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The Washington Post's team of journalists has once again done some really top-notch reporting (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6962426/).


Maybe I missed the part where the shit from the online stores at least matched the quality of a CD. Oh that's right, I didn't miss anything. Downloaded music still sounds like shit.


Wait a minute, I thought there weren't going to be anymore compact discs. I'm so confused.


Air-mousing? That's not funny, it will never be funny, and the editor of this piece should have removed it for being completely stupid. Shit like this makes geldon appear intellectual.


Downloadable music is not a high-fidelity format yet either. Until it is that majority of people will not be making their purchases online. Until a online music store gives you the option of lossless quality, CDs cannot and will not die.


Only person in this whole article who says something somewhat intelligent is the guy from Sirius radio.

Until I start seeing high quality (read: lossless) formats there is no reason to buy anything from an online music store. Does that make me an audio snob? No. That makes me someone who wants what CDs offered me 25 years ago, HIGH QUALITY. I shouldn't have to be paying the same amount of money for less. That's just stupid.

I don't think lossless is absolutely necessary. 192kbps, perhaps 256, is a decent tradeoff for fast delivery. Sound quality at that rate isn't go to be bad unless it's really scrutinized. I will agree though that "CD Quality" downloadable music is hype. For some reason, people want to believe it, even though it's nowhere near the truth.

Why should there be a trade-off? We're talking about replacing compact discs and that means music of the same quality. 192 is not compact disc quality. If I am paying money then I want the same quality, no trade-offs accepted.

Lossless is the only way I would take music from an online service, but I have no interest in using online music services since they insist I use some proprietary piece of shit software to get music. iTunes is the least offensive of the bunch, and even it is a bloated, ugly piece of shit.

For personal ripping though, I tend to stick to .ogg for playing on my computer, and MP3 for my Nomad Xen.

Well, there's no point then. The amount of time it takes to go to the store and buy a few albums (with liner notes even!) isn't going to be much longer.

Then again, I'm probably talking out of my ass. What's the average size of a lossless MP3 (5:00 song)? How long would it take to download 10 of them on broadband?

Lossless and MP3 don't go together.  It's a contradiction in terms, MP3 is a compression format and therefore lossy.

But around 80 MB a song for a straight 1:1 digital cd rip.

Hail to the Thief by Radiohead.
Thoughtful tunes that glide from soft to panicked, quiet to soaring, guitars always present. 14 tracks, 56m29s total time.

                                                                                               

Format.	Output size, bytes.	Ripping time, minutes seconds.
Wave	599,019,736	4m36s
FLAC	391,721,051	5m50s
Monkey's Audio	371,117,694	6m02s
MP3 - 256k	108,701,696	9m41s
Ogg Vorbis - 256k	107,228,378	10m39s

Information obtained from here (http://www.bobulous.net/misc/audioFormats.html).

FLAC has the most hardware and software support. The best player out there that has FLAC support is the Rio Karma (http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_templates/item_main_Rio.asp?model=261).

Apple has a lossless format, ALE - Apple Lossless Encoder, that iTunes supports encoding to and the iPod and iPod Mini will read. No iPod Shuffle support, but there isn't enough room on one of those things anyway.

CDs will never disappear until Best Buy can figure out how to replace the 12 aisles of music near the front of each store.

It's just that simple.

Also, getting rid of cds means Joe Redneck needs to learn how to use a computer. This is America, folks. Not Japan.

Now, a real purist would point out that CDs themselves involve some loss of quality as compared to, say, something like vinyl.

But then, albums were a pain in the ass.  I don't miss them, gimme CDs any day.

That's bollocks. With a remotely decent setup, CDs are arguably better. Vinyl purists are nothing more than audio hippies.

No it's not.

You guys are talking about two different things. Poly is talking about how the digitization of an analog wave form results in an approximation of the original and therefore represents a loss in quality. And then you have the whole digital to analog conversion process which can introduce additional error. You are talking about how CDs sound in your typical stereo system compared to records and in that situation I would agree that CDs are arguably better. No clicks or pops, better S/N, dynamic range, frequency response, etc. (not talking about audiophile record equipment, just your standard consumer model).

No.  The best vinyl is much better than CD quality.  However, you have almost certainly never heard the best vinyl recordings, unless you listened to certain classical music labels 30 years ago.  Almost all of the pop and rock vinyl albums produced were limited in audio range to much less than vinyl is capable of, sometimes as bad as 50-12000 Hz.

The problem with vinyl records is that they degrade with use, not that the quality is bad.

You can't take the best of a genre to be the average. That's just silly. On average, vinyl is crap compared to CDs. And yes, I've gone out of my way to hear recordings on the best audio shit money can buy.

If you need better quality to your CDs just put some green marker (http://www.snopes.com/music/media/marker.htm) on them. Easy enough.

I'd also like to point out that anything above 192kbps quality is out of range of what we're even capable of hearing. Whether a track is "CD Quality" or not only matters to our heads, not our ears.

What always gets lost in this debate is that "audio quality" is a non-starter for the typical listener.  128kbps through a decent set of stereo speakers or headphones is more than good enough for most uses, 192kbps through a decent 5.1 sound system is better than 99% of the non-MP3 home stereo systems (and even counting the computer, not much more expensive).  People didn't switch from LP to CD because they thought the audio quality was better, they switched because the CD's were harder to damage, didn't degrade in quality every time they were played, and were more portable.  CD's were superior to both records and cassette tapes in all of those areas.

An MP3 (or equivalent alternative) is effectively impossible to damage and is incredibly portable.  Sure, a "golden ear" thinks it's distorted and muddy, and unless routed through a $5K+ stereo system it's also tinny and flat.  But such people are rare freaks, *most* of us can't tell the difference and don't care if you can.

--Dave

I don't think I have ever bought an audio CD or if I have you could count them on one hand. I stream music all day long off Shoutcast for free. MahrinSkel is right, frankly the majority of consumers don't care about audio quality.

Radio quality on $20 computer speakers is good enough for me.

Which brings us down to what do you get when you buy an audio CD?

You get a piece of plastic which gives you a licence to listen to the music contained on it.

You don't need the piece of plastic if bandwidth is wireless and ubiquitous via satelite.

There are many Metallica tracks that I can think of right now that sound like shit at anything below 256.

To some of us it matters to our ears. I'm sorry if yours suck.

What's your point ?

This reminds me of those crazy old "THE HUMAN EYE CAN'T SEE MORE THAN 24-30 FPS!!!" arguments.  They were quite common back when 3D graphics card were being introduced, but thankfully you don't see them that much anymore.

Bruce

Are you confusing sampling rate with frequency? Even a person with damaged hearing can tell the difference between a cymbal recorded at 192Kb/s and 256Kb/s.

Right, that's why compressed ZIP files are unable to unZIP, to recreate the original file. 

Notice: there is a difference between lossy compression and lossless compression.  The latter does exist.

No, I'm not confusing them. I'm just throwing out the "192" number because the frequencies being kept at that rate are roughly in the same range of what humans can hear (of course, a 192 sampling rate is relative, depending on the quality of the original). Point is: The frequency range being recorded on a CD is twice as much as what humans are capable of hearing. For "listening" purposes, you don't need all of it.

Oh, and why isn't anyone bitching about the inferiority of CD's to DVD audio? DVD is 4 times better.

If you have listented using serious top end equipment, you would know how incorrect this is.  Listening to good vinyl, even using valve amplification, which will emphasise mid-range sound, you would see how wrong you are.  If you are ever lucky enough to find someone with equipment that I can only dream about, you would recind that statement instantly.  This is one of the very few things that Righ and I have thrown serious money at, but there are others who have spent hundreds of thousands on some extroidinary kit. 

Although, you can't hear many of the frequencies that vinyl can produce, I'm one of those people who think you can feel them.  CDs do an excellent job of emulating vinyl for all but the most elite purist, perhaps, but I still think they are emulating somethig they can't fully reproduce... yet.  Whether it'll be CD that ultimately does the job, I do think it'll get done... eventually.  I don't think we're there quite yet.

