i wish mp3 was never born

[admin_exported]

id of rather mp3 was never invented even if it is useful for the car

i love treating myself to a cd and phsically going to buy it from a shop (u apreciate it more)

i love owning the original cd with the cover art and track listing

i love reading the inlay and notes

i love seeing my ever increasing cd collection grow on my shelf

i love going to my shelf and shuffling through my collection until some thing grabs me and then physically inserting it into to my cd player

i love the simplicity of cd and not having to mess around with ticking boxes on computers and downloading software and the latest codecs

i love it that i haven't got a jack to phonos hanging out of my system with a iregular shape device on the end of it or a docking station looking at odds to the rest of my system

i might start a campaign to bring back the soul to music playing, bring back vinyl and cd and kick mp3

what does everyone else think

 

[Anonymous]

Well continue to buy the CDs, but rip them to MP3 for portables and the car.

Simple!

 

[Anonymous]

Agree mostly. I love Mp3 (when commuting/ out of house) but thats about it. I don't really care if less people are collecting records/cds anymore as long as the ones that do (us!) are able to do so. I think, probably,the days of listening to an album from beginning to end are becoming increasingly rare with people just downloading individual tracks they like. A shame i think.......... ( Gotta say though i'm still spending more time than is healthy digitalizing my cd collection! Not entirely sure why. Trying to future proof or something...............

 

[Anonymous]

yeah good point, i forgot to mention the bit about listening to the whole album from start to end in the order it was intended

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="JAXON5"] I think, probably,the days of listening to an album from beginning to end are becoming increasingly rare with people just downloading individual tracks they like. A shame i think.......... .[/quote]

I'm not a massive audio fan but I am aware of my increasing inability to listen to a whole albumn. I tend to fast forward through my CDs and rarely listen to it's entirity. I have to sit down a long way from the player with a large glass of something and the remote out of reach.

Used to be able to listen to X Ray Spex on repeat for hours ! Can't believe I'm losing patience with age ! Mind you, looking at the Just Jack, Jack Johnson, Natalie Embrulia etc I keep getting given I'm not surprised

 

[madeinstein]

Funny.. When I opened this post I was sure that it's going to be about sound quality and I was a bit dissapointed when it wasn't.

Matt you like to buy/own CD and it's just the way you are.. but looks like the rest of the world moved forward and picked digital library as a better solution, which in my opinion is much more convinient way to browse, search and store music (not talking about the rubbish itunes)

I like quality and convinience and looks like these days with big cheap storage solutions even quality of the music is not an issue anymore.

One thing that still annoys me in this whole thing are cables but hopefuly in the near future wifi will replace them and I would be able to sync my NAS with the mp3s overnight, maybe even a car.. and play music on my wifi speakers around the house..

Anyway good luck with your campaign.. I'm not against the CDs.. just like the digital solution.. but it's just the way I am..

 

[Anonymous]

im a firm believer in cd quality over mp3 but i didn't want to turn this thread into another technical debate about transports and dacs and such like (there plenty of other threads covering this)

 

[madeinstein]

fairly enough..

 

[Big Chris]

I'm with you Matt. I own about 500 CDs. I don't own a single MP3 (My Wife has a 1st gen Nano for the Gym,) When I'm travelling, I still use my Minidisc player/recorder!! And when was the last time you saw one of those? ;-)

 

[fr0g]

Look up the word 'luddite' on wiki.

MP3 and all that has followed has shaken up the music industry from it's complacency. It has helped drive CD prices down, and means you don't have to buy a whole (often rubbish) album, or buy an excessively priced CD single just to own one track.

Yes, listening through a great CD from start to end is great... And you still can. It's up to you. But the VAST majority of CDs are not full of great tracks. So skipping the dross is a great tool.

Now we have moved on to lossless formats, the quality is actually GREATER than a CD. A lossless CD rip played through the right equipment will beat any CD player for out and out quality.

The likes of Linn Records now provide HIGHER than CD standard downloads... These recordings played back through the right equpment are far better than any CD player could hope to acheive.

I still believe the market for a tangible object that you purchase, rather than soley data, will survive...I too like to own the CD, even if it get's ripped immediately and stuck on a shelf...
Personally I see it moving to solid state - You buy a memory chip with the album, or film or whatever...No moving parts, no surface to scratch, and non degradeable (as some CDs seem to be).

Long live progress.

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Frog: "Now we have moved on to lossless formats, the quality is actually GREATER than a CD. A lossless CD rip played through the right equipment will beat any CD player for out and out quality". Surely this way could only ever be as good as the CD at very best?

 

[fr0g]

[quote user="Gerrardasnails"]Frog: "Now we have moved on to lossless formats, the quality is actually GREATER than a CD. A lossless CD rip played through the right equipment will beat any CD player for out and out quality". Surely this way could only ever be as good as the CD at very best?[/quote]

Nope. A hard disk, or better still a solid state disk is a far better mech than an optical disk transport, which is ancient technology.

The CD player is reading a free spinning optical disk, and error-checking in real time...Once you have the bit-perfect copy on a HDD, then you have a perfect bit-stream, every time you play the track.

 

[Clare Newsome]

[quote user="fr0g"]Look up the word 'luddite' on wiki.
[/quote]

Look up the words "Members must not post insulting remarks about any individual" in our House Rules....

Live and let live, eh FrOg?

PS The CD's responsible for so many albums containing 'filler' tracks. When you're playing vinyl - and therefore can't merrily skip tracks - it's more crucial that an album's great from start to finish.

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="Clare Newsome"][quote user="fr0g"]Look up the word 'luddite' on wiki.

[/quote]

....... PS The CD's responsible for so many albums containing 'filler' tracks. When you're playing vinyl - and therefore can't merrily skip tracks - it's more crucial that an album's great from start to finish.

[/quote]

Amusingly, even less so with a cassette......

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="jbadman"][quote user="Clare Newsome"][quote user="fr0g"]Look up the word 'luddite' on wiki.

[/quote]

....... PS The CD's responsible for so many albums containing 'filler' tracks. When you're playing vinyl - and therefore can't merrily skip tracks - it's more crucial that an album's great from start to finish.

[/quote]

Amusingly, even less so with a cassette......
[/quote]

Although some 'quality' cassette decks allowed you to fastfwd to the next track ;-)

 

[fr0g]

[quote user="Clare Newsome"][quote user="fr0g"]Look up the word 'luddite' on wiki.
[/quote]

Look up the words "Members must not post insulting remarks about any individual" in our House Rules....

Live and let live, eh FrOg?

PS The CD's responsible for so many albums containing 'filler' tracks. When you're playing vinyl - and therefore can't merrily skip tracks - it's more crucial that an album's great from start to finish.

[/quote]

Apologies :|
I just had to defend the honour of MP3

And as for CD's being responsible for fillers... no way. I had many LPs, and tapes with bad tracks... It's always been there, especially in the popular music world... a band or an artist write 2 great tracks, and the record company rush an album from them..., it's just much easier now to ignore them...first by skipping them with CD, and now with playlists.

 

[Anonymous]

no offence taken, i probably am a bit of a luddite.

i am not oposed to technology advancing if it is a major improvement but i cant help but feel we have chosen to go slightly backwards with i pod and mp3 in choosing convenience and fashion over real quality. An ipod just isn't the same as a nice expensive sturdy piece of equipment in your rack..

I have the same opinion when it comes to blueray/dvd vs downloaded films. Whenever i go to watch a film at my mates there is allways some reason why we cant watch the fillm straight away. Hang on iv just got to download this codec or i havnt encoded this quite correctly or this resolution isnt quite right. With a dvd or blueray, insert and play (nice and simple)

 

[fr0g]

[quote user="matt444_2000"]
no offence taken, i probably am a bit of a luddite.

i am not oposed to technology advancing if it is a major improvement but i cant help but feel we have chosen to go slightly backwards with i pod and mp3 in choosing convenience and fashion over real quality. An ipod just isn't the same as a nice expensive sturdy piece of equipment in your rack..

I have the same opinion when it comes to blueray/dvd vs downloaded films. Whenever i go to watch a film at my mates there is allways some reason why we cant watch the fillm straight away. Hang on iv just got to download this codec or i havnt encoded this quite correctly or this resolution isnt quite right. With a dvd or blueray, insert and play (nice and simple)

[/quote]

In the process of advancement, there are always some minor problems... Yes an iPod or any other MP3 player isn't as nice as a decent hifi component, but it is 100x better than what it replaced....the portable cassete player, and the portable CD player, and even the minidisc (I'll not mention the disastarous and ill-fated DCC rubbish that philips tried to foist upon us),
Instead of carrying around a bumdle of tapes in a bag, or CD's or minidiscs, we can now have our ENTIRE music collection in our pockets. The quality of a good MP3 player is far better than any portable player of old.

