Amazon downloads
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Still having one foot in the music and studio biz, I'm constantly hearing the analog vs digital discussion. I for one don't miss the low frequency rumble, reduced dynamic range, crackle, hiss, pops and the RIAA curve from LPs. While there's some truth to it, much of what people label as missing "warmth" is really just a noise floor. And a great deal of what's wrong with modern CDs is in fact not a failing of digital but rather standard business procedures of massively limiting, i.e. truncating, the waveforms and then expanding them back up in order to achieve greater perceived loudness (see "loudness wars"). Engineers and many producers hate it, but if the guy footing the bill wants his record "loud" then you do it, and kiss all that dynamic range goodbye. Just as in the software biz, the people who are good at doing things are rarely the ones making the decisions.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
It's not 'warmth' ...it's 'soul' :) ...in between that snap, crackle and pop is the heart and soul of the piece, which falls out like water through a sieve through the gaps between the digital sample numbers. The more unbroken analog curve contains the heart and soul :) Update: no, I'm not on drugs :) I agree with what you say though about how they truncate for loudness...as if that itchy biting in your inner ear can be thought of a 'stimulating'...movie theatres are really bad for that.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Just as in the software biz, the people who are good at doing things are rarely the ones making the decisions.
Agreed
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It's not 'warmth' ...it's 'soul' :) ...in between that snap, crackle and pop is the heart and soul of the piece, which falls out like water through a sieve through the gaps between the digital sample numbers. The more unbroken analog curve contains the heart and soul :) Update: no, I'm not on drugs :) I agree with what you say though about how they truncate for loudness...as if that itchy biting in your inner ear can be thought of a 'stimulating'...movie theatres are really bad for that.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Just as in the software biz, the people who are good at doing things are rarely the ones making the decisions.
Agreed
David Lockwood wrote:
Update: no, I'm not on drugs
It's okay. I'm from the 70s. :)
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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Absolutely agree about the not missing the "warmth". Having spent the money to get a decent amp and preamp many years ago hearing every last snap, crackle and pop was never a great contributor to musical enjoyment. I still remember some of the origin story of CDs - no idea if it's true. Phillips wanted to fit an operetta (72 minutes) on to a disk that would fit into a standard vehicle console (12cm maximum for the disk), end result after reverse engineering those dimensions was 22kbps (allowing for error correction and other meta information).
I am convinced that lobotomising users will make little to no difference.
Good story. Kinda like the size of the SRBs on the space shuttle being directly related to the width of a Roman horse's posterior.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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I've quit using iTunes due to the audio quality of the files. They sound decent enough on a computer, but when burning a CD the quality is horrible, with a mid to upper highs boost that makes me dive for the treble control in my car stereo. Today I gave Amazon's download a try. The mp3 sounds decent enough, it'll be interesting to see what the quality of the CD is in the car. If it's not up to snuff, then I'm back to buying CDs and converting them myself. Not that I'm opposed to buying in CD format, but downloads give instant gratification, which is always nice. I'll be glad when the year 3000 comes and we have enough bandwidth to download uncompressed file formats. You have no idea how much the pro audio industry bitches (and rightfully so) about killing themselves to mix the perfect record, only to have it sqaushed down to mp3. But until 3000, downloading .wav files is just this side of impractical.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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David Lockwood wrote:
Update: no, I'm not on drugs
It's okay. I'm from the 70s. :)
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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CD sux...MP3 is even worse. Get a nice analog record player if you want decent sound. Digital is great for a lot of things but music is not one of them.
This used to be a more common argument back in the day, I thought it was dead by now. :) I honestly have never heard an LP sound as good as a CD. The first CD I remember hearing was Steely Dan Pretzel Logic and I was blown away by how much more I could hear going on in it than in the LP version that was previously muddled sounding.