I believe what Schmoo said is somewhat correct, but there are many rock (and other) vinyl recordings that are as well produced as the best classical.  Nearly all the music we own has been transferred to CD... not for quality, but for longevity.

Somewhere in there, there's a good corollary to online gaming and sites like this one.

Actually that was a mangling of the fact that broadcast quality TV is 29.97 FPS.

Since posting that I remembered the Motown records I had, where the recording and mixing was exquisite, and the record quality was almost as good as the German labels I mentioned.  The lower-quality stuff was mostly British labels (like a lot of the Jethro Tull albums I had, unfortunately).

"valve amplification", how quaint. :)  Years ago I was the techie guy in a store that sold high-end audio equipment. I had all the latest audio gear (no vacuum tube valve stuff, but good transistor equipment).  It's amazing what a few thousand dollars of equipment will do for the sound quality of a good album.

Check out the guitar thread (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=2081.0). As far as instruments and mics go, valve technology is still the standard by which others are judged. Far from odd, at least when it comes to creating music.

Amen. I' don't begrudge those who care the right to choose their platform, but I want it convenient and fast. And full of calories and cholesterol if possible.

That's pretty much it.  CD audio (Redbook standard of 44.1 kHz 16-bit audio) involves sampling of analog signals.  The actual loss is small.  I think an overwhelming majority of people don't even notice it it all, and the benefits of having something that doesn't wear out through normal use, is easily portable, and won't be eaten at the whim of your tape player is well worth it.

Perhaps I should have used a different example--maybe DVD vs. film for Schild the movie-phile?  There are similarities.

The harmonic distortion produced by valve amplification is pleasing to the ear. It may not be literally "high fidelity", but enthusiasts are willing to spend high prices and sacrifice frequency extremes in order to gain the "warmth" in the mid-range that valves produce. And while Gabriel may be producing for the flat, clipped sound of push-pull trannies, Conny Plank is not.

As far as the whole "can you hear the difference" crap is concerned, yes, I can, and my tired old ears are nearing 40 years old. Max Townshend wrote years ago when CD was first introduced by Sony and Philips that it would take significantly higher sampling resolution and bandwidth to use a digital technology to replace what could be recorded with analog equipment of the day. Since that time, studios have implemented technology that has met or exceeded Townshend's stated benchmarks, and with SA-CD and DVD-A, consumer electronics companies are trying to sell it to us.

Marketing and the mass consumer reaction will determine the future audio formats. Quality, be it technical or perceived, will not.

What you need is the proper disgronification circuitry.

Bruce

I notice no difference between MP3 quality and CD quality.  I guess I'm a freak.  Oh well, I'm a freak with money to spend on products.  From my perspective, CDs are currently the better product... but only because the presentation of MP3s isn't as professional and doesn't include the decoration and convenience of a CD.  Yet.

(I should note that by convenience, I mean that it comes with its own reusable, labeled case.  With MP3s, I have to buy and label my own cases, and they still won't be as recognizable as the cover art for CD books.  In terms of portability, for me, CDs and MP3s are equally convenient because I can rip or burn as I like.  Though it's nice that CDs come in a format that my car can play right out of the box whereas I (and most people, I'd wager) would have to buy a completely different device to allow my car to instantly play MP3s.)

I know, I was referring to Signe referring to vacuum tubes as 'valves'.

Vacuum tube amplifiers create a certain kind of distortion that a lot of musicians like, me included when I was playing guitar regularly in the '80s.

Ah, OK. Heh, if I'm not mistaken, it's another one of those pecularities of British usage.

That is the most cogent and important thing said in this thread. Betamax was superior to VHS tapes... except that no one bought them. Your pristine audio format that introduces no loss and makes your ears weep with joy matters jack and shit if you can't buy it. And the shuffling, stinking mass of buying humanity will determine what the replacement for CD Audio is. And we probably have not seen the format that will replace it yet.

I will say that I don't WANT to hear Ashlee Simpson as she actually sounds. Please distort her to sound not sucky, kthxbye.

