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I'm kind of a hybrid. For casual listening, and to hear a new (to me) artist online, or if the music isn't available any other way, I'll pick digital music. If I really like what I hear, I'll buy the CD. Unlike .mp3 file music (which is the file format used by the majority of digital music), CD music is usually full fidelity (.mp3 files are compressed files, which causes a loss of fidelity), which sounds better in the car, and can be ripped into digital music in the .wav file format (which is full fidelity) onto my computer drive, for listening convenience, due to me no longer having a decent stereo system in my apartment.
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07-24-2021 04:38 PM
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My main listening speakers are JBL 590 and 4311b. What I did was to get a mini pair of JBL for my computer. I actually get most of my contemporary listening experience from YouTube. Much music on YouTube is high quality and having nice speakers makes it very enjoyable.
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I have too many LPs and CDs as it is, I have no space for any more, so these days I’ll generally buy Mp3 downloads. At my age I honestly can’t hear much difference between them.
Occasionally I’ll get rid of one or two old CDs or LPs I never listen to, to make room for some new CDs.
Funny thing is yesterday I discovered an ancient vinyl LP I don’t even remember getting, I think someone might have given it to me years ago. It’s called ‘Hooray for Stan Getz’ and looks like a bootleg, no details whatsoever on the cover. Anyway I played it and it sounds like old radio broadcasts, the sound is not too bad, and there is some excellent guitar playing on it - sounded like Jimmy Raney to me. For some reason the guitar is better recorded than anything else, as it happens.
Anyway I googled it and found it is indeed the Getz quintet with Raney, in live broadcasts from Birdland in 1952. So I’ll be keeping this one!
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Originally Posted by Marcel_A
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."
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I always liked reading the liner notes
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I usually listen either on Utube or in my car. I just got a 2019 honda, no CD player, most newer cars are not installing them. So I have been downloading my CD's to a flash drive I can use in the car. The sound quality is diminished, that's for sure....
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The sound shouldn't necessarily be degraded, unless it's an inferior sound system in the car. If you rip the CDs to either .flac or .wav, which are lossless formats, the quality is as good as the CD. The playback equipment is another matter, and would degrade the quality just as much if it played the actual CD. TBH, I have no experience at all with Honda sound systems.
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Vinyl. Of course!
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Once upon a time I had 1200 CD's. It was completely unmanageable. It required multiple cabinets,huge amounts of space and really rigid organization just to be able to find anything. I went files and a digital player around 2008 and I've never regretted it. I think it's a much more enjoyable way to listen to music about 99% of the time.
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As long as it is good music, that's all that matters. Look at the primitive recording equipment that Charlie Parker was recorded on-his performances still shine thru!
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Originally Posted by icr
The JBLs are easily good enough to hear the difference between lossless and mp3 versions of the same CDs. But they also reveal the differences between digital files and vinyl when I compare the vinyl and CD releases of the same source files. I’m not saying that either is better (although I usually prefer the vinyl), but they almost always sound different.
As CDs are basically 16 bit 44 kHz wav files, they should sound identical to 16/44 wav or FLAC rips. But rips to mp3 will degrade the sound quality of source files regardless of their resolution. So I rip everything to FLAC regardless of the resolution or quality of the source. Even an old 78 will be audibly degraded if ripped to a lossy file format and heard through a decent system. My JBLs are about $100 each when on sale, which is often. So “decent” does not mean expensive - the differences are not subtle.
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Mostly streaming with the occasional vinyl. Can’t remember the last time I played a CD. Probably on a road trip at least two years ago.
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Digital in the car. At home, I don't really listen to music (my neighbors are bunch of Karens, and living in an HOA condo situation, anyone can complain about anything and levy fines against me with no proof or evidence whatsoever).
But the few times I listen at home, I'll use CDs pretty often (haven't bothered to rip even a small fraction of them). Haven't played vinyl in quite a while, although it's fun.
But just as often, just digital files using a little speaker driven by a PC.
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Originally Posted by jack-e
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There are headphones available for sale, and the neighbors can't hear them even if you turn it up to 12.
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Originally Posted by citizenk74
Plus, digital keys: not just for stage volume, but for also cutting volume.
There's a lot of great material here that's helping me cut loose of cowboy chords and pentatonic scales, so I should be thanking you all for making this a lively informative site.