"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." - Walter Bagehot
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This used to be a more common argument back in the day, I thought it was dead by now. :) I honestly have never heard an LP sound as good as a CD. The first CD I remember hearing was Steely Dan Pretzel Logic and I was blown away by how much more I could hear going on in it than in the LP version that was previously muddled sounding.
"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." - Walter Bagehot
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John C wrote:
This used to be a more common argument back in the day, I thought it was dead by now.
I was feeling a bit argumentative, so I thought I'd revive it...the Visual Basic vs C# needed to rest for a while so... :)
David Lockwood wrote:
I was feeling a bit argumentative, so I thought I'd revive it...the Visual Basic vs C# needed to rest for a while so...
:laugh: You don't actually read that garbage do you? I can barely read it as I'm responding to it but something always compells me. Reminds me of my favorite cartoon: http://xkcd.com/386/[^]
"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." - Walter Bagehot
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David Lockwood wrote:
I was feeling a bit argumentative, so I thought I'd revive it...the Visual Basic vs C# needed to rest for a while so...
:laugh: You don't actually read that garbage do you? I can barely read it as I'm responding to it but something always compells me. Reminds me of my favorite cartoon: http://xkcd.com/386/[^]
"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." - Walter Bagehot
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I've quit using iTunes due to the audio quality of the files. They sound decent enough on a computer, but when burning a CD the quality is horrible, with a mid to upper highs boost that makes me dive for the treble control in my car stereo. Today I gave Amazon's download a try. The mp3 sounds decent enough, it'll be interesting to see what the quality of the CD is in the car. If it's not up to snuff, then I'm back to buying CDs and converting them myself. Not that I'm opposed to buying in CD format, but downloads give instant gratification, which is always nice. I'll be glad when the year 3000 comes and we have enough bandwidth to download uncompressed file formats. You have no idea how much the pro audio industry bitches (and rightfully so) about killing themselves to mix the perfect record, only to have it sqaushed down to mp3. But until 3000, downloading .wav files is just this side of impractical.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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I've quit using iTunes due to the audio quality of the files. They sound decent enough on a computer, but when burning a CD the quality is horrible, with a mid to upper highs boost that makes me dive for the treble control in my car stereo. Today I gave Amazon's download a try. The mp3 sounds decent enough, it'll be interesting to see what the quality of the CD is in the car. If it's not up to snuff, then I'm back to buying CDs and converting them myself. Not that I'm opposed to buying in CD format, but downloads give instant gratification, which is always nice. I'll be glad when the year 3000 comes and we have enough bandwidth to download uncompressed file formats. You have no idea how much the pro audio industry bitches (and rightfully so) about killing themselves to mix the perfect record, only to have it sqaushed down to mp3. But until 3000, downloading .wav files is just this side of impractical.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
Actually, once the bandwidth gets good enough, there will be no more media. X| Just on-demand audio/video (for a price). That way they can keep control of who is playing what, when. Cue RIAA Imperial March music.
"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." "There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."
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I've quit using iTunes due to the audio quality of the files. They sound decent enough on a computer, but when burning a CD the quality is horrible, with a mid to upper highs boost that makes me dive for the treble control in my car stereo. Today I gave Amazon's download a try. The mp3 sounds decent enough, it'll be interesting to see what the quality of the CD is in the car. If it's not up to snuff, then I'm back to buying CDs and converting them myself. Not that I'm opposed to buying in CD format, but downloads give instant gratification, which is always nice. I'll be glad when the year 3000 comes and we have enough bandwidth to download uncompressed file formats. You have no idea how much the pro audio industry bitches (and rightfully so) about killing themselves to mix the perfect record, only to have it sqaushed down to mp3. But until 3000, downloading .wav files is just this side of impractical.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
NiN offered one of their recent albums in high end lossless downloadable formats. IIRC the best was 32bit 96khz.
You know, every time I tried to win a bar-bet about being able to count to 1000 using my fingers I always got punched out when I reached 4.... -- El Corazon