are CDs dead?

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Fri May 02, 2008 2:00 am

Depends on what genre of music you listen to and what your personal needs are.

I have 2 mp3 players and I do notice the quality hit but it is not as bad as old dubbed cassettes were and I used to happily listen to those on a cassette walkman back in the day. On trains and planes etc where there is a lot of background noise this is a moot point anyway. Also if you're blasting stuff out at a party you don't notice the difference either.

However, I prefer to listen to CDs at home with my expensive headphones instead of the dire little ibuds, in the quiet and chill. And CDs still provide a great medium to rip to most other formats and are getting cheaper all the time.

condra · Post by **condra** » Fri May 02, 2008 2:25 am

yes they are. pretty much.

forge · Post by **forge** » Fri May 02, 2008 3:22 am

did anyone actually read the article?

dcease · Post by **dcease** » Fri May 02, 2008 3:26 am

tl;dr

just the thread title

forge · Post by **forge** » Fri May 02, 2008 3:32 am

dcease wrote:tl;dr

just the thread title

kind of the whole point!

to summarise, he says no, but it was a well written argument that was interesting enough for me to bother posting it.

dcease · Post by **dcease** » Fri May 02, 2008 3:39 am

i read your little article, harrison. i still fucking hate cd's

(as apparently the author does, ass well...)

and you'll bother posting anything...hahahahahhhahahahhhhahah!!!!!!!!!!

forge · Post by **forge** » Fri May 02, 2008 3:53 am

dcease wrote:i read your little article, harrison. i still fucking hate cd's (as apparently the author does, ass well...)

and you'll bother posting anything...hahahahahhhahahahhhhahah!!!!!!!!!!

pot [to kettle]: Black!

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Fri May 02, 2008 4:01 am

I hate low bit rate (sub 192 Kbps) mp3, aac, wma, ogg or whatever. Higher bitrate 256 Kbps or better is not so bad but anything sub 320 is still noticeable, not only because it has to be mastered differently so as to avoid clipping in conversion.

My music has a wide dynamic range which gets compromised by these low bit rate formats.

If you're just releasing some thud thud thud thud 4 on the floor with phat bass and a couple of samples then maybe mp3 works for you quality wise.

I also prefer having a physical product with covers, artwork, liner notes, photos etc as opposed to looking at a .jpeg 'cover'. So I still buy CDs (occasionally) and they are almost as cheap (and sometimes cheaper) than downloading from Itunes or whatever where you get a low bitrate file.

dcease · Post by **dcease** » Fri May 02, 2008 4:01 am

takes a pot____ to know one

Noel · Post by **Noel** » Fri May 02, 2008 7:46 am

Mine have certainly taken a very long rest. I'm thinking of moving them to the attic to be honest.

but mp3 and other lossy formats will also be obsolete before you know it. They'll be remembered as a necessary evil that allowed people to put music on thier computers in the days before TeraByte disk drives and 100 Mb/s internet connections.

A quick look on dabs.com reveals current price for usb2 external drives at around £130 per Tera Byte. That's about 1600 hours of CD quality audio without any compression. (Actualy it can be better than CD because it's error free). In a few years Tera byte drives that fit in your pocket will be commonplace.

Network bandwidth is also continuing to improve, and the maths involved in lossless data compression is now approaching theoretical perfection - and this will find it's way into mainstream protocols before very long.

There is also a strong comercial desire for a faster internet; to deliver high quality, paid for, streaming media services. With the amount of investment that big media and broadcasting companies can put in, the internet will get faster. (it will also get more controlled but that's another matter).

This technology treadmill is not going to stop anytime soon.

With ever increasing bandwidth and ever decreasing storage costs there's really no justification for lossy formats - and that includes CD. Why stick at 16bit 44.1Khz stereo.

In five years time MP3 players and silver disks will have followed cassette tapes, VHS videos and (dare I say it?) vinyl records into the attic of obsolescence.

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Fri May 02, 2008 8:04 am

dcease wrote:or how about a 200 song playlist? i fucking laugh at that shit.

I wonder if this is one reason why the single song or single album has declined in worth?! It makes a whole lot of a difference to your personal appreciation to a piece of art wether you have to care for the quality and cleanth of the media-surface and player, make a choice which selection of physical inconvinient medias you take into your car, which specific album you chose to somewhat inconviniently unpackage from its casing or if you simply push play on your MP3 and skip through a playlist of hundreds of songs.

snakedogman · Post by **snakedogman** » Fri May 02, 2008 10:25 am

Actually I'm buying more cd's at the moment than ever before. Especially with the US dollar/Euro exchange rate being as it is it's pretty cheap to order cd's over the internet. I just love getting those packages in the mail. And although I do tend to only listen to the original cd once before ripping it, I still like to have a tangible thing in my hands to represent my music.
Also I really don't like paying for lossy formats like mp3's and buying downloads as wavs is still way too expensive. It's usually cheaper to just buy the cd.

jasefos · Post by **jasefos** » Fri May 02, 2008 11:11 am

My 0.02 ...

- FUCK itunes and their crappy 128kpbs downloads !!!!
Who the hell can honestly enjoy listening to 128k mp3s? It's worse than AM radio ... I can't believe Apple get away with charging for DRM'd shit quality downloads. When I first bought my iPod Nano, I thought I'd give it a spin and buy a few tunes but the quality is truly bad. I'd rather seek other mechanisms.

- I LOVE buying 320kpbs MP3 direct from Artists.
Recent purchases being Radiohead's In Rainbows and NIN's latest offering (hate to say it but that WAS crap compared to the NIN of old - what happened to the SONGwriting which made him the famous artist he is today - give me Pretty Hate Machine again anyday). In fact I love buying MP3s from artists directly so much I'd prefer to be doing this all the time and I go out of my way to support artists who adopt this distribution model even if I wouldn't normally buy from their genre.

- I LOVe buying 320kpbs MP3 direct from Beatport and similar sites.
So much range, so much to discover and legitimately build a digital music library.

- I don't mind buying CD media from local retailers provided they aren't completely taking the piss with the margin they're hoping to add on the way through.

- I love buying CD media from local "cut price HiFi" retailers (like JB HiFi here in Australia). Sometimes you can find absolute gems in those bargain bins.

- I love exposing myself to the cutting edge music promoted on blogs.
This keeps me in touch with genres I wouldn't have otherwise considered. Music on blogs keeps me fresh and inspired.

This is my perspective only - I am not a DJ but rather a music creator/performer and enthusiastic consumer.

; )

suspended childhood · Post by **suspended childhood** » Fri May 02, 2008 1:03 pm

leedsquietman wrote:I hate low bit rate (sub 192 Kbps) mp3, aac, wma, ogg or whatever. Higher bitrate 256 Kbps or better is not so bad but anything sub 320 is still noticeable, not only because it has to be mastered differently so as to avoid clipping in conversion.

I heard somewhere that all mp3s are mono with the exception being 320... 320 is actually STEREO with 160 on the right and left respectively...

from this...meaning 192 is actually better quality than the 320 aside from being mono vs stereo...

any truth to that?

forge · Post by **forge** » Fri May 02, 2008 1:20 pm

Noel wrote:Mine have certainly taken a very long rest. I'm thinking of moving them to the attic to be honest.

but mp3 and other lossy formats will also be obsolete before you know it. They'll be remembered as a necessary evil that allowed people to put music on thier computers in the days before TeraByte disk drives and 100 Mb/s internet connections.

A quick look on dabs.com reveals current price for usb2 external drives at around £130 per Tera Byte. That's about 1600 hours of CD quality audio without any compression. (Actualy it can be better than CD because it's error free). In a few years Tera byte drives that fit in your pocket will be commonplace.

Network bandwidth is also continuing to improve, and the maths involved in lossless data compression is now approaching theoretical perfection - and this will find it's way into mainstream protocols before very long.

There is also a strong comercial desire for a faster internet; to deliver high quality, paid for, streaming media services. With the amount of investment that big media and broadcasting companies can put in, the internet will get faster. (it will also get more controlled but that's another matter).

This technology treadmill is not going to stop anytime soon.

With ever increasing bandwidth and ever decreasing storage costs there's really no justification for lossy formats - and that includes CD. Why stick at 16bit 44.1Khz stereo.

In five years time MP3 players and silver disks will have followed cassette tapes, VHS videos and (dare I say it?) vinyl records into the attic of obsolescence.

nice post - I agree entirely

CDs may be useful though as a kind of business card or flyer, but then maybe USB keys is the future there, considering a 1GB one is about $10 AUD now, in 5 years will there be any point at all in having a CD? or will they be as useless and irritating as the shit people keep thrusting past my rather big NO JUNK MAIL sign

DVDs are getting just as cheap and store way more

I was thinking just before how the changes we're experiencing now with technology are transitional as we are still moving from the 20th century model of a physical format that the music exists on, into a completely new age where it will be utterly pointless to bother with a physical medium