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Originally Posted by sgosnell
Well, yeah, I guess. You know, because it's one louder.
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Moved 3 years ago and still haven't unpacked the boxes of CDs in the basement...
Say what you will about Spotify for paying musicians and sound quality but I certainly listen to a lot more music than I used to when I relied on CDs. Sonos all over the house makes it so I can play music anywhere any time in a matter of 5 seconds.
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Both, i.e., buying the CD is at times cheaper than the equivalent 16/44 download where I live (Switzerland). Also I've had botched FLAC files a couple of times from my usual digital purveyor (Qobuz) who fortunately also give the option of a WAV download. I like to do the FLAC conversion myself anyway, either from a CD or a lossless download, via the excellent DBPoweramp software.
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Putting aside the question of vinyl vs digital, and also the signal chain question ($200 stereo vs $2400 stereo, etc.), there is a lot of variation just in the realm of CDs.
Take, for example, any famous Blue Note album from the 1950s or 1960s ("Blue Trane", "Moanin'", "Maiden Voyage", etc. etc.). You probably have at least 5 CD masterings to choose from, starting with the work of engineer Ron McMaster in the first 1980s versions, and moving on through various "improved" editions in North America and Japan (RVG edition, XRCD edition, SHM-CD edition, SACD edition, TOCJ edition, etc.).
These masterings differ on such aspects as: compression (dynamic range, which Foobar and other programs can analyze and report on), bass boost / treble attenuation (EQ generally), and level of noise reduction technology used.
Quite often, it's the first, 1980s/early 1990s CD editions of Blue Note that have the highest dynamic range, the clearest high end (listen to the cymbals closely to tell), the most natural sounding bass (if it sounds great at background-level listening, it's probably too bassy when you turn it up to listen closely), and the least amount of noticeable noise reduction (related to EQ, this can make recordings sound muffled and lifeless).
So often, later editions (looking at you, RVG editions and XRCD editions) advertise themselves as using all kinds of state-of-the-art, high-resolution hoodoo voodoo mastering technology, and when you put on good headphones and listen closely, they are worse than their predecessors. Rudy Van Gelder in particular is wildly overrated as a recording and mastering engineer, and RVG editions, about 9 times out of 10, are over-compressed, bassy, and lack clarity and "air" on the top end. There are a few that break this pattern and sound pretty good (Sonny Clark Trio on Blue Note comes to mind).
While this is more of an issue for older albums that have been reissued multiple times, even stuff recorded in 1980s and onward that gets reissued can vary in quality by the mastering. If you are talking about rock and pop music, somewhere around 1997-1999, mastering engineers started reducing the dynamic range on brand new releases, and it only got worse in the 21st century. It's mind boggling that an album like Beck's 2002 "Sea Change" could have sounded quite a bit better on the original release (all the recording studio technology was very mature by that point, had been for years), but it was 2002, and the engineers choose to suck some of the life out of it, as they would not have in, say, 1994. You can tell when you compare it to the 2009 Mobile Fidelity 'Sea Change' release (an example of a later edition that really does deliver on the promise of improvement, as do most on MFSL and a couple of other boutique reissue labels like Analogue Records).
So if you are still a CD shopper, keep this in mind--newer is often not better--and if you use a streaming service, you might have to settle for access to only the latest mastering offered by the record label (which is probably optimized for background listening and won't sound as lively when you crank it up).
I'd probably rather have a high-quality mp3 file of a great sounding master than a 192kpbs/24-bit high resolution file of a mediocre sounding master with a bunch of compression and noise reduction added. (And some of the premium high-res files you can buy do come from mediocre masters.)Last edited by 44lombard; 08-03-2021 at 01:56 PM.
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The largest record collection ever was over a Million albums, and a million and a half singles.
But here’s the problem with you digital fanatics that make us record owners laugh. This gentleman estimates that less than 23 percent of his collection ever made it to digital. So, where are you finding 77 percent of music that existed? Only on vinyl. Case closed.
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Originally Posted by Stringswinger
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Originally Posted by wintermoon
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Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop
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Originally Posted by Stringswinger
Grant Green, What is This Thing
Today, 01:59 PM in Ear Training, Transcribing & Reading