High Definition Audio.
 

"Rob" wrote in message
m...

5. Sound. Few really knew what that 'digital' meant in terms of enjoying
listening to music.

Their own ears told the story when digital became readily available.

We were told it was better because it was digital, and that really was an
end to it.

People had previously been told that many other things were better such as
Dolby cassettes, but none were as much better, and none had as much staying
power. Just being told that something is better does not produce dramatic
long-term sales trends like the CD hs enjoyed. The failure of SCAD and DVD-A
are recent examples of that.

Of course, there were tangible advantages, such as less crackle and pop,
but quite how much this ever got in the way of enjoying music was never
made clear.

Those still-unsolved issues with the LP were clearly audible and very clear
to every music lover. There was a major market composed of record cleaners,
for example.

And hindsight has revealed that in many cases we were sold a pup - the
digital transcription was often a mess,

There were a few messy digital transcriptions, but the vast majority were
soncially advantageous, as the booming sales for CD versions of LP titles
clearly shows.

and the scramble for 'remasters' had begun.

CD versions of LPs had a massive market that lasted for a decade or more.
This was all about sound quality.

I think your version is skewed by your experience in the US. Perhaps you
were (are?) more into 'high fidelity'?

The fact that the LP market slid to less than 1% of the CD market was all
about sound quality. The fact that consumers rejected SACD and DVD-A which
had negligable sound quality advantages shows how sensitive they are to the
sound quality advantage of the CD over the LP and cassette, as a general
rule.

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Arny Krueger wrote:

"D.M. Procida" wrote in
message
...

It's quite true that CD doesn't suffer from vinyl's pops and crackles,
and I'm pretty sure most people didn't actively like the latter.

You've got that right! Both coutns.

However, I am far from convinced that they were that bothered about
them,

You wouldn't be if you had been around in those days.

I was around. What's more, those days are still around, every time
someone plays an LP.

or indeed about most sonic defects.

Why do you think that? That people are tolerating the (relatively small)
audible flaws in MP3s proves nothing, because the flaws in legacy media (LP,
consumer analog tape) was far more audible.

I think it for the reasons I've already given: wherever you go, people
are listening to very badly-distorted sound, as they have done for
decades, without any sign that they notice a problem.

I don't actively enjoy vinyl's pops and crackles, but I don't mind them
that much. My brain seems to tune them out, unless they're very bad. The
same goes for tape hiss. I can hear it if I listen for it, but unless
it's excessive, it gets tuned out. In fact, the more I listen to the
music, the less I hear those defects.

On the other hand, I strongly dislike MP3s compression, and in
particular the way it can turn things like cymbals into an undefined
mmssssshhhhhh sound. And in the case of MP3, the more carefully I listen
the more I hear the distortion and the more it spoils the music.

Sonic defects that are laid over the sound (such as vinyl surface noise,
tape hiss) I find easy to ignore.

Those that distort the sounds themselves (MP3 compression, the glassy
distortion of a badly-tracked record) I find much more unpleasant, and I
remain bewildered at the boundless ability of other people to tolerate
them.

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

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Arny Krueger wrote:

The fact that consumers rejected SACD and DVD-A which had negligable sound
quality advantages shows how sensitive they are to the sound quality
advantage of the CD over the LP and cassette, as a general rule.

That's a complete non-sequitur. It actually made me laugh out loud.

You can't just make assert any old two factual claims and then join them
up with words like "because" or "it shows".

You need to join them up with reasoning and evidence, not by randomly
inserting the words that people who do have some kind of grasp of
logical form tend to use when asserting connections.

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

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"D.M. Procida" wrote in
message
...

Because the selling point you mentioned was their indestructability -
which obviously isn't why *brand new* vinyl has pops and crackles.

It's quite true that CD doesn't suffer from vinyl's pops and crackles,
and I'm pretty sure most people didn't actively like the latter.
However, I am far from convinced that they were that bothered about
them, or indeed about most sonic defects.


This does seem to me to be a particularly pointless argument. Obviously
people differ in what matters to them. No doubt some switched to CD
primarily for reasons of convenience (though since CDs were twice the price
of equivalent LPs in the early years it was an expensive convenience) whilst
others did so primarily for reasons of sound quality. Who is to say how much
of each was important to what proportion of the buying public?, the data
simply doesn't exist. Some people will clearly put up with a good deal of
"snap, crackle and pop", whilst to me it was enough to stop me buying LPs
even before CDs became available.

David.

High Definition Audio.
 

"D.M. Procida" wrote in
message
...


I don't actively enjoy vinyl's pops and crackles, but I don't mind them
that much. My brain seems to tune them out, unless they're very bad. The
same goes for tape hiss. I can hear it if I listen for it, but unless
it's excessive, it gets tuned out. In fact, the more I listen to the
music, the less I hear those defects.

and:

And in the case of MP3, the more carefully I listen
the more I hear the distortion and the more it spoils the music.

Indeed. The more you listen to the music the less you hear the defects, the
more carefully you listen to the distortion the more it spoils the music,
'twas always thus.


On the other hand, I strongly dislike MP3s compression, and in
particular the way it can turn things like cymbals into an undefined
mmssssshhhhhh sound.

Analogue tape does the same thing.

Sonic defects that are laid over the sound (such as vinyl surface noise,
tape hiss) I find easy to ignore.

Those that distort the sounds themselves (MP3 compression, the glassy
distortion of a badly-tracked record) I find much more unpleasant, and I
remain bewildered at the boundless ability of other people to tolerate
them.


There's a lot that bewilders me about other people's behaviour and beliefs.

David.

High Definition Audio.
 

"Eiron" wrote in message
...
Rob wrote:
Don Pearce wrote:
[...]

In the past the classical listener was always the early adopter,
driving the technology forwards. That situation existed up to and
including the CD. But the classical listener is generally a little
more intelligent and canny than other music followers, and since the
trend moved away from increasing quality, he has refused to follow.
The early adopters now are generally children listening to highly
compressed pop.


Where on earth do you get hold of the notion that people (men?) who
listen to classical music are 'more intelligent and canny' than other
music genre followers?!

Baroque and Renaissance music is the thing.
The 'dumbing down' started in the late eighteenth century. :-)


Excellent, Eiron, excellent:-)))

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In article , Bob Latham
wrote:
In article , Arny Krueger
wrote:

That people are tolerating the (relatively small) audible flaws in
MP3s proves nothing, because the flaws in legacy media (LP, consumer
analog tape) was far more audible.

I have very limited experience of mp3 players but I have on occasion had
friend's players wired into my Hi-Fi. I have to say I found them
worryingly disappointing and obviously inferior to CD.

This may depend on what you use as an 'mp3 player' and the details of the
mp3 recordings being played. My introduction to using mp3 was the free
downloads the Concertegbouw made available last year. These were 384kbps
and can I play them using machines like the Rega Apollo. Doing this, they
sound fairly good. I also converted them to LPCM so I could easily make
tracks of the movements. I don't know I could tell them from a decent
commercial CDA.

However if I play some of the low rate net radio stations they do sound
poor, and even some at 256kbps show up audible problems.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Change 'noise' to 'jcgl' if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

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On Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:18:20 +0000 (GMT), Jim Lesurf
wrote:

In article , Bob Latham
wrote:
In article , Arny Krueger
wrote:

That people are tolerating the (relatively small) audible flaws in
MP3s proves nothing, because the flaws in legacy media (LP, consumer
analog tape) was far more audible.

I have very limited experience of mp3 players but I have on occasion had
friend's players wired into my Hi-Fi. I have to say I found them
worryingly disappointing and obviously inferior to CD.

This may depend on what you use as an 'mp3 player' and the details of the
mp3 recordings being played. My introduction to using mp3 was the free
downloads the Concertegbouw made available last year. These were 384kbps
and can I play them using machines like the Rega Apollo. Doing this, they
sound fairly good. I also converted them to LPCM so I could easily make
tracks of the movements. I don't know I could tell them from a decent
commercial CDA.

However if I play some of the low rate net radio stations they do sound
poor, and even some at 256kbps show up audible problems.

Slainte,

Jim

Have you tried any of the AAC streams yet? They seem to survive even
very low bit rates. In particular I find the image is far steadier
than medium rate MP3.

d

High Definition Audio.
 

In article ,
Rob wrote:
5. Sound. Few really knew what that 'digital' meant in terms of enjoying
listening to music. We were told it was better because it was digital,
and that really was an end to it. Of course, there were tangible
advantages, such as less crackle and pop, but quite how much this ever
got in the way of enjoying music was never made clear. And hindsight has
revealed that in many cases we were sold a pup - the digital
transcription was often a mess, and the scramble for 'remasters' had
begun.

The joke is that any analogue master ever made could just be transcribed
straight to CD - very unlike making an LP. But the suits had an obsession
about hearing any tape hiss which often meant chopping the ends of tracks.
Pure madness.

However, I've never bought a CD which was also available at one time as an
LP and would describe it as a 'pup'. Indeed, quite the reverse. Plenty of
CDs from old analogue masters which were originally only sold on very poor
vinyl.

--
*The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard *

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

High Definition Audio.
 

Don Pearce wrote in message news:4992198a.402223734@localhost...

Because classical music is generally far more complex and demanding
than modern pop - it takes a greater degree of intelligence to
understand and appreciate it.

You can extrapolate this from just classical music to much "traditional"
music.

I suspect that the simplification is largely driven by the fact that
spending dedicated time just listening to music is becoming far less common
as other art forms have become more practical to enjoy.

In the days when traditional music was king, there was no TV, etc.