MP3 or CD?
I still buy CDs.
But then, I’m a Leonard Cohen fan, and apparently that’s the sort of archaic thing we folks do.
If I’m just buying a single song, though, I usually pay my 99 cents (or $1.29, because inflation has hit the iTunes store) and bypass the hard copy. But any more than a few songs and it’s the CD for me—often a used one, because they can be cheaper.
Why do I do this (besides the fact that I’m a technological dinosaur)? I figure it gives me more versatility. I can hear a CD on a player, my computer, or in the car—plus I can put the entire thing on my iPod and have it do whatever iPods do.
What’s the downside? I haven’t figured out any. The only possible difficulty is storage, and CDs are so small that I really can’t consider it much of a problem, especially since I was raised on records, which are considerably bulkier.
Not just bulkier, but more fragile. They were so very easily scratched, especially when the owner had the listening habit I did—which was to play a favorite song and then change the record. This required a special skill that has probably gone the way of so many techniques from the olden days, such as cutting ice from ponds and storing it before the days of the freezer. I had laboriously learned how to deftly pick up the playing arm so that it made a clean break with the record, and then change to another selection swiftly, letting the arm down silently and ever-so-gently in just the right place.
I don’t need to do that any more; CDs and MP3 players make it so easy to select a track. But I still prefer (or think I prefer) the sound of records. To me they have a warmer, richer, fuller timbre. Digital technology has always seemed slightly metallic and tinny to me, despite (or maybe because of) its clarity, although I’ve made a complete transition to it.
And you?
I buy used cds and then use my computer to ‘rip’ them into mp3s. I can put the resulting file onto all my devices without a limit (itunes had a limit years ago, don’t know if they still do)… plus if you leave your computer on most of these internet TV media player boxes can play the music stored on your computer to your TV’s audio system (so, in your LL if you have your TV working along with your stereo…).
So; anyway, yes CDs are the way go. 🙂
I strongly prefer CDs to purely digital formats, mostly because I can make my own MP3 files from CDs, but I can’t make good quality CDs from MP3s.
There’s also the DRM business where I could potentially lose access to my digital files through pique or technical malfunction. No, I much prefer to have my own hard copy.
I started downloading MP3s instead of purchasing CD and ripping them out of convenience. Then I got an MP3 of a song I like and it sounds distorted in a way I don’t hear on the radio.
I was listening to a show yesterday that asked the same question.
The guy did a test I’d never thought of. He did the same thing noise cancelling headphones do. He inverted the polarity of an MP3 and mixed it with the CD file. If they were identical, they’d cancel each other out. They didn’t. The resulting sound is the difference. And there was a lot.
It may be that people raised on vinyl “remember” a warmer sound, but memory can be selective. Remember pops, cracks, and warps? All gone now. Also, the compression used in some CDs to create a louder, potentially more marketable sound can lead to ear ache after a few listens. I do miss the large artwork and inserts however.
Nothing wrong with being a technological dinosaur though. Do you still have a Chatty Cathy doll? Sorry, just trying to be funny.
Eh. Things began going downhill when records changed from a three-dimensional to a two-dimensional format.
If music recordings were supposed to be flat, Edison would have created them that way.
A few years ago I started to rip/burn favorite CD cuts from my collection onto CDRs for my own enjoyment, making the original CDs redundant. For a while, up to about a year ago, they sold as well as books on Amazon, but now very few sell. I blame that on MP3s, downloadable cuts at 99 cents (now $1.29) and people who’ll settle for the lesser quality.
If the audio CD goes the way of the LP and cassette (try to find decent players for these older formats) I will be distressed.
It was interesting to hear of the quality in sound difference between MP3s and CDs.
I have hundreds of CDs, most bought in box sets @ ~ $2/CD from a used book store, which cover a lot of genres. A recent purchase of Billie Holiday post 1945 10 CD box set for $15 balances a 10 CD box set of Billie Holiday pre-1945 purchased a decade earlier. Earlier is better for Billie Holiday. I also recently purchased a 10 CD box set of Hayden for under $9.
