I've been in denial ever since CDs came out. CD packages suck. They can unfold 15 times, but they're still shitty little pamphlets. It's not a sleeve, there's no real estate, and there's no room for art. It's in a shitty, plastic, exploding jewel box. They're shit. So let's treat it for what it is - it's just a means of getting electronic information.
Everytime I read an interview with El Rezzo, I'm almost constantly thinking: "What a smart guy." He's right, of course, and not the first person say it: we are witnessing the death throes of the album as a physically-present medium (if not as a concept altogether). For most halfway computer literate people, this death has either already occured some time ago, or is wheezing its last breaths, the occasional, almost nostalgic trip to the record store.
I'm a wheezer myself. I am, as I said previously, waiting for the CD* to be released before I look into any of the new NIN tracks which are all online, somewhere. I don't want my first listen to be some shitty mp3. But you know what I'll do after my first listen? Rip it. Rip it to my home PC, my work PC, my pocket PC, and maybe a backup copy since I take such awful care of my CDs. After that, I'll lose all that quality I was waiting for so eagerly. It'll almost be like I'm just using the low-quality version to trigger memories of the high quality one.
iTunes/Napster should allow you to download CD-quality (which is still pretty shit compared to analog) tracks for the same price as an mp3. I've really been enjoying downloading heaps of really obscure tracks from my teenage years via Napster recently, and think 79p for a track is a good deal. But, thanks to the iPods rather incredible effect on the way we listen to music, it seems the mp3 has become 'the standard' for music quality. And that really sucks. Technology is going forward, stereos are getting better, but our parents baseline format for listening to music had a superior depth of sound than our baseline.
I applaud the online music revolution and cannot fucking wait for the big five to crumble and die horribly, vomiting up their DRM and lawsuits and entire 'this is what you will listen to and you will like it if we have to ram it down your throats' ethic as they go. But with broadband constantly getting broader and computers getting faster, you'd think someone would have the nous to put together a high-quality music-download service, so that there's a way to get the songs you want at the quality you want, other than ordering a physically-delivered CD-ROM with that electronic information encoded on it.
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*although I'm seriously considering buying the LP as well, even though I lack a record player myself.
This is a 
You haven't got a record player?! Do you have any records though?
Vinyl will always be superior to cd's, for one reason. A vinyl record contains the actual sounds recorded in a studio, a cd has been digitized and quantized and fucked around with and there's loads missing from the original recording.
And you can't make a cd go wikky-wikky-waaaa in quite the same way as a record.
I do have a couple of records, mainly picked up from gigs at which vinyl was the only way to purchase the band witnessed.
I'm pretty sure with most modern albums, they make a digital version first which is then recorded onto the vinyl. However you're right, vinyls are superior because they have no compression, so the sound is a lot deeper and you hear a lot more of what was recorded. I believe it was one of the Beatles who called CDs 'the greatest swindle in history'.
A good 5.1 mix on a CD is pretty damned awesome. An mp3, on the other hand, while great for listening to in your car or headphones, sounds flat and useless at a club or any decent stereo. Since mp3s are rapidly becoming (if they aren't there already) the baseline standard for music, I worry that they'll soon be accepted as 'good enough', the way CDs were back in the 80's, and people will forget that it used to sound so much better.
Fuckin' TAPES sound better than mp3s in my opinion. People can wax lyrical about the convenience of cds and mp3s and such, but if the sound quality sucks, they don't really have an argument.
Surprisingly enough, a lot of studio masters are still recorded onto 24-track analogue tape (ie, ridiculously good quality)as this is what the artist or producer prefers. If you're an audio nerd you can check it out on the side of cd's- if the first letter in an ADD/AAD/DAD/DDD info box is an 'A', it was mastered on analog tape...therefore the vinyl LP should be the very bestest quality.
You should read that interview with Trent, he makes a lot of similar point, but eventually concedes that most people don't listen to music in the best of environs, or, even if that have 5.1 stereo, don't set it up correctly.
