High Definition Audio.
 

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , Eiron
wrote:


One annoying thing about MP3 is that files cannot be seamlessly linked.
As many of my albums do not have a period of silence between tracks I
prefer not to have one inserted by the player. The only solution I have
found so far is to copy a time range spanning the required multiple
tracks from the CD using Goldwave or similar.

I can't see any inherent reason why it is impossible for playing devices
to
play sequential mp3 files with no gap. Presumably the problem is that none
of them bother to do so as the designers/programers presume 'tracks' and
'songs' not movements or sections from a longer work where they may be no
gap in the music.

Not only that, there are portable MP3 players that avoid the gap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapless_playback

High Definition Audio.
 

Arny Krueger wrote:

No, that is an *assertion* that CD succeeded as a medium chiefly because
of its superior sound quality. I'm aware you think that. I was asking
*why* you think that.

I've got ears and 37 years of experience listening to LPs and analog tape
because there was no viable option.

Not only that, but I was around to see how high end audio dealers and
ragazines fabricated the myth of LP sonic superiority let alone parity, and
CD acceptance based primarily on convenience.

That doesn't answer the question.

I think that CD succeeded mostly because CDs were more convenient than
the existing alternatives: easier to store, play and look after, more
durable, and so on.

OK, so you bought the myth.

What myth?

I don't think that they succeeded because of superior sound quality,

Yet, that is their most obvious attribute.

To some people. To most people, I don't think it makes much difference.
If it did, the CD wouldn't now be losing out to lower-quality
(heavily-compressed, played on poorer equipment) but much more
convenient formats.

If quality were what made the difference, the convenient compact
cassette would not have taken the place of 1/4" tape running at four
times its speed.

Minidisc was (briefly) successful while it proved to be more convenient
than alternatives, but lost out when that advantage disappeared. Neither
its success nor its eclipse were related to the quality of its sound
related to other formats.

because all the evidence is that before and since the advent of CD the
vast majority of people are quite evidently happy listening to
appalling-reproduced sound, whether it's coming from over-driven PA
systems, badly-tuned radios, scratched records and rubbishy record
players, warbling cassettes or hideously-compressed MP3 files.

Your account of the evidence leaves a lot to be desired.

The evidence is all around. You only need to go anywhere music's being
played to hear it for yourself.

But you can't blame that on the CD.

Who's blaming anything on CDs?

I'm not even talking about the sound quality of CD, or indeed anything
else. The point I'm making is that most people don't seem to care very
much about sound quality, of anything, and that convenience rather than
sound quality is largely what makes a format a success.

You have still failed to provide any kind of reason for believing that
CD's superior sound quality is what made it a success. All you do is
keep repeating your assertion. On the other hand, I've given several
reasons to believe that what appears to determine the success of a
format is convenience:

* the very poor sound quality that most people seem to be
satisfied with

* the fact that new more convenient formats of poorer quality are
displacing CD as a format

* the fact that generally, convenience, not sound quality,
determines the success of a format

Daniele
--
Thanks to a non-paying bidder, the world has an amazing second chance
to own a nearly immaculate BMW C1 (Cardiff, UK). Lucky world!

http://search.ebay.co.uk/220356804658

High Definition Audio.
 

On 2009-02-09, Eiron wrote:
One annoying thing about MP3 is that files cannot be seamlessly linked.
As many of my albums do not have a period of silence between tracks
I prefer not to have one inserted by the player.

That's also my current pet hate with MP3 players. For example, it
interrupts through-composed opera intolerably.

It's certainly possible to encode MP3s with a "--nogap" setting (LAME)
but the number of MP3 players which will reproduce this properly is
very limited. I hope more will appear on the market soon.

The only solution I have found so far is to copy a time range spanning
the required multiple tracks from the CD using Goldwave or similar.

Yes. I run a custom script to assemble tracks for the same reasons.

--
John Phillips

High Definition Audio.
 

"D.M. Procida" wrote in
message
...
Arny Krueger wrote:

No, that is an *assertion* that CD succeeded as a medium chiefly
because
of its superior sound quality. I'm aware you think that. I was asking
*why* you think that.

I've got ears and 37 years of experience listening to LPs and analog tape
because there was no viable option.

Not only that, but I was around to see how high end audio dealers and
ragazines fabricated the myth of LP sonic superiority let alone parity,
and
CD acceptance based primarily on convenience.

That doesn't answer the question.

Sure it does. I think that CD succeeded chiefly because of its sound quality
because its the improvement in sound quality is its most widely perceived
benefit.

