Originally Posted by kidA
Okay this is going to be long and rambling.
1. the cd isn't dead but it's in decline. The prevalance of the itunes+ipod combination is responsible for this decline, but this isn't to say that cds will be gone. there will always be people who want the physical copy, whether for audiophile or personal reasons.
2. this being said, i don't really buy cds anymore. this is simply because with my current set up both for portable and at desk listening, i don't have equipment that can give me the detail for me to distinguish between higher quality mp3s and lossless (wav on cd, or digital lossless). Itunes Plus and amazon both sell DRM free (no protection) AAC/mp3s at i believe over 200kbps (256 maybe?) and at that point, you are hardpressed to hear any difference even with the equipment in i'd say 70% of "popular contemporary" music (you can really tell with classical and jazz from my experience)
so i can't tell the difference between higher quality mp3 and cd, and even when i can it's only in a/b comparisons. actually walking around or even sitting and listening to a 192kbps+ mp3, i don't find enough artifacts, if any, to make me absolutely have to lug around all my cds)
3. vinyl is on the rise because vintage is in. see: reliced guitars. Vinyl has a romanticism related to it of an old feel, and people like this, they feel cool. also, in the audiophile community, you have people spending literally 10s of thousands of dollars to put together reference vinyl systems because of the quality of sound you get from the purely analog process. But this ties in with my final and most important point.
4. vinyl is also favored in audiophile circles because the older recordings had completely different production values that went into them.
We shouldn't be complaining about the death of cds or arguing about mp3s, but we should really be worried, or at least i'm worried, about the loss of dynamic range from the excessive loudness and compression in "pop music." I refer to this as "mainstream production," that glossy perfectly polished, but compressed sound that makes every pop singer, pop country, pop rock band sound the same. The production is so "clean" and "sparkly" and the sound is so filled out by filler noise from string samples or synth additions that the sonic landscape blends into a singular monovolume force that i really can't get so emotionally connected with, because in all honesty it feels artifical and insincere.
The prevalence of compressed file formats as the main vehicle for music through lower fidelity earbuds is in many ways, changing production values of sound engineers and the result is even good albums being ruined. well maybe not ruined, but very close. Just listen to even music from the 90s and compare it to today. Let's take U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" and compare it to "Vertigo." It's hard to describe it, but there's just that sound of mainstream production. This is (in addition to the fact that mainstream popular music is garbage now, for the most part) why I find myself listening to more "indie" bands, because they generally have a less produced sound.
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