With my library, I see no need to purchase MP3s @ $1/song, not when I have CDs @ 10-20 cents per song.
rickl: Har!
I’m with Tesh (and neo). I want a physical object that can’t be disabled and can survive a computer crash.
I also like the liner notes. How can I have the artist sign my MP3? I miss album art and lyric sheets.
That being said, I am soon going to try putting my library on a home server to listen anywhere in the house.
darkdog: I never had a Chatty Kathy to begin with.
However, there was this.
MP3s. Album art, liner notes, …, are all available on wikipedia or elsewhere. My hearing is no longer good enough to tell the difference anyhow.
Coincidentally, I was listening to Songs of Love and Hate just before getting on here and reading this post.
We collect lots of music and gave up on CDs several years ago for very practical reasons. The problem is when you have > 1,400 CDs and have nowhere to store them except the attic. We’re digital all the way. Yes, the sound quality suffers, but we can not keep all of our music immediately assessable in our rather limited space.
Neo, Eric Clapton agrees with you about that cold digital sound. So do a ton of musicians, who scour the world and pay top dollar for vacuum tubes to get that old analogue sound.
Think about it: analogue is a smooth curve; digital is a stairstep. If the latter were discovered first, we’d be trumpeting the analogue as a great leap forward.
As far as “stairstep sound” vs analog.
I can’t think of a method of analog video recording.
Everything becomes frames per second vs persistence of vision.
I’m sure that there is a persistence of audio, similarly, that means at some point, digital audio would be undistinguishable from vinyl (or wax drums, as was alluded to earlier) with the absence of clicks, pops, tape hiss, and lack of dynamic range.
As and audiophile (also now a species on the soon to be extinct list), I have found the CD’s when first issued were not very good. However the technology and recordng improved, and now I think Cd’s and blu-rays contain very high quality audio. If you have a decent system, try playing your CD’s in your BR player: the result will stound you as the BR will bring out more detail than a standard CD player will.
Beware MP3 ripping. Did you ever wonder howw all those songs fit in the memory? The standard MP3 rip (itunes) will drop a significant amount of the data to compress the file. There is an opton within iTunes for a complete transfer from the CD, but it will also eat up your iPod memory and also take MUCH longer. I only use my iPod in the car where road noise compensates for the lack of original sound quality.
True to audiophile form I must list my system: 🙂
B&W: 4 front speakers, Paradigm rear speakers, Acoustat subwoofer
Yamaha sound processor/effects channels amp, Sony BR, Phase Linear main amp, Phase linear sub amp.
I’m torn on both. I love CD’s and have a ton of em but it’s just sooo easy to get or swap mp3’s. We’ve actually gotten lazy and just play thru our PC now. Our CD player rarely gets used anymore solely because it’s easy to play inmediamonkey rather than selecting which CD we’re in the mood for. Hopefully we’ll get everything onto server soon and start implementing a sonos system and utilizing our nice sound system.
Great discussion. I find myself relying on digital audio more and more because the portability you spoke of, Neo, is greater now for mp3s than it is for CDs (and it’s increasing, too).
I really enjoyed by direct-to-disk vinyl recordings when I fancied myself an audiophile. But the depth of sound possible on a CD surprised me. Really, listen to The Beatles Mr. Roberts and you’ll hear vocals that just weren’t present on the $3.99 Capital albums put out in 1966.
I’m a little fortunate. My musical memory is just filled with songs I heard only on a transistor radio through a 3″ speaker. No base. I loved that music so it’s locked in my brain.
But even the lowest quality mp3s out today are better. Music is a joy once again.
Cm,
yes, that’s what amazes me. the convenience seems to totally outweigh the quality. My kids prove the point. I’ve asked them many times why they prefer those tiny plastic stick in your ear pieces of crap, that deliver no sound quality whatsoever to the system they could use in the our house. They reply convenience. Ok, I say, well why not then use a good set of headphones that give some good quality. The answer: they don’t care. No wonder today’s “artists” are just manufactured on the computer; nobody really cares about how it really sounds.