I think that CD succeeded mostly because CDs were more convenient than
the existing alternatives: easier to store, play and look after, more
durable, and so on.

OK, so you bought the myth.

What myth?

What you said, above.

I don't think that they succeeded because of superior sound quality,

Yet, that is their most obvious attribute.

To some people.

To most people.

To most people, I don't think it makes much difference.

Prove it.

If it did, the CD wouldn't now be losing out to lower-quality
(heavily-compressed, played on poorer equipment) but much more
convenient formats.

Bad logic. Even the commonly-used compressed formats are perceived by most
people as sounding better than LPs or cassettes as they are likely to
experience them.

For example, all other things being equal, a given CD will sound better on a
boombox than the corresponding cassette tape. Similarly, a given CD will
sound better than the corresponding LP on a low quality player that has both
LP and CD facilities (they exist!). As you move up the quality scale, the
casette will never come close, but the LP might get within a country mile.

If quality were what made the difference, the convenient compact
cassette would not have taken the place of 1/4" tape running at four
times its speed.

1/4" tape was never effectively marketed. It was too expensive to make in
genral. It could sound pretty good at 7 1/2 ips, but most recently and most
widely it was marketed at 3 3/4 ips to make it more economical to produce
and sell, which frankly didn't sound as good as a Dolby cassette.

Minidisc was (briefly) successful while it proved to be more convenient
than alternatives, but lost out when that advantage disappeared. Neither
its success nor its eclipse were related to the quality of its sound
related to other formats.

Minidisc was never effectively marketed in the US. I still have a MD player
someplace and it was a bust.

because all the evidence is that before and since the advent of CD the
vast majority of people are quite evidently happy listening to
appalling-reproduced sound, whether it's coming from over-driven PA
systems, badly-tuned radios, scratched records and rubbishy record
players, warbling cassettes or hideously-compressed MP3 files.

Your account of the evidence leaves a lot to be desired.

The evidence is all around.

Wrong. I explain this below. I'm not going to repeat myself because.

You only need to go anywhere music's being played to hear it for
yourself.

Been there done that.

But you can't blame that on the CD.

Who's blaming anything on CDs?

I think you need to read your own paragraph. You say "since the advent of
CD". My counter argument is most of the issues you raise are unchanged by
the "advent of the CD:.

I'm not even talking about the sound quality of CD, or indeed anything
else. The point I'm making is that most people don't seem to care very
much about sound quality, of anything, and that convenience rather than
sound quality is largely what makes a format a success.

I see plenty of evidencen that people will migrate in the direction of
better sound quality provided that obtaining that improved sound quality
isn't that difficult. If you're going to the store to buy a recording and
your choice is the CD, LP, or tape we already know from real world
experience what people will buy - they will buy the CD even at a far higher
price. That was the real world during much of the 1980s.

You have still failed to provide any kind of reason for believing that
CD's superior sound quality is what made it a success.

Dimissal on your part is not failure on my part.

All you do is keep repeating your assertion.

And you're not?

On the other hand, I've given several
reasons to believe that what appears to determine the success of a
format is convenience:

* the very poor sound quality that most people seem to be
satisfied with

Asked and answered.

* the fact that new more convenient formats of poorer quality are
displacing CD as a format

Now you are making the logical mistake of conflating then and now. You
started out talking about why the CD succeeded 25 years ago, and now you are
talking about a completely different issue that relates to what is happening
25 years later.

Another point that you miss is that the actual compressed files that people
are buying from iTunes etc., still sound better than LPs or cassettes,
especially given the kind of LP and cassette players that most people are
familiar with.

If you go to high end LP and cassette players, the CD generally still sounds
better, all other things being equal.

Furthermore, the files people are downloading from iTunes etc., aren't all
that bad. In blind tests, even critical listeners can't reliably hear the
difference in a blind test. The MP3 and AAC files that people are
downloading from iTunes etc sound worlds better than cassettes played on any
player, and sound better than LPs played on the players that most people are
familiar with.

Another point that you are missing is that the sound quality of LPs and
cassettes are far, far, far more impacted by being played on cheap player
mechanisms than CDs.

* the fact that generally, convenience, not sound quality,
determines the success of a format

Not a fact, an opinion.

In the end its a combination of convenience and sound quality. What people
are looking for is adequate sound quality in their view. Once the sound
quality is adequate in their view, then they will go for improvements in
convenience.

High Definition Audio.
 

In article
,
D.M. Procida wrote:
I think that the convenience of the CD, rather than its sound quality,
has been the major factor in its success.