You are right I misspoke, however MP3 is not a lossless compression algorithm it achieves compression by resampling hence the cute little 192k or 64k that most people append to thier .mp3 files.

Are there any lossless compression algorithms that are fast enough to be listened to in real time?  Or do you always have to 'unpack' them before playing?

I have to say, personally, that I find 192 KB most enjoyable.  It's hard for me to tell any difference if you go up to 256 KB, and anything beyond that is probably wasted.

Bruce

That's a "ball of string" question. Depends on your system processor and whether you have dedicated compression hardware. Probably not on an Apple IIe.

Comparison (http://members.home.nl/w.speek/comparison.htm)

I can't tell the difference between mp3 and CD at all.  Neither can most of the general public.  The perceived sound quality difference of a small minority will not have an impact on what replaces CD's.  That's not to say they won't be around for a lot longer for other reasons, but this 'issue' on sound quality you guys are complaining about will not factor in the slightest in the decision.

Just a quick note....

Most kids buying music are bloody thieves and will take whatever comes easiest; ie mp3's and CD's.

Also, the vast majority of listeners don't have top-end gear, so any minor nuances of a particular format are moot: they cannot hear the difference, and don't really care.

I personally still buy CD's (albeit online usually), because I hate the downtime incurred by having to do a ton of ripping. Also, about half of the stuff I listen to isn't really available for me to steal online (from a reliable source)  if I was so inclined.

Get back to me after I get my free i-Pod.

The problem with lossless compression is not the speed of unpacking, its the size of the file. Lossy files are much smaller. I doubt speed of unpacking is really a big issue anymore.

Different lossy formats have different issues, it depends a lot on what type of music you listen to. Algorithms that perform fixed rate sampling can run into moire type patterns against sounds of a similar frequency. (Similar to moire patterns and artifacts in 3d rendering)

Personally I like CDs because I like albums, rather than collections of individual songs. (With pop music there is no difference of course) I also like owning concrete stuff.

I just wanted to mention how irritated I am with all online music services for having shitty bitrates or shitty selection.

Eh.  I'm tone deaf (really!), so for the most part I just can't tell a compressed (above 128K) file apart from the CD version.  Could just be that I don't have a killer sound system, but I don't think so.  I'm just one of those people who either A) can't pick up on the differences, or B) isn't bothered by them.

I'd like to mention that I don't care about bitrate one whit, but DRM pisses me off.  I'm currently unable to listen to some of the songs that I've bought from the Apple music store because their DRM seems to be buggy.  FTS.  If I buy anything else from their store, I'll be sure to strip the DRM and save it as mp3 before doing anything else.  Fuckers.

As i might be getting an iPod soon...how do you convert it?

I'm not sure I can say here what means you would use to remove the DRM from, say, a hymn.  But the converting to MP3 is easy - iTunes has a context menu option for that.

Is it really hype? With my fiber optic internet service, 700 or so megabytes doesn't seem like all that much to download.

I would be happy to find 192k music, but outside of Real, it isn't out there.

Yes, yes, I know of allofmp3.com. I have no problems buying from them at 320k or AIFF at $0.02 a megabyte but they don't have the catalog. One or two interesting things, but nothing obscure.

Emusic has plenty of obscure stuff. Or at least they did at one point in time (and believe me, if it's obscure to me, it's REALLY obscure). Too bad they've moved to a "per song" type of subscription deal though. A couple years back, it was a flat monthly fee, with unlimited downloads. Damn shame. With the advent of iTunes and other similar services, those kind of fees were just too good to last.

Usually when people say they can't tell the difference between 192 and 256 or higher, it later turns out they are listening on a $50 stereo from 1987. Or in the car.

This isn't intended as a cue for people start discussing how much their amp doesn't suck, but as an observation I have made based on when RL people say this whose kit I have actually heard.

Emusic it is. I just browsed their catalog and see many things I'd enjoy plus it's Lame VBR ~192k, which is acceptable.

Thank you.

That's probably true.  The vast majority of humanity doesn't spend a lot of money on stereo equipment.  I do most of my own music listening on $20 PC speakers, and the rest in the car.

Nyquist would like to have a talk with you...