Cm, why play a CD thrugh those lousy speakers on a computer? The computer playback even drops out alot of the content. I’m just curious. Is it that the music is really background “noise” and no longer a forefront activity that requires some concentration/attention?
Neo, if cd space isn’t a problem for you, you must have, compared to me, either many fewer recordings or much more space. I really prefer to have classical music on cd, in large part for the notes etc. (not always readily available online, and even then not necessarily convenient to read). But I’ve almost completely quit buying them because of the space problem. I have roughly 1000 lps and…I don’t know…at least several hundred cds. And I really don’t have a place to store more.
The digital vs. analog and cd vs. mp3 arguments are not easily settled. There has been a great deal of research and testing and it’s really not conclusive. As far as I’m concerned the only useful tests are blind tests, and you can’t achieve real blindness with lps, because the noise gives them away. And resolution is everything with mp3s. Low enough resolution and they sound like an old-time AM car radio, high enough and very very very few people can reliably distinguish between that and cd.
My personal and unproven opinion is that the real warmth, or something (as opposed to the merely retro vibe provided by pops and clicks) of old analog recordings is an effect of the recording techniques used, not so much the playback. There are cd reissues of old recordings that sound as rich as the originals.
Most people don’t listen to music anymore. It is now just a soundtrack for exercise or driving or surfing or doing chores. Myself, most of the music I hear now is live performance. At home or driving I tend to have political blowhards yelling from the radio.
I can still hear the flatness of a lo-res MP3 compared to a CD-quality MP3, but my ears my have lost their ability to detect audiophile subtleties.
He inverted the polarity of an MP3 and mixed it with the CD file. If they were identical, they’d cancel each other out. They didn’t.
Of course not. MP3s are a lossy file format – the size reduction you get is because you throw data away. One should not be surprised that when comparing apples to oranges you find…differences.
Yes, I’m not sure what “inverting the polarity” in this context means, but it doesn’t sound like that’s a meaningful test. Especially if it means a bit-by-bit comparison of the files. Even a lossless format like FLAC would “fail” that test.
Btw you can compress a file without losing any data–that’s what the Zip format does. That’s also what FLAC and other lossless audio formats do. They preserve all the data while using complex strategies to represent it with fewer bits. To take the most obvious example, if you have a line of text consisting of only spaces (space is a character like any other), you can employ some briefer way of saying “100 spaces here”. It gets very arcane, but it works. That’s why you can “zip” a program, email it to a friend, and have it work. Barring transmission problems, it will be bit-for-bit identical to your copy.
Hey physicsguy, yeah my wife and I love listening to music and we have an above avg stereo system. Before kids, CD’s were on constantly (and loud) but life has changed it seems. I believe I can tell the diff but probably more honestly, our collection has grown to more music that is digital (flac, wav, mp3). We have hundreds of CD’s but probably hundreds of digital as well so if we want to listen to music we only have on digital, we have one choice only – the PC. Yes, the speakers suck but we currently have only that choice. We can listen to CD’s thru our nice system but not digital so it really just has become habit to listen to everything all in one place. I do use nice headphones at work for my pod where I code. We are saving for sonos and uptodate receiver (wifi, internet, etc) – speakers we’re good. Car is still good for CD’s tho 🙂
Physicsguy, adding a post-thought—yes we both like similar music (or I wouldn’t have married her!) And we typically don’t listen as background but kids make it oh so harder to just sit back, listen and enjoy. We download lots of concerts and radio sessions (kexp, etc)
“Inverting the polarity” means if the waveform is going south, you send it north.
If two waveforms are identical, and one is inverted, in mixing them together they will cancel each other out.
If they are not identical, the difference will be heard as sound. The more sound, the more difference. Of course there will be a difference between a “compressed” (but not lossless) file and the original file.
This technique demonstrates how much difference without straining your ears to hear it.
Just an interesting fun fact to know and not a point of contention.
Nobody listens to bit files, they listen to waveforms.
And a truly “lossless” scheme would be, by definition, identical in output.
And if your PC speakers suck, line output to your stereo, if that’s what you want.
