CD Availability Nearing It's End And The Consequences

[Rexp]

The indroduction of CD was a crime against humanity - good riddance! 

[Rexp]

Sure, plenty of folks like CD, I just don't take audio advice from them. I'd also strongly advise any nooby reading this not to take audio advice from anyone who doesn't run an analog source. 

[Rexp]

6 hours ago, TubeLover said:

I owned turntables and vinyl based systems exclusively from 1968 through 1990, and have been involved with vinyl in one way or another, for 50 years? How about you? 

 

JC

I only got into digital in the 90's when my hi-end store sold both CD Players and Turntables. About a year in, I realized I wasn't spending as much time listening to music and figured it was because I was doing demos for clients, but in fact the real reason was I was listening to CD's. Soon after I closed the store, as I couldn't justify selling CD Players any longer. 

[Rexp]

6 hours ago, TubeLover said:

I truly never thought it was possible that this discussion would yield a Sandy Posey reference. Well Done. 

And yes, the loss to the millennial generation of what an "album" is, and means is very sad. Perhaps a sing that they simply don't care about art, the view of the artists in creating a whole suite of music, and only want a quick hit from a single song that caught their ear. The ADD generation indeed.

 

JC

You're blaming the younger generation for the sins of the record labels and audio industry. 

[Rexp]

9 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

I 99% quit my audiophile hobby back in the late 80s because CDs didn't sound 'right' to me, and I didn't want to mess around with turtables & ticks/pops anymore.  I gave up because CDs sounded so bad -- but the problem wasn't witih 'CDs', 'digital' or anything WRT the transport.  The problem was with the demonically bad mastering, which was plausible, but still terrible because it sucked people in.  It got people used to the woody midrange, the swishy/compressed highs, and distorrted lows.  But, those defects were NOT because of digital by itself as vinyl could sound just as bad, if they mastered the vinyl in the same way as CDs had been all along.

 

John

 

Most digital recording & mastering still sucks. 

[Rexp]

5 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

Digital mastering AND vinyl that uses the same mastering -- which is more and more, does suck.  That is the WHOLE REASON fo rmy project.  (Yes, I have heard/seen even have rips of FeralA vinyl.)

 

My project has sometimes gone slowly, because reverse engineering a proprietary design can be tricky -- ask the most picky audiophles now, the FeralA decoding is coming along very nicely -- maybe never perfect though, unless the recording wasnt molested.  Unmolested FeralA recordings (that is, just encoded from the DolbyA tape) -- they can be fantastic.  The decoded copy of  'Crime of the Century' is probably as good as the best vinyl now, without the vinyl impairments.

John

 

As I already have vinyl copies of the old stuff, I'm more interested in what you can do for modern recordings. 

[Rexp]

3 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

Some modern recordings are 'interesting'.   On a lark, I tried decoding Taylor Swift's 'Shake it Off' and Carly Rae Jepsen 'Call me Maybe", and oddly they decode cleanly with no artefects.  WTF...  Are they using feralA now for 'the expected sound'?

 

John

 

Shake if off, sounds awful, are you saying you got it to sound good? 

[Rexp]

Probably beyond help then.. 

[Rexp]

5 hours ago, SJK said:

I disagree.  I played records and avoided CD players for a long time, and I suspect that a lot of the issues were with the CD players themselves rather than the sound quality of the disc.

 

Yes, I understand and respect John Dyson's opinion - but he was in the enviable position of hearing it recorded and then hearing how the CD sounded; for most of us only the latter is possible.

 

I never bought into "perfect sound forever", but you have to admit the CD did one thing that was never possible until then.  It made music portable.  You could take it to the beach, play it in the car, give your favorite track to your wedding DJ (fill in your choice here). 

 

So many things that the CD provided - it made the music quality the same every time and, as you could afford better gear it rose to the occasion, or as much as it was able to.  

 

I still buy CDs, and that with a response to the OP.  For any new music I look to HDTracks first, and then give that same big sigh, asking myself "When, when will they realize that nobody is going to buy an album for $24.99?"

 

Then I look on Amazon and buy the CD for much less than that.  Looking at my bin of CDs that I will eventually send to my brother, I see a bunch of things that I can't get except on CD, things like the Nels Cline Singers or Bill Nelson's Whimsy.  

 

And if it doesn't sound as wonderful and as magical as some might like?  To me, it's about the music.  If I can only get in on CD, I would rather that than not at all.

Like I said, plenty of folks like (or can tolerate) CD. I just wish it was invented in the first place. 

[Rexp]

Some recollections from one of the engineers who created CD:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120324185222/http://www.exp-math.uni-essen.de/~immink/pdf/beethoven.htm

[Rexp]

So seems like CD Players are capable of good sound afterall.. You just need to spend 100k according to this review:

 

http://www.theaudiobeat.com/equipment/wadax_atlantis.htm