The futiure will retain sturdy pieces of equipment in racks... Just look at Linn, and Naim recently adding high end HDD players.

My future glass is well and truly half full

 

[Anonymous]

yeah in that way mp3 is a huge advance in technology, i do use a sony mp3 in my car and as you say it cuts out carrying cds and tapes and is very simple to use whilst driving.

Mostly i was really coming at it from a hi fi source point of view

 

[professorhat]

Well, MP3 wasn't really designed for hi-fi, it was designed for compression and portability. In the same way as MP4 wasn't designed for home cinema systems, it's designed for portable video players.

 

[Anonymous]

To my ears MP3's are far better sounding than vinyl which I detest, I find them extremely useful because it enables me to download free tracks I'm interested in, to discover new Music by Internet radio or by listening to samples from the 2 or 3 million tracks offered by Amazon.com or in the better AAC Format from iTunes. I can also email tracks to friends and exchange music with others. Therefore, for my money MP3's are wonderful and in less compressed form, virtually indistinguishable from the original file. They never sound unpleasant and are excellent for toning down bright systems or recordings.

If I like an MP3 enough, I buy the whole CD and if I only want a track I buy it from iTunes because they sound pretty good.

Anyone who like some old rack stored bit of hi fi should treat himself to an iPod Touch, many reckon they sound better (with good headphones) that most hi fi and they are so clever and so nice to use. Or if you're a cheapskate, buy an iPod Shuffle for £32 load it with 320K MP3's and compare it with your CD player. I guarantee that some of you will have a shock! 141 million can't all be wrong!

Just my thoughts

Ashley

 

[pekers678]

[quote user="matt444_2000"]
id of rather mp3 was never invented even if it is useful for the car

i love treating myself to a cd and phsically going to buy it from a shop (u apreciate it more)

i love owning the original cd with the cover art and track listing

i love reading the inlay and notes

i love seeing my ever increasing cd collection grow on my shelf

i love going to my shelf and shuffling through my collection until some thing grabs me and then physically inserting it into to my cd player

i love the simplicity of cd and not having to mess around with ticking boxes on computers and downloading software and the latest codecs

i love it that i haven't got a jack to phonos hanging out of my system with a iregular shape device on the end of it or a docking station looking at odds to the rest of my system

i might start a campaign to bring back the soul to music playing, bring back vinyl and cd and kick mp3

what does everyone else think
[/quote]
100% agree with you, I love vintage hi-fi as well, but that'll probably pass as I am still u-17 and have much to learn...
I buy loads of vinyl, and it is making a comeback, for example, amazon has recently added the vinyl section again, which I think is great news. The only thing that really irritates me is that you can get the cd for £5 when the proper vinyl costs £17, surely this is a marketing scam as I am sure I read somewhere that vinyl is cheaper to make than CD?!

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Ashley. Do you not have a CD/ record collection that you cherish? I would be distraught if i woke up tomorrow with my own collection replaced by a hard drive substitute. Being able to email them to anyone i wanted would provide scant consolation.
Also don't you think just downloading songs you like encourages 'fast food' music?? Some LPs require some patience and improve with time on a whole range of levels. Being able to download any track you like is great from a technical/convenience point of view but it has its negative impact too,and i'm thinking here that there's too much pressure on artists to make records/songs with immediate impact rather than an album with coherence and substance ( not that the two have to be mutually exclusive). I just think that this technological evolution is not necessarily 'the best thing to happen to music'.

 

[pekers678]

JAXON5, once again completely agree, and my big problem is that if you play an mp3 through an older system, it sounds awful, proper hifi separate iPod docks are fairly poor unless you want to pay £70-100, and let's face it, for £20 more you could get a Cambridge Audio A5 brand new that would probably sound better than a mid-range mp3!

 

[cse]

It's simple. The problem with mp3 is that it'an over complicated way to listen to music. It requires constant use of a computer, scanning websites etc which is hardly relaxing. keeeping up-to-date with the technology is tiresome and although classical music is covered increasingly, latest releases don't appear to be any cheaper. I also don't really understand why people are so obsseseed with listening to music whilst travelling!! Conversely, HIFI is way over priced. Yoy have to spend an imense amount to create a really sophisticated sound and are expected to constantly be thinking of upgrading. Personally,I regret not borrowing the money and investing in a really good Quad/Linn/Meridian system ages ago and just getting on with enjoying listening to music.