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CD's. Only for the brain dead? Or dead-eared?


unclemeat

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  • 2 weeks later...

well put. lps in 2009 (esp old ones in your collection) do require more work to enjoy.

interestingly cd's require more effort than down loaded or other high tech programing.

each with differing degrees of auditory satisfaction for the listener :)

paul

.......... by the way ! who are those people anyway!!!!! :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Too bad the "what are you listening to" thread isn't located down here...I never get down here in this section...

Compression in excess is the death of music. I have a Daughtry CD that is excellant music from a performance standpoint but it gives me a headache to listen to it. The duty cycle is approaching 50%. Well that would be square tone, but you get my point.

As a rule Jazz and Classical music is usually not as compressed. Rock is almost always compressed. Most people don't get it because they have had crappy speakers all their life and wouldn't know what a snare chopping hard would really sound like. Thank God for compression drivers.

What really surprises me is that more people don't complain about Apple selling MP3/AAC files at such low sample rates. It is too bad that super audio formats haven't taken off. How am I going to purchase good music 10 years from now at this rate? (no pun intended) I refuse to not own a hard copy disc of any music I buy. DVD audio could be stellar if the industry wasn't so self serving. Herbie Hancock is a big multichannel advocate. He spoke at the opening of an AES convention in L.A. in 2000 when multichannel was just coming out. Evidently it fell on literally deaf ears since the studios didn't take him seriously. I would love to see more concert DVD's focus on innovative multi-channel mixes.

As I rant this early morning...

The gov't should control audio compressors not everything else ( I won't mention handguns and healthcare Amy)...

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  • 5 months later...

Good thread.

I am also sick of buying CDs. I am anti-MP3, and I will not buy an iPod or download iTunes. I want to keep the computer as far away - literally and figuratively - from my listening room as possible. In fact, I keep my laptop at work, and will not bring it home. At work, I listen to public radio through a Tivoli.

However, I own something like 500 CDs. I can't just start over with vinyl. Too expensive and time consuming. I was thinking about buying that Yamaha CD recorder with the hard drive to "store" all my CDs in a lossless format. Then, someone told me Yamaha stopped making it. Now, what the hell am I going to do, other than find one used?

A toast to the future: horns, tubes, and vinyl!

BTW, all the digital crap being made, all the cool plastic junk you own - it's doomed for obsolescence. Your laptops, iPods, digital cameras, flat screen TVs, HTIBs, smart phones, Play Stations, home theater processors, all that overpriced stuff you find at Best Buy will soon find a home in a land fill somewhere in New Jersey. Their shelf lives are only a few years.

On the other hand, Macintosh amps will outlive you. My dad's old Nikon SLR still takes great pictures after about thirty years of ownership (I hope they still develop film in the future. If not, I'll have to learn to do it myself). Our old tubed Sony TV my family had when I was a kid lasted for close to twenty years!

Maybe it's time to just say no. Stop being a super consumer. Stop keeping up with the Joneses. Live simply.

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Jackson, I am gonna sue you for causing me great stomach ache! You'll be hearing from my lawyer.

Still laughing at this one... [:P]

And I'd shoot myself before listening to a tuner. I've heard enough Clearasil commercials for one lifetime.

Seriously if you suffer from bad acne, don't consider suicide if clearsil isn't doing the trick, try ProActive.

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Jackson, I am gonna sue you for causing me great stomach ache! You'll be hearing from my lawyer.

Still laughing at this one... Stick out tongue

Stomach acne? Sounds nasty, but I've had it in worse places...oh stomach ache, nevermind!

I am currently listening to some original press Prestige vinyl on one of the few, non-Klipsch systems and even sitting at my desk behind the HPM 100's, it sounds better than most CD's.

Thump and others are right when he talks about poor mastering and over compression, as I have made simple live off the floor digital recordings, that not only have the dynamic range, capture the room and sound better to me than even the classics "re-mastered" for CD.

This is a vinyl guy saying that Digital is not the greatest of evils in the sound of music today and done right it doesn't have to be a unpleasant thing.

What started as a accident due to inexperience with a new format, has become engineered flaws, to ensure that they will always be able to sell you a "new and improved" version of something you have already bought, at least 3 times already.

CES is already showing signs of that and now, it will no longer be good enough to have 2D(yawn?) Hendrix in concert Blu Ray, everything needs the Avatar treatment now, which isn't at all like getting a computer to add color to "It's A Wonderful Life" or deciding how the Beatles should have sounded all along...or is it?

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Oh where is UncleMeat head when we need him

I hope he wasn't exposed to a tuner......................I do want to agree with deang,that Velvet Revolver recording was pretty bad,not due to format.Put on Steely Dan AJA remaster cd,proof the format is solid.

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I have not posted for a while, but I have over a thousand albums and when people hear them over Klipsch La Scala's they are impressed by the bass and midrange. I have over a hundred MFSL albums as well as Quad and Sony Half Speed Mastered and they sound fantastic. My old Thorens will still best most CD's. But on the other hand, the DVD's of concerts I have still make people smile when they hear them. Cheers.

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  • 10 months later...

I need your address so I can go over there and give you a hug.

I have switched all the way to vinyl. I don't mind WAV's. CD's, I look down on CD's as much as I look down on MP3. I got a really compressed version of Rush-Powerwindows that's imposible to listen to with headphones since it sounds really loud. There aren't any artifacts of poor compression technique, but every sound is near the 0db mark for the whole album. On speakers, it's a rockfest, but It doesn't sound as special as a snap-crackle-and-pop tape from '85. It's missing something.

I bought some "audiophile" CD's that do rock, but they're not from any of the big recording companies. I'd buy a lot more vinyl, but right now, at $40, that's a bit much for a college student. I'm not a believer in blind 44khz sampling though. A little bit of phase timing and you lose it all.

My best Jam session was at an audio store that said "Bring Your Records." They had a pay for play rule that was the cheapest way I ever got the grace of K-Horns. I got my $ worth by playing through Master of Puppets on DMM vinyl, along with some Hendrix and some Christmas With Glen Campbell.

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  • 1 month later...

We normally hammer out these issues in 2 channel, but I'll give it a whirl here....

I agree with the complaints re: digital audio. There's a whole lotta garbage out there (search for my Metallica "Death Magnetic" rant if you need to), and a few that are worthwhile - or at least "workable" in the CD format. For example, I really like the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab releases....nice and analog sounding. This shows that there is nothing wrong with the CD format inherently.....it's that the powers that be in the industry just don't give a shi....

But the fact is that digital IS here to stay in some form, and is so saturated into the market that I have done as many system workarounds as is reasonable to make the best of the digital stuff I have. Things I have done to address this include:

- Use of vacuum tube gears throughout to make digital as good as possible. This includes a tube buffered CD player (tube buffered DAC is another approach that works well as is any high quality DAC in general). Tubes allow me to "roll out" some of the less desireable aspects of digital while seeking to retain maximum clarity without "rolling off" the highs, yet while getting a smoother presentation overall.

- Also, I selected specifically Heritage speakers with the older AlNiCo drivers - the K77V and K55V, which do have a different character than the more modern drivers do. The K77V only reaches to about 17K or so, but it has a smooth sound that "vinylizes" things to a degree. And these drivers are wonderful with the vinyl rig, the vintage Klipsch AlNiCo being my choice in the "value range"......it takes the really GOOD drivers, like vintage JBL and TAD to get me to migrate away from the K55V and K77V.

- "clean out" vintage gears thoroughly by selecting high grade parts in the signal path (spent $600 on couplers alone for one set of McIntosh MC30). Also selected similar grade parts for new builds (VRD KT88 based monoblocks, as well as for crossovers in my Heritage speakers). The digital "hash" gets exaggerated when pumped through average grade parts - and then into the super revealing Klipsch. So the "name of the game" is to remove any and all parts in the signal path that add any microdistortions, and to use gears that present an easy, warm and clear signal to the speaker.

If one cannot go through all that "analness", time, and cost, there's always the option of a nice, well rebuilt tube integrated (like a Scott 299, for example), or an early McIntosh solid state setup (MC250 with a modest cost vintage Mac pre), hooked up to a Klipsch Heritage pair of your choice that would do a lot to make the digititis more tolerable.

