Jota180 said:
Just sat through a couple of hours of different tracks from different bands and I'm finding the most annoying thing about HIFI is not so much the HIFI but poorly mastered CD's.
If the world's recording and mastering big-wigs could be brought together at one side of a big room and all the HIFI heads at the other side, with big sticks, I'm sure we could come to an acceptable agreement.
Without wishing to be argumentative, they only care about how they are going to get people to 1. Buy their music all over again & 2. Buy another generation of gear.
CD quality electronics and CDs are all our brains/ears need, so without tampering there is no 'churn'. Brilliant idea, let punters down by compressing and down-grading the quality of CDs and then you can sell them 24bit music and the equipment manufacturers get to sell brand new shiny boxes.
To a certain extent I can see why people insist that the 80s and 90s were a golden era for hifi. Huge effort was put into putting out the best quality CDs and some manufacturers understood about CD players and their effect on poorly designed amps, to deliver decent electronics.
Without 'churn' there is no growth, no profits, in an important part of the world economy; so there will always be a new nirvana waiting in the wings. I am enormously fortunate because I am at an age where I couldn't give a monkeys if I never buy any new music.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy discovering new music but I could easily end my days with what I already have and with a music delivery system that I seriously love and couldn't improve on; I'm in Nirvana already. Baby Boomers, what lucky b'stards we are.