Fraunhofer Institut (MP3) and many others (MPEG-1) including your beloved SONY, Philips, Panasonic, Thomson, etc. are hardly computer dorks.

Back in 1995 it was amazing to encode in decent quality a full CD song into a single 1.44MB floppy.
And at Internet bandwidth at the time, no compression would either mean no music, on MIDI-based files only.

Computer dorks... really? You can't be serious.

The only change in music trend is that buyers started to prefer convenience over quality, for the first time in commercial music history, the next generation after CD that we expected to be DVD-A or SACD, was a step back in quality (64~128Kbps CBR) that you could carry in your pocket, without the bulkiness of a portable CD drive.

And, as usual, the format kick in because you easily copy it.

Same example for the SONY PlayStation 1 (PSX), it really started to take off in sales when PIC12/PIC16 hacks allowed to play imported games and copies on CDR...

Julien

Still... you need to provide examples: which CD release, which SACD release and what are the differences.

Otherwise you're just throwing baseless claims.

Julien

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Sound like dorks to me if all they were interested in is the technical achievement of compression rather than the resulting sound.

Compare that to Sony's development of ATRAC compression..sound quality mattered when they developed that. Makes sense since Sony' s CEO was a classical music conductor.

Already did? Again from my small SACD collection: Redbook Asia Asia > SACD Asia Asia, Redbook Mariah Carey Music Box > SACD Music Box. The SACDs both sound lacklustre, flat, lifeless and muted compared to the redbook.

Then again very happy with the rest of my SACDs: YMO, Vince Guaraldi, John Coltrane, Dusty Springfield, Marvin Gay, Elvis etc..I have an Aiko SACD that sounds really bad, not sure if it's just that most Aiko recordings sound flat?

Do you actually do any research before making such broad claims?

Didn't realize my thread was going to start a SACD versus CD versus vinyl war!
Still a quick google on the internet shows there are too many such threads already and no consensus with any of them!

Maybe though that REALLY is why vinyl is back again because it seems be the current flavour of the month in terms of best sound. I just remember from my youth that Van Halen really did sound better on vinyl, especially albums like Fair Warning. I also remember some terrible CD pressings like Heart - Heart (1985) which were really bright and tinny to listen to even though it was their commercial peak and had some great songs.

I'm starting to think that if you can't beat the record companies then maybe it's time I joined them by putting together my own Extra Special Fan Club Edition of some titles with a maximum of 2 copies available worldwide! I've a few really cool ideas about what I'd include in such releases - all legitimate merchandise produced by the record companies themselves but very tough to source in 2018 and certainly never sold in the form I envisage. Food for though........

I think the more likely explanation is that the dynamic range compression has reached a point where even a regular, non-hifi-nut listener can tell the sound quality has gone down the toilet.

Unfortunately, a vinyl of something like Metallica's Death Magnetic is still going to sound like garbage because the whole thing was DR-compressed at mixing stage and the vinyl is drawn from the same master as the CD! That's kind of why there was a big buzz over the inclusion of the tracks in one of those music games for playstation, Rockstar or whatever, because the tracks included were taken from an earlier, non-compressed mix and sounded much better than the final album.

In a rare turn of events I’m going to side with Forper on this. Minidisc sounds so much better than MP3 at similar bit rates and it’s specifically for the reasons he states. You go listen to a 1.4MB MP3. Seriously. Go do that. It’s torture, especially in the high end. MP3s are like lossy zip files whereas ATRAC is inherently “audio” in its design, being very careful to only ruin the parts you probably aren’t listening too. “Computer dorks” looking at data instead of just listening to it seems plausible.

No you are absolutely right to judge what you can actually hear. That's the only true test in any audio comparison.
I couldn't care less if it was being played back on some El Cheapo No Name brand system as long as it sounds great.
Too many audiophiles spend far too much money changing cables, colouring in the edges of their CDs and shelling out money on formats that don't necessarily yield any improvement, all in the name of science.

You're both right about ipods. Absolutely horrid devices in terms of sound.
I remember someone in the office asking me to listen to a track on their ipod and I can honestly say it was the worst sound I have ever heard in my life - even a cassette walkman made in china I got free from some catalogue in the 80's sounded better. It just made an otherwise brilliant Depeche Mode song sound completely drained of energy and dead. I quickly returned it and thanked my lucky stars I owned a Sony!

I went to live in Japan when ipods came out. I only owned about 50 CDs so did what everyone was doing and got an ipod and ripped my CDs then sold most of em (except some special Japanese ones) before my trip.

Travel light I thought..and Hiroshi Fujiwara, one of my idols was using one, it must be good I thought. Then after a few weeks of listening I realised what a dumb thing I'd done. I now hated music and felt drained and depressed after listening to it. I literally threw it into the pacific ocean and went and bought a used D777 discman at Hard Off.

That's why I encode all my MP3s at 320kbps

I wouldn’t use MP3 for anything now that there are multiple better sounding formats. 320kbs should sound very close to the CD it came from but you wouldnt need such a high bit rate with a better format.

As for the quality of iPods, I’ve owned a few and several iPhones and never had a huge problem with sound quality other than the fact that the amps can’t push real headphones very well but that’s true of everything I’ve ever used that was portable. I do have an issue with my current iPhone SE which seems to clip on the digital out with fully normalized recordings for some reason now, no idea why. This could be an actual hardware issue or maybe some update caused it. Analog out sounds great. Weird.

Selling all my discs off...I’m for SURE I would hate that experience. I’ve never done it. I like buying discs, loading and unloading them, looking at the art, and being to see who the staff were without going to a Wiki. When you go on a trip with just an iPod you can’t play any of the CDs you buy on vacation. I mean...that’s no fun.

That's it! There's a Japanese used bookstore in Sydney that has a lot of well priced Japanese CDs and I take the bus 4 hours from where I live to get there. I pack that same D777 discman and look forwards to what I might be listening to on the trip home.

Well you can't do that with records either.

...unless you get one of those portable record players like they had in the 60's and plug it into the recharge outlet on the train or something...

That'd be an amazing sight actually, everyone around you is staring at their smartphones and you're kickin' back, spinning records with those huge 70's style headphones

Vinyl has been around for what seems like an eternity yet I have my concerns about how long these new pressings can be sustained in the current vinyl revival.

Everything about the production of vinyl flies against conserving energy.
The basic raw materials rely almost exclusively on the petroleum industry for the vinyl required to produce records.
Then there is the energy consumed pressing records and also transporting them worldwide as they are very heavy product.
Add to this the huge quantities of wood pulp required to produce the sleeves, inner covers etc and you've almost got yourself an energy crisis in the waiting.

Prices are already sky high to counteract the higher than normal production costs but can this really be sustained for another 20 years given most people are trying to move away from using oil. I think if new records are still being produced in 20 years time, they will be incredibly expensive unless they can figure out a way to make them from some renewable material that still has the same basic properties as vinyl. Even re-using old vinyl isn't a viable option since its never as good as virgin vinyl for new pressings because it contains small amounts of contaminants that ultimately affect the quality.

So I think this current increase in vinyl production will be impacted fairly soon by pressure to switch to a more environmentally friendly product that doesn't have such a large carbon footprint.

You must feel so cool listening to a discman in public.

Luckily I'm old now and I don't give a sh** what anyone thinks about me in public.

Okay..... how old is old??

same age as LD