At first many complained you couldn't get the same blurb on them as an LP.
Or as appealing a cover.

I don't think people are that bothered about sound quality on the whole.

Oh c'mon. The fact they were said to be near indestructible was a big
selling point. Very few liked the cracks and pops off vinyl.

When they first arrived, there were no portables or car units, so they
replaced the record deck in a Hi-Fi installation - so physical convenience
wasn't much of an issue.

--
*Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

High Definition Audio.
 

In article ,
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

In article
,
D.M. Procida wrote:
I think that the convenience of the CD, rather than its sound quality,
has been the major factor in its success.

At first many complained you couldn't get the same blurb on them as an LP.
Or as appealing a cover.

I don't think people are that bothered about sound quality on the whole.

Oh c'mon. The fact they were said to be near indestructible was a big
selling point. Very few liked the cracks and pops off vinyl.

When they first arrived, there were no portables or car units, so they
replaced the record deck in a Hi-Fi installation - so physical convenience
wasn't much of an issue.

Sales didn't take off until portables were available and lps disappeared
from store shelves.

Sound was still a selling point, of course.

Stephen

High Definition Audio.
 

"MiNe 109"
D.M. Procida

Oh c'mon. The fact they were said to be near indestructible was a big
selling point. Very few liked the cracks and pops off vinyl.

When they first arrived, there were no portables or car units, so they
replaced the record deck in a Hi-Fi installation - so physical
convenience
wasn't much of an issue.

Sales didn't take off until portables were available and lps disappeared
from store shelves.


** When the first CD players appeared in hi-fi stores in Sydney ( May
83) - there were * NO * discs available to play on them !! After a week,
a few CD titles turned up in an import record store. There were then only a
couple of CD pressing plants operating in the world and so all discs sold
here were imported.

The first CD players were very expensive, so the ONLY initial buyers were
folk with good hi-fi systems keen to try this new marvel. Within about a
year or so the number of CD titles available was in the thousands and
cheaper, more basic players began to appear.

My impression was that the record industry was *very keen* that CDs take
over for THEIR CONVENIENCE - as CD discs were cheap to make, took up
far less storage space, were cheaper to freight anywhere, had perfect
consistency sample to sample, were not easily damaged in transit nor subject
to problems like warping. The rate of customer returns of CDs was very low.
All this saved everyone involved lots of time and cost.

The appearance of hand held players had almost no effect on CD sales as
their numbers were relatively tiny - same goes for in-car CD players.

The eventual appearance of portable music centres incorporating CD players
made a big difference, by-passing the need to own a hi-fi system with
separate CD player. The first generation of these were also fitted with
cassette players and allowed copying of CDs to cassette. The previous
assumed link between CDs and genuine hi-fi sound was now broken which
finally made CDs into a mass market format.



...... Phil

High Definition Audio.
 

"MiNe 109" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

In article
,
D.M. Procida wrote:
I think that the convenience of the CD, rather than its sound quality,
has been the major factor in its success.

At first many complained you couldn't get the same blurb on them as an
LP.
Or as appealing a cover.

I don't think people are that bothered about sound quality on the
whole.

Oh c'mon. The fact they were said to be near indestructible was a big
selling point. Very few liked the cracks and pops off vinyl.

The absence of cracks and pops off of vinyl was a major sound quality
selling point for CDs.

When they first arrived, there were no portables or car units, so they
replaced the record deck in a Hi-Fi installation - so physical
convenience
wasn't much of an issue.

Sales didn't take off until portables were available

Sales took off immediately. Portables were not available immediately.

and lps disappeared from store shelves.

LPs disappeared as a consequence of competition for store space.

Sound was still a selling point, of course.

High Definition Audio.
 

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

I don't think people are that bothered about sound quality on the whole.

Oh c'mon. The fact they were said to be near indestructible was a big
selling point.

Exactly - that's part of convenience rather than sound quality.
Treatment that would ruin an LP won't damage a CD. You can let a four-
year-old use an expensive CD player.

Daniele
--
Thanks to a non-paying bidder, the world has an amazing second chance
to own a nearly immaculate BMW C1 (Cardiff, UK). Lucky world!

http://search.ebay.co.uk/220356804658

High Definition Audio.
 

In article ,
Jim Lesurf wrote:
However I do prefer commercial CD to CDR/W as I suspect it will prove
more physically durable.

Absolutely. Some of my earliest CDRs no longer play or have developed
faults. I've not had a commercial CD fail - despite having CD from quite
early on, although there are reports of this.

--
*Why are a wise man and a wise guy opposites?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.