Yes, folks, that's the exact title of the article, and many similar articles on the story use the same terminology:
Digital Music Outsells CDs | Peter Getty Music Blog
What amuses me is how the CD isn't "digital" anymore - it sure was digital 30 years ago when it came out!
I've made a hobby of noticing the changing definitions of words. Somewhere in the last decade or two the music industry decided that digital only means "a music file downloaded from the Internet," and thus that CDs are no longer digital.
Digital Music Outsells CDs | Peter Getty Music Blog
What amuses me is how the CD isn't "digital" anymore - it sure was digital 30 years ago when it came out!
I've made a hobby of noticing the changing definitions of words. Somewhere in the last decade or two the music industry decided that digital only means "a music file downloaded from the Internet," and thus that CDs are no longer digital.
Would it be in future like; DSD/uncompressed/flac meant for analog or maybe for true digital... Real Digital Files -rdf, Even buying a music has changed in definition (Can't copy at your will etc.)
Now the sales guy at Best Buy can fling a SSD across the room (ala the CD era) and shout 'Perfect digital music FOREVER!!!!' 😀
The "audiophool" banter has already started for FLAC -Different compression levels for FLAC | Naim Audio Forums
Most of these fools just subjectively say they don't like a compressed FLAC.
FLAC is FLAC , uncompress a compressed one - same bitperfect FLAC.
Like saying a winzip file won't be the same unzipped.
But their minds think of a MP3 , which "psychoacoustically" omits actual
audio information , so anything with the word "compress" is automatically
denigrated.
OS
Most of these fools just subjectively say they don't like a compressed FLAC.
FLAC is FLAC , uncompress a compressed one - same bitperfect FLAC.
Like saying a winzip file won't be the same unzipped.
But their minds think of a MP3 , which "psychoacoustically" omits actual
audio information , so anything with the word "compress" is automatically
denigrated.
OS
Next problem, trying to explain the difference between lossless/lossy data compression and signal level dynamics compression...
"Nah, I'd rather listen to the download instead of a CD because the download is DIGITAL!!11!"
"Nah, I'd rather listen to the download instead of a CD because the download is DIGITAL!!11!"
Digital has also come to mean smart phones, computers and the like. I hear it in business meetings all the time. "Digital Devices" or "Digital Assets".
Because nobody cares about Sound Quality anymore, it's a SHAME!
Several groups of ignorance/subjects are to blame for this: Computer geeks, Technical illiterates, Push for miniaturization, combined with oblivious people that just don't care about Sound Quality, which these groups merge over each other.
1. I blame the computer geek morons that in the quest to save Megabytes (why save megabytes when hard-drives are SO BIG anyway, and always get bigger) rip MP3's at low quality with garbage like auto-volume leveling, VBR, and the morons that DEFAULT design the programs to rip CD's at the lowest quality, (Windows Media Player, etc) and of course nobody actually goes in the options and changes it to 320kbps anyway, and leaves it set to 96 or 128kbps default. Then they upload the garbage to the internet and gets downloaded thousands of times. Even worse when scratched CD rips make it on the internet!
2. Blame the hordes of technically illiterate morons who are too ignorant to care what the quality of their music sounds like. They would rather download a low-bitrate version of their song, instead of getting the CD at full quality. I saw this happening back in 98-2000 in my high school years, when morons didn't care how distorted the music was, "THATS MAH SOWNG ON DA RADIO!!!!1" It is sad that most people don't care how it sounds, as long as it is loud, and if you try to help & mention that it's playing at very low quality, they get MAD AT YOU because of some silly emotional attachment to their song, instead of trying to re-download/rip at higher quality.
3. Low quality digital garbage released into the market/miniaturization. Push to have everything smaller or "modern", Crappy MP3 players, garbage onboard soundcards, Most teenagers/20's don't even know what good SQ is anymore, and believe it or not, some boomers don't even care. Most people don't even realize the significant difference tweeters make, because they listen to everything on small speakers, and cheap headphones (earbuds), and listen to mostly MP3 that doesn't even allow you to fully hear the capability of your speakers.
There will only be a few of us that want full quality sound. Few of us know what it is like to have a nice home stereo system with 100W/ch and nice speakers and a good sound source. Some peoples entire life view of music was developed on their portable Music Player/Smartphone and Headphones or their computer and computer speakers. When I was young, it was always the goal to GET AWAY from the portable music and hook up a nice amp and speakers!
Several groups of ignorance/subjects are to blame for this: Computer geeks, Technical illiterates, Push for miniaturization, combined with oblivious people that just don't care about Sound Quality, which these groups merge over each other.
1. I blame the computer geek morons that in the quest to save Megabytes (why save megabytes when hard-drives are SO BIG anyway, and always get bigger) rip MP3's at low quality with garbage like auto-volume leveling, VBR, and the morons that DEFAULT design the programs to rip CD's at the lowest quality, (Windows Media Player, etc) and of course nobody actually goes in the options and changes it to 320kbps anyway, and leaves it set to 96 or 128kbps default. Then they upload the garbage to the internet and gets downloaded thousands of times. Even worse when scratched CD rips make it on the internet!
2. Blame the hordes of technically illