Music CDs came out in the 80s and we still can't replicate their quality?

[coonmanx]

I think there's a place for both. I buy CDs and LPs now for music that I really love and where I think very high replay value is there, for either new music or old. I use Spotify and Amazon to continually find new music and go deeper into artists I like. It's a surfeit of riches, really. In my mid-60s, I like my music library size and don't really want to grow it significantly, so I'm down to about 30 hardcopy purchases a year.

I met a guy at the local record shop who went from 500 LPs in 2005 to 12,000 today by his estimate. He was buying about 15 albums yesterday to add to that, probably his normal weekend buy rate. So that's about $150 a week to add to the "collection". The last time he moved, he said it took a month and half to move all the albums. Ugh! Not for me. There is a place to get off the Merry-Go-Round of buying more & more, everyone just has to find a spot they can live with...

I use free internet radio to find new music. Just bought a new Albert Castiglia CD becuase I first heard a song of his on the internet radio station that I was listening to...

 

[b7676]

I principally blame the storage cartel for keeping mb priced like gb for decades, and delivering consumers spinning platters guaranteed to quickly fail. Lesser so, telecom which kept dsl speed for profit and car head unit oems with no reason to support 'other' codecs.
Now that the file structure concept and removable storage, or the usb interface is past public imagination (do androids dream of usbc ports?) solid state finally becomes lowest cost per gb and is reasonably durable. Also I have mused that Sony spoilt consumers by being so good, ubiquitous, and cheap.
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Musicians owning the record label is the way master quality lossless becomes a widely circulated copy. No one else is interested to translate you sitting with the mixing engineer. 'Music Illusion' is payed deference like fishtank water by most.

Marketing the recapitalization of music sales is clearly the 'better mousetrap', so the consumer of music-as-a-service is really the license holder and the userbase is the product. MaaS therefore will come and go like webbrowsers. A higher perceived quality of file will not ever compare to the impact of user interface experience & marketing.

 

[Pancreas]

You are paying too much if a CD costs $20. They can be had for much cheaper than that these days.

thats why i said back in the 90s lol thats how they cost back then

 

[sergeauckland]

I am much more exercised over why CDs bought in the 1980s sound so much better than the 'Remastered' versions or anything recorded in the last 15-20 years.
CDs used to be the most transparent source, 'nothing' between the master tape as signed off by the artist/producer and the listener. Mastering was pretty much a 1:1 copy converting the tape into glass for CD pressing.

Then, people started mucking about with the dynamic range, and squashing everything into the last 3dB.

Why do my original 1980s Dire Straights CDs sound hugely better than the current masterings?
Why do my early Pink Floyd CDs sound so much better than the current masterings?

Both of these even have headroom left (unnecessarily, I accept) under 0dBFS, the sweet old-fashioned things!

Of more modern recordings, even those that won awards, like the Alison Krauss / Robert Plant CDs sound utterly dire.

There are still people about who master CDs well, I buy a fair few CDs from BGO (Beat Goes On) who license classic recordings and reissue them. I don't see the sort of crushing limiting and horrible EQ common elsewhere, but then BGO are a tiny label for reissues only, no original recordings.

Rant over!

S.

 

[Doodski]

How is this possible?

Where you have to be an audiophile, pay niche streaming services, buy high grade FLAC compatible equipment, etc just to replicate lossless quality

We went backwards on this crap, where lossless is now a selling term? when is just 80s technology

What happen to just having a discman?

What happened to boombox disc players?

We went backwards from high quality cds to everyone downloading crap mp3s from torrent, limewire, or buying mp3 files off amazon, etc to crappy streaming services that are not really lossless except for a couple ones that of course charge more for the joy

and to manufacturers exploiting this to create and sell overpriced music players, upcharge for streaming services, overrated devices, etc just to replicate what could be done in the 90s with a $20 cd and a $50 discman or $100 boombox

bruh

I have compared decent recordings on MP3, CD and flac and I could not differentiate them apart. I have one flac file that is 128MB and 2666 kbps and it does sound a little better but the others are a not.

 

[Doodski]

with spotify, apple music, etc you're just renting, thats the norm nowadays

youre renting cars as many people lease more than finance nowadays, you're renting movies, tv shows through netflix, disney, amazon video

youre renting storage on apple cloud, google drive, icloud, onedrive, etc

youre renting shipping services as amazon prime

youre renting ad free experiences like youtube red, etc

99% of phone apps now are subscription based, youre renting apps

You're renting computer sofware like office, security suites, antiviruses, VPNs

youre renting game purchases online

Try to relax a bit and breath it all in. It is more productive and accessible for sure. Being schitzO about services when being on a monthly basis is a bit like voting with your money is futile. You get to chose who gets some and make sure somebody gets some of it.

 

[Doodski]

I’m glad I don’t own the CD of every track I ever listened to on Spotify.

Me too in that I have ~3200 favorites on YouTube for music videos. If I had to stock those CDs it would be horrible.

 

[Mart68]

Me too in that I have ~3200 favorites on YouTube for music videos. If I had to stock those CDs it would be horrible.

I still live in an age before MTV

 

[Doodski]

I still live in an age before MTV

Haha. You got to see my video favorites...LoL. I grew up with a satellite dish and MTV playing all day everyday in the early and mid 80s.

 

[Mart68]

Haha. You got to see my video favorites...LoL. I grew up with a satellite dish and MTV playing all day everyday in the early and mid 80s.

lol by the time my father got cable I'd left home. In fact I think he waited for me to leave before subscribing.

I do want to see your 80s video favourites though. It better include Twisted Sister 'We're Not Going To Take It.'

 

[Doodski]

lol by the time my father got cable I'd left home. In fact I think he waited for me to leave before subscribing.

I do want to see your 80s video favourites though. It better include Twisted Sister 'We're Not Going To Take It.'

It does include Twisted Sister. With the long intro of the stern father. LoL. My father was not like that. I had to work hard but not berated like that.

 

[Tatr76]

Lossless is great and have huge library I have ripped from cd's or buy. Love thrifting cd's in second hand from shops for pennies or buy new to help artists like on bandcamp. Still play them but more often just stream ripped from my digital library. But Mp3's still was a revelation to me and listened to them when first popular, going from skipping cd player to early ipod with huge library in small player when out and about was liberating and feel the same about streaming and a phone.