Does it annoy you that CD and MP3 sound quality sucks?

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NotRealBrianWilson
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30 Jan 2009, 6:23 pm

twoshots wrote:
ValMikeSmith wrote:
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Vinyl is no better as it is even worse than CD. Vinyl has superiority with smaller ensembles while CDs have superiority with larger ensembles. Vinyl is one of the reasons why we ditched the orchestras of the 19th century in the first place.


Original "Vinyl" type records were not electric, but wind-up. Orchestras were the only thing loud enough to record on them in mass production before electric amplifiers were invented. Those discs spun more than twice as fast as later electric turntables.

Digital sound can never exceed the quality of original Analog because Analog has an INFINITE sampling rate and NO DATA LOSS FROM DIGITAL COMPRESSION.

I like this reasoning. Ergo, VHS > DVD?


No, I don't believe it is. There was never any doubt that DVD was supiror to VHS. Even at it's very best (eg the Fox's UK edition of "Moulin Rouge") regarding picture resolution VHS could never make full use of even a standard 4:3 TV's capabilities.

twoshots wrote:
Humans have a finite ability to discern sounds. I am highly skeptical that Vinyl is intrinsically superior to CDs in terms of accuracy.


Well, me too. But for sound quality give me a nice 1971 RCA Dynagroove pressing of David Bowie's "Hunky Dury" over any CD edition any day. That said, the 1998 CD of his "Young Americans" album sounds much better than it's vinyl equivelant, so swings and roundabouts etc...


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Keith
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30 Jan 2009, 6:33 pm

Has anyone even bothered to listen to some audio with an equaliser or even use some oxygen free wires? The loss of quality can be lost through drag as the signals get slowed down by the oxygen in the cables. I now use a stereo system which lets me go 33% higher in volume compared to my last speaker set up. Was annoying watching videos on DVD though as I had to have the volume really high just to listen to it at normal volume. Unfortunately the static could also be heard too...

I encode to 192Kbps in MP3, but I would prefer to use analogue over digital as the more I see the results of digital, the more I am turned off by the idea. No in-between and that's the problem, the world is in analogue; are we that bothered about getting some of the detail through quickly at a compromise?



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31 Jan 2009, 7:16 am

Keith wrote:
Has anyone even bothered to listen to some audio with an equaliser or even use some oxygen free wires? The loss of quality can be lost through drag as the signals get slowed down by the oxygen in the cables. I now use a stereo system which lets me go 33% higher in volume compared to my last speaker set up. Was annoying watching videos on DVD though as I had to have the volume really high just to listen to it at normal volume. Unfortunately the static could also be heard too...


I use a VST parametric EQ for everything that I listen to on my computer instead of the lousy graphic EQ's supplied with many MP3 players. As far as cabling is concerned, the advantages of O2 free cabling only really only comes into play when you have really long cable runs, where you want to keep signal degradation via line resistance as low as possible. With short cable runs, O2 cables are pretty much redundant, and more or less marketing hype by the cable manufacturers. -- I would assume that the improved S/N ratio that your hearing is more a result of using a higher end soundcard with better D/A conversion, Op Amps, as well as better RFI shielding, (Computers as you probably know produce a LOT of RFI) rather than the expensive O2 free cables that you're using.

Furthermore, you will notice a major increase in sound quality when you encode your MP3 files at 320 kb/s rather than 192 kb/s.


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Eggman
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31 Jan 2009, 3:46 pm

try archive quaklity ripping


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TheSpecialKid
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31 Jan 2009, 7:14 pm

Fogman wrote:
Keith wrote:
Has anyone even bothered to listen to some audio with an equaliser or even use some oxygen free wires? The loss of quality can be lost through drag as the signals get slowed down by the oxygen in the cables. I now use a stereo system which lets me go 33% higher in volume compared to my last speaker set up. Was annoying watching videos on DVD though as I had to have the volume really high just to listen to it at normal volume. Unfortunately the static could also be heard too...


I use a VST parametric EQ for everything that I listen to on my computer instead of the lousy graphic EQ's supplied with many MP3 players. As far as cabling is concerned, the advantages of O2 free cabling only really only comes into play when you have really long cable runs, where you want to keep signal degradation via line resistance as low as possible. With short cable runs, O2 cables are pretty much redundant, and more or less marketing hype by the cable manufacturers. -- I would assume that the improved S/N ratio that your hearing is more a result of using a higher end soundcard with better D/A conversion, Op Amps, as well as better RFI shielding, (Computers as you probably know produce a LOT of RFI) rather than the expensive O2 free cables that you're using.

Furthermore, you will notice a major increase in sound quality when you encode your MP3 files at 320 kb/s rather than 192 kb/s.



See that was excatly my point!... Well written... (Of cause everyone who really bothers about music have a real equalizer.)



Enigmatic_Oddity
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01 Feb 2009, 4:27 am

I find that the difference between good and poor recordings have less to do with the format they're on and more to do with the people involved in producing the recordings.



spockezri
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02 Feb 2009, 10:21 am

marshall wrote:
I’m very detail oriented when it comes to music. I sometimes like to concentrate on small background sounds that add to the mood. It bothers me that recordings are so low quality these days. I find that when there’s too many distinct instruments/sounds layered together in a musical piece the sounds will start to bleed together into a mush and lose their richness. Does this bother anyone else?

MP3 at high volume = tinny crappy song


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