I’ve yet to see a player with a zip file codec 🙂
PS
When ripping you are not limited to only the mp3 format. You have many you can pick from if mp3 quality doesnt cut it for you.
This thread is making me feel very young. And I am not that young (36). For me, the choice I am always weighing, is between subscription models like Rdio and Spotify, or collecting my own digital files, bought borrowed or stolen. Friends are always emailing me links to albums and I don’t have the moral compunction not to just download them. I try and see bands I like live, to make up for my immoral ways. I also signed up for Spotify, just so the artists get a bit of something from me. I have never liked CDs. They always seemed so cheap and disposable compared to a nice dog-eared old record. I kept all the records I bought in my teens and early twenties, and got rid of all my CDs. I am currently using iTunes Match as well, which is working nicely, and it means even the albums I acquired in less than legal ways can generate royalties for the artists.
The next room has the Wall of LPs – six feet high, ten feet wide, crammed to the max.
Elsewhere is the CD tree – like one of those lazy-susan racks, except it’s five feet tall.
Last album I bought, they gave me 3 CDs plus all 39 tracks in Apple Lossless for portable use. The best of both worlds, perhaps. (The deluxe package included six 180-gram vinyl LPs plus some other goodies, but it cost twenty times as much.)
Mac: I don’t have much storage space at all. And although I don’t have anywhere near 1000 CDs (I’ve never counted, but it’s more like a couple of hundred), I store them in those album thingees with slots for them and their liners, and I throw out the jewel cases. They store pretty well that way, especially if you mostly don’t use the CDs and can store them away somewhere and just use your iPod most of the time.
I know several people who have done the throw-away-the-case thing, but for some reason I’ve never really considered it, not sure why. But yeah, that would cut the storage space way down, maybe I should try it.
I just did a rough estimate and it looks like I’ve got somewhat more than 500 cds, probably not 600. I don’t even want to say how many mp3/wma/flac files I’ve got. Suffice to say I have more music than I can listen to. It’s a little crazed, really. But in my defense I really thought I would have a lot more leisure at this point in my life (early 60s) than I do.
Ed B: oic. Yes, that does tell you something, assuming everything that goes into creating the waveforms is equal. Those audio “leftovers” wouldn’t necessarily all be detectable in the music, though. Depends on many things, not least the ears of the listener. I did an experiment of my own with this a couple of years ago, trying to distinguish the original CD from several high-res mp3 rips of the same track, some variable bit rate, some constant, different encoding programs. I could not tell any difference among the mp3s, but thought I could distinguish the cd from them. It wasn’t a blind test, though, and I can’t be sure. At best it was a very subtle difference, certainly not something a casual listener on iPod earbuds or something would notice. But then my ears are not as good as they used to be, and I don’t dispute that some people really can hear a more significant difference. Anything below 128k CBR (constant bit rate) mp3, though, is pretty obvious (and awful) to me.
You can in fact zip a raw audio file and recover it perfectly, but the algorithm isn’t optimized for audio and the actual size reduction is pretty small.
“My personal and unproven opinion is that the real warmth, or something (as opposed to the merely retro vibe provided by pops and clicks) of old analog recordings is an effect of the recording techniques used, not so much the playback. There are cd reissues of old recordings that sound as rich as the originals.”
I think you are exactly right, Mac. I’m a musician and an electrical engineer so I’ve thought about this a lot and heard all the arguments ad nauseam. There is no question in my mind that CDs reproduce the original recordings more clearly (I have heard this many times on different recordings), but “clearly”, i. .e accurately, does not automatically mean “more aesthetically pleasing”. E. g. a soft-focus “art” photograph might “look better” than an accurate, hard-edged police photograph of a crime scene (not to mention the subject matter!).
Another factor is that recordings that were originally made when vinyl rules were often recorded differently precisely because the producers/engineers *knew* they were going to be mastered for vinyl, to compensate for or take advantage of the known qualities of vinyl recordings. Both George Martin and Andrew Oldham, the producers of the classic recordings of the Beatles and Rolling Stones respectively, have said that when the original classics were reissued for CD that they had to remix them in order to recapture the sound they had originally intended.