These approaches make my systems sound more "analog" with digital. I do also have a vinyl rig (Thorens TD124), but I was late getting back into the vinyl game, and the saturated nature of CD is hard to avoid. So I try to do the best I can with both, as much as I do agree with the complaints. And the things I have done to address the digital issues has done WONDERS with the vinyl sound, too.

But as I listen to the MFSL CD release of Supertramp's "Crime Of The Century", I must admit it sounds excellent.

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  • 2 months later...

I have only few CD of the same title on LP on only I dont have decent turntable to play the small LP collation I still have. Id try Star Trek the motion picture as its the same soundtrack content as the CD. I cant try Star Wars as the CD is new master not the same as the original LP that I still have.

I only have a few 45 Man on the moon Apollo 11 and Close Encounters of the third kind.

An LP is going to have artefacts that starching like sound as the needle and disc turn around and around with the odd mishap scratch. Same issue with CD dirt on the disc it miss-tracks or worse a scratch in certain angle that skips the laser from reading the disc.

Tape wares out after so long even if its well treated if its chewed it goes from clear sound to muffled sound until it passed the damage tape. Heads ware down after a long time or get dirty and need cleaning. Then again same for CD it gets build up of dirt from skin dust hair you name it, even odd possible spider I guess making a website inside. LOL

I think between the whole they sound okay the same unless totally re-mixed and they dont sound identical. Kinder like running two DVD of the same region1 and region2 theyll lose sync within seconds because region2 is playing faster and region1 slower yet sounds better than region2.

I hear where youre coming from Roman. I dont like getting ripped off as consumer. They must enjoy doing this all the time to us while they keep the original master tape but dont want to share its fullness without compressing it so they can make a few bucks to buy the next new car. Get the idea!

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I'm not a believer in blind 44khz sampling though.

Well for starters humans cant hear 44,000KHz maybe 44Hz LOL I guess the mixers have pet bats. Hey batty can you hear that. (noods his head) mixer gives it the thumbs up. [:D] Most of u older folks would be lucky to hear 16KHz as small narrow high pitch pinching sound on the ear once in while. Most musical instruments cant reach that high. 44KHz what a load of codswallop.

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  • 1 month later...

CD's, digital may be so called perfect but they will never match the depth, punch and warmth of analog. Very simple test to prove it, at least for me. I am a huge Pete Townshend fan, if anyone has the record CHINESE EYES take a listen to it and I don't care if it is on one of the most lowest end turntable's. After listening to the record then listen to the CD, you'll be quick to chuck the CD out the window.

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After listening to the record then listen to the CD, you'll be quick to chuck the CD out the window.

Drop a Telarc CD on my Panny XR combo and you'll be tossing your whole tube / vinyl rig out the window.

Depth = dynamic range and or bandwidth; For the former, if the source material is compressed dynamically, it's gonna sound flat no matter what it's played on. For the latter, if your speakers don't extend to at least 30 Hz you can't expect things to sound incredibly deep music-wise.Punch = impedence matching/sensitivity, & phase linearity ; Horns match the impedance of the air load to a relatively small driver or having a line of drivers greater than 1/4 wavelength to greatly increase sensitivity. When the phase response of the drivers are linear to one another ie. when a transient is sent to the speaker, all the harmonics leave at the same time in order to sum up to the original signal...it's experienced as "punch".

None of this has to do with, or is exclusive to tubes or vinyl.

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Vinyl is so much better. Its pure audio, no equalization needed. Just analog vinyl grooves that a metal point moves through and it makes music, what could go wrong? What could go right? Sniff some more glue. I have listened to 10 CDs and they all suck, but I have never heard a bad LP!!!!!!!! NEVER!!!!!!! NEVER EVER!!!!!!!!! THEY DON"T EXIST!!!!!!! SANTA CLAUSE LIVES!!!!!!!!!!! THE MOON IS MADE OF CHEESE!!!!!!! VINYL is the snizzle!!!!!!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!! BELIEVE ME!!!!!!! CDs SUCK.. ALL CDs and any digital audio SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!

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