount of saved space/mass is incredible. I've had to move apartments a couple of times, and the CDs in their cases occupied multiple heavy boxes. Now they all fit in three very portable binders, that I can stash on a shelf. I have nothing in theory against ripping them all to some lossless digital format, other than the time that would take.

i was heartbroken when i realized i had to get rid of my record player a couple years ago until i remembered that i had been given it used by an elderly couple more than a decade earlier

i then bought a cheapo suitcase one that requires a quarter taped to the needle but hey i kick it old school

I bought a crappy Ariston turntable with my first pay check from writing 17 years ago and it is still going strong. I need a new CD player though, as the drawer on my old one needs to be opened and closed manually.

ed B: I don't know what Ikea shelves you prefer, but I have at least two spare blue/white "Robin" shelves that I would part with for the cost of shipping.

I'd have four if my wife agreed to the binder plan (insert "binders of women" joke here)

but i genuinely have bought cds/boxsets off amazon with their glorious autorip extra, where it is cheaper to get the cd/free digital version than it is getting the digital only option.

this always amuses me. amazon is like, we will pay you to take this CD out of our warehouse.

I did the binder thing a couple weeks ago as well as majorly weeding my collection. The only ones I've kept intact are signed/cherished special edition/PJ Harvey. I thought I would be a lot more melancholy about it than I was but it felt... really, really good.

No new record presses have been manufactured in the last decade or two; the tooling is prohibitively expensive and/or non-existent, and the people who knew how to make them are either dead or retired.

I believe this was true until very recently, but it looks like this plant in the Czech Republic has internally developed and is building new presses to keep up with demand:

http://thequietus.com/articles/17670-gz-vinyl-pressing-plant-record-store-day

I have several hundred movies in binders and i struggle to find films i know i have -- with LPs and other "cased" items it's very efficient to be able to scan the spines.

Phrases i never thought i'd utter; "Do you have the Czech Import?" -- i always thought that Russian turntables required found pieces of talus slag for their cartridge styli.

Alphabetize

For movies I sort by genre, or director - and then by year of release; or, at least many other factors before alphabet. My music hard drive is sorted by genre, alphabet (band name), and then release date, and it's no fun to browse. Maybe "your" generation can mentally parse things this way, but it more revelatory to view my catalog in a larger macro sense.

idgi, you're sorting your stuff by genre and director and release date, isn't that more micro than just using the alphabet?

With somewhere between 10 and 15-thousand individual titles (20+ if you include the hard drive material) I would never find use in simply taking every piece of music i have a placing it in alphabetical order.

The alphabet is a cold, detailed, and finely-tipped brush -- blending those details into more generalized hues is what connects music from different artists -- and it's in a way that the alphabet cannot.

My mp3 player sorts alphabetically and I can never remember what's on it -- instead -- i'll throw in couple of preformed playlists for general listening and then a big chunk of something like "Complete 1950's Stan Getz" in a separate folder as something i need to slowly digest.

Let me use another example -- i have the entire Pink Floyd catalog thru "The Final Cut" -- how do i reconcile the fact that i only need one of those albums on vinyl, 2-3 of them on disc, and the rest is fine for high-bit mp3 -- and how do i sort them? Broad brush strokes; in my main vinyl stack (of maybe 400 LPs), Floyd's "Meddle" sets alongside "Yerself is Steam" and that makes more sense to me than the alphabet ever could.

I understand that to some extent we are all somewhat reliant on the alphabet -- the point i'm trying to make is that there is nothing fun about scanning through such an un-nuanced list -- and that one day that somebody devises a way for me to organically peruse my own catalog that's as enjoyable as the way i organically stack my records. Yes; the main stacks have to be in order; but when i get a fresh pile of CDs or LPs they set out front, unbound from the confines of their inevitable alphabetical slot. They set out front in an organic order that may include such factors as "completely random", "genre", "artist", "preciousness", "rarity", "condition", "level of interest", or whatever. Organic listening of music somewhat requires an organic order of titles, and i would be much more apt to committing to digital stacks if they made them more fun to look through.

Shuffle is the new browse

PINK FLOYD RULES

If the "shuffle" button was smarter and randomly included factors such as "mood" or "bpm" or "key" or whatever other details it can glean, we might be talking.