Okay, so I don't even begin to qualify as an audiophile. But, I DO listen to my CDs on a carefully selected DVD player that has a really nice ADA convertor through my 1974 Pioneer Quad receiver feeding custom-voiced CMC speakers...and I'm here to say, I'm thoroughly disappointed by what my Macs do to my disc's files. I suspect that iTunes renders them into some sort of sampled Mpeg format that plays what PASSES for the real audio file. I've noticed this with friends iPods, that the music files don't sound right to me. I spent some time today A/B-ing the Macs and the player, and the difference is HUGE!
You know, sometimes I think we're too involved with making the circle ROUNDER. Having been through the battles to get to a better audio format from vinyl thru magnetic tape to optical tracks, MAYBE WE GOT IT RIGHT NOW. Now, I'm all about BACK OFF, tech-boys...this stuff sounds GREAT RIGHT NOW! I'm listening to AJA (Steely Dan) and the difference between the old-school set-up and the Mac is MORE THAN OBVIOUS!
Point in case, HOME AT LAST; the air in between the piano chords at the opening are completely lost in the iTunes version...and yet, SUPPOSEDLY, iTunes is PLAYING MY DISC!
Leave me alone; I don't care about your format changes, I'M HAPPY WITH THIS, DAMMIT!
And, in fact, it sounds WAY BETTER than the iTunes pablum you're trying to push off on me...that stuff may be good enough for the inconigscenti you're preaching to, but it will never sell to me!
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I actually entered engineering school because of my love for audio. I wanted to learn how to design it. Although I worked another field for my career, I still designed and built custom loudspeakers for many years. I'm not saying my stuff was the best you could buy, but I ensured each speaker produced top quality sound for the money people were willing to spend. I actually spent weeks testing and designing each one.
ReplyDeleteAfter I retired I pretty much hung up the loudspeaker business for 2 reasons. One, I was rired of doing it. Two, people are so ignorant of high fidelity now it's absolutely incredible. MP3 has taken over the world and it sounds terrible. Not only that, but no one cares. You can compare CD verses MP3 and they'll say they can hear the difference but it doesn't matter to them. What they want most is an ipod they can load up with 10,000 songs to carry along. A quality stereo is pretty large and requires you to sit still to listen. No one wants to sit still. They want music blasting in their ears while they drive, work, walk and read. People refuse to stay home even a few hours so a traditional stereo is useless to them.
If you haven't, it would be interesting for you to read up on how compression algorithms like MP3 actually work. I could probably answer any questions you might have if something got confusing. I'd be happy to. Once you understand a majority of the actual music is REMOVED from a MP3 you'll see why it sounds bad.
I don't know if you have access to a state of the art vinyl record player system but you should listen to one if possible. Although incredibly expensive (a good turntable alone is about $5K and up) you'll hear the same difference between it and a CD as you do between a CD and a MP3. Digital music doesn't hold a candle to analog if you have top quality records and not the stamped out trash we bought in the 70's. Most CDs sound much better than those although plenty of people would disagree with me.
Again, I have to concur. I'm knowledgeable enough about the MP3 process to understand it a bit, enough to not be surprised by the losses I notice. What got me is how using iTunes as the player in the Mac rendered the CD sound to crap-I should see if I can find a better player to install in the laptop-it just has the software the school installed.
ReplyDeleteI have some vinyl afficianados among my friends and have heard the difference! I'll just never be able to afford it. Thankfully, a well-engineered CD is sufficiently good that I can enjoy it-unlike the crappy snipped-and-clipped MP3 files. I suppose it is all a matter of trade-offs, but I for one do not care to tote 10K songs around-I don't even own an MP3 player-I pretty much like to sit down and LISTEN to my music!
People live with ipods stuck in their ears because it allows them to zone out the world. They can ignore everything around them. It's a socially acceptable way to be rude as hell like yapping on a cell phone in public places. These people are saying "my life is too important to bother with you so I'm going to act like you aren't there. I can't legally kill you without going to jail so the next best thing is pretend you don't exist"
ReplyDeleteThese people's lives are trivial nonsense. Nothing they do means crap to anyone but themselves and they are so meaningless they don't count. Seeing them pretend to be important and too good to acknowledge those around them is rather funny except they crash into you on the road while they're busy zoning out in the car.
While I can stand a bit of that, such as listening to a woman describing her yeast infection in a Walgreen's on a phone to her sister who's had a lot of them, due to her rampant promiscuity (all information I obtained for free! by listening in while I merely tried to find the products I wanted) what makes me crazy is people on the phone whilst merging in rush hour traffic, all of us in steel cages going 60 mph or better! WHAT IS SO F*CKING IMPORTANT that you can't take a minute to MERGE without distraction...I sometimes count people in cars with their left hands up to their heads on my drive home-ONE DAY I COUNTED FIFTEEN and I only have a 10 minute commute!
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I don't care what happens to them, once I navigate past them! That's as politely as I can put it! And I know most of my siblings are guilty of this! For god's sake, just get home already! There will be plenty of time to make phone calls! !!!!!!!(Look, you even made me use excessive exclamation marks!)