I probably will get the vinyl, now that you've got me worked up, and get Chris to rip it to mp3 and CD- then I'll get the large-format album artwork, as well. However, vinyl doesn't come in 5.1, so, y'know, there's that to consider. I may get both.
On a pair of headphones MP3's quality are ok. They are still better than tape, and when you can fit 5000 songs in the palm of your hand come tell me about convience.
What happens in the studio is irrelvent, it all becomes digital at some point.
IF it's recorded from Analog 24-track tape directly onto vinyl (which does still happen y'know) there is no loss of quality and it never becomes digital. So nyah-nyah-nyah.
Well, no-one is more audio-minded than TR, so I have to assume that all possibly copies come at the highest possible quality, excepting that mp3 just have shit quality.
I agree with Adrian on the convenience point. You can't really hear the compression difference on headphones or (regular) car stereos. However when someone takes the kind of care and layered sound TR does to make a song, you owe it to them to listen to it in the best quality possible. The 5.1 mix of Downward Spiral is, like, a whole new album.
Oh there's no doubting the convenience of mp3s, but if you play a cd through a good stereo system, and then the same track on mp3, you can hear the difference, even in a 'blind listen' test (I've done it). If you then listen to the same track on vinyl (the track was U2's 'Vertigo')it's like, wow, vinyl rocks.
It's like a Burger king 'sandwich' versus a really nice one you make for yourself at home. One is really convenient, the other one is tasty.
Good analogy!
Cheers!
If you want to do the test yourself, you will need a U2 iPod (or an iPod with 'How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb' on it), the Album on CD and vinyl, a very good (?1000+) stereo, and an extremely good turntable (we used the Technics SL-1200GLD). Set it all up, have a listen, taste the difference.
Or: sell it all and go backpacking for a month. Come back and sing to yourself.
MP3 quality depends on both the codec used and the bitrated selected. You can also have digital compression (FLAC) that compresses the audio with no loss to quality.
Just saying MP3 is shite, doesn't mean anything.
And considering in a studio how many components are digital, electric, sampled, the fact something is analogue doesn't necessarily mean it's better quality. And remember most amplifiers these days have some digital components anyway.
Give me your vinyl, and I'll give you a 7.1 SACD or DVDA that will make it look like you are listening through a tin pipe.
Ok let me put it this way: A 7.1 SACD or DVDA are recorded at 48 or 96-bit 192khz. Digitized. Even at that very high bitrate, there are still 'bits' missing. An analogue master recorded directly onto an acetate is COMPLETELY lossless, recorded at a 'bitrate' of infinity. If you listen to the record you will be listening to the actual original recording, not some compressed, digitized, cleaned, squeezed, washed and blowdried version.
Saying FLAC recording is lossless also doesn't mean anything, as you are recording from a digital source, which has already lost and destroyed the warmth and analogue goodness.
So even the very best high-bitrate mp3 has lost some bits.
Why do you think professional DJs use turntables and records when cds and mp3s would be SO much more convenient for them?
Cause then they couldn't go wickety-wicket-wack!
Adrian, you don't have any 7.1 SACDs, cause your system is 5.1. However even 5.1 is, in many ways, superior to vinyl. Like, SURROUND SOUND, dudes!
Warmth and analogue goodness are a matter of opinion. Some people prefer digital to analogue. Most people cant tell the difference. Most people can't afford the kit that would even allow them to tell the difference.
And analogue also has it's own losses, but because they are not digital their is no way to fix or restore these losses like you can on digital. Go get a TV and stick on an analogue antenna and then switch to digital. Same with old mobile phones. Analogue still has loss.
Many professional DJ's ARE turning to computers and digital tracks (cite: Paul van Dyk), however many stay with turntables because it's easier (currently) to mix an beat match and what not. Considering dance music starts off digitally, there is not much of an argument that it would sound better plaid from an analogue source.
Yeah, well Paul van Dyk SUCKS. So there.
It is surely and totally a matter of opinion. But anaolgue phones/tv versus digital is not the same argument. They're transmission media versus storage media. It's like comparing a megaphone to a lunchbox.
On a totally different issue, but kinda the same, the new Indiana Jones film will, much to George Lucas's chagrin, be filmed on celluloid and not digital film, because Speilberg prefers it. It's a matter of opinion.
PvD is legendary. That's opinion too.
And it's got nothing to do with storage or transmission. They are the same thing. Just with one the bits move to other locations and with one the bits move through an amp. It's all the same.
Analog doesn't have 'bits', surely?
Anyway, apropos of DJing, you dudes need to check THIS action out.
And somehow I doubt PvD is using mp3s to DJ with, even if he has gone digital. They don't have remotely the bottom register required to get a dancefloor moving.
And they don't warm the cockles of your heart either.
No, PvD is probably using a high bit rate lossless algorithm. But it's still digital.
I reckon DJ's use vinyl because it looks cool in so many ways. Beat matching MP3s just doesn't look the the same and isn't anywhere near as much fun. Realtime digital resampling/processing over a DJ set is an increasingly common practice though.
I used to have different amp/speaker combinations for listening to different types of music and to suit the mood I was in at the time. Now I don't and I consider this a huge step forward in my personal development.
>Warmth and analogue goodness are a matter of opinion.
Yes and no. It IS a measurable fact that digital recording (talking about 'lossless' encoding is redundant if your source is a CD, which, by its nature, has already degraded in quality) is compressed, so you lose elements from the upper and lower register - you can see this on a sound wave. So that's not opinion, sound really is being lost -on purpose, to save space, no less. Which is the whole point of mp3s. I dread to think what the next awesome format will be. Morse code?
Thought for the day: I'd rather have 500 songs at CD quality than 5000 songs at mp3 quality. Convenience isn't everything.
I have seen plenty of analysis that says the way your ear picks up sound is more digital than analogue anyway.
CD's are compressed using Nyquist theory which means that technically you can rebuild the entire sound wave that you can year as you have sampled at twice the rate. Even assuming their is loss you can pick up, none of us can really afford the equipment to notice this. Not withstanding the law of diminishing returns that says you can double the amount of money you spend on the equipment, but might only get a 5% increase in audio quality. Double it again and you might only get a 1% increase. Double it again and you might get a .1% increase. So unless you have a lot more money hidden under your mattress than I'm led to believe, the equipment you're playing the audio on, probably is where you are loosing quality, not the CD.
Finally, with digital storage, you can have 500 songs as CD quality. With CD's you can have 50. In the same space. In fact I can replace my whole CD collection which takes up 3x4 foot with a single hard drive. You can have both convenience and quality. You can then adjust where the quality/convenience point works best for you to your liking.
Also, see this article which has a good discussion on audio compression
All the theories in the world don't change the fact that certain people hear things other people don't. If you don't hear a difference between analogue and CD then that's nothing to be ashamed of - many, possibly most, people can't (I've never tried so don't know if I can).
However lots of people report a difference (which can be easily tested on a blind listening test) and prefer analogue - nothing you can say about the theory will change their minds, no matter what articles you can find with google.
The fact is, even a direct transmission of a pure analogue signal from a microphone through an amp to a speaker sounds different from the original sound. Any recording process changes what is perceived. Any process applied to the signal changes it further - and in general degrades it. Digitising and then converting back to analogue is such a process so it is not surprising that this changes what people hear.
Even if an audio signal were samplead at 1 MHz and digitised using 256 bits (well beyond the ranges on which we "should" be able to hear the difference according to Nyqist theory) the very process of putting the signal through the digitiser circuit will change its nature due to the fact that noise is unavoidable.
CD and MP3 were both trade-offs between storage space and audio quality - in effect, they are respectively "good enough" for x% of the population, but there will always be some for whom there is a perceived difference.