This is why I love reading the IDM list
--- John/Slackonomics <slack@slackonomics.com> wrote:
quoted 130 lines On Mar 20, 2005, at 9:13 AM, Kurt Bernhard Pruenner
> On Mar 20, 2005, at 9:13 AM, Kurt Bernhard Pruenner
> wrote:
>
>
> Yeah, I think it's fantastic they're offering this
> service. Don't get
> me wrong... I don't like vinyl either (the
> artwork/liner notes are
> awesome on vinyl though). I own a few dozen pieces
> on vinyl but the
> surest way for an artist to get me not to listen to
> something is to
> offer it only on vinyl and/or put it out in some
> ridiculously hard to
> open limited edition box/digipack. If I can't get
> to the CD easily,
> then I won't bother listening to it. And vinyl is
> such a chore to keep
> dust-free, keep from skipping, having to flip over
> that I generally
> don't bother. Lastly, vinyl is utterly impossible
> to play in a car/on
> the move.
>
> Before all the vinyl purists attack me, it sounds
> fantastic if you have
> the proper equipment. But then there's the issue of
> degradation.
> Every time you play vinyl it worsens the sound
> (unless you buy one of
> those wonderfully expensive optical vinyl readers).
>
> I think most vinyl purists would argue that vinyl
> (on proper equipment)
> is miles better sounding than 192 kpbs mp3s, not to
> mention it is
> conceivably better sounding than the digital masters
> themselves,
> provided it were recorded entirely on professional
> analog equipment to
> begin with. I'm a digital purist in every regard,
> but most audiophiles
> concede that digital even at the highest resolution
> 24-bit, 192khz,
> stereo isn't really as good as professional quality
> analog. I'm
> talking about Studer 2" reel-to-reel, Neve/SSL, etc.
>
> With all that said, it's a great idea. If the
> lossless audio files
> were made directly from the digital copies (i.e.
> original source AIFF
> or WAV files) then it'd be essentially a perfect
> bit-for-bit copy of
> the original file before the vinyl was pressed (and
> certainly much
> better than a mp3 copy).
>
> > Also, I'm encoding everything at 192kbps and I'm
> fine with that as long
> > as I have backups (i.e. originals); I'll probably
> reencode the 320kbps
> > files down to 192kbps for my MP3 discman...
>
> The only problem with going mp3 (or AAC/Ogg) over
> FLAC/Shorten/APE/Apple Lossless is that what about
> the future? What if
> you want to make CD burns of the audio? What if you
> want to listen
> with high quality Sennheiser (or whatever)
> headphones? I don't like
> the idea of encoding my 2000+ CD collection in a
> lossy format because
> of the future.
>
> What I mean is... if you lock yourself in to a
> format like mp3, and
> later this new whizbang codec comes out that only
> takes up 1 megabyte
> for an entire CD and is a perfect lossless copy of
> the original CD...
> then what will you do? If you go your route you'll
> have to "transcode"
> from a lossy format to this new format.
>
> Generally transcoding brings artifacts and other
> unwarranted
> distortion/loss of audio fidelity. If you chose a
> lossless format you
> get all the benefits of the original CD recording
> (i.e. absolutely no
> loss of sound due to compression) with the added
> benefit of smaller
> size AND the ability to uncompress back to the
> original WAV/AIFF source
> material in case you want to go to a new codec in
> the future.
> Obviously the compression ratio isn't as good as
> with mp3/aac/ogg, but
> it's roughly half the size of the source
> AIFF/WAV/CD, which I can live
> with.
>
> Granted you (personally) still have the originals to
> extract from in
> the future, but it's infinitely easier to extract it
> in mass (say, with
> a batch process) from the lossless copies than it is
> to RE-rip your
> entire collection and re-encode.
>
> All in all, I'm very hesitant to use a lossy codec
> like mp3/AAC or Ogg
> Vorbis due to all the factors I mentioned. And for
> the sake of
> uniformity and audio fidelity, I expect that the
> music I buy also be
> lossless.
>
> Great idea, but more could be done. But kudos and
> props for the
> effort. It's not unappreciated. :)
>
> --
>
> Mr. Tangent [the binary police]
> www.mrtangent.com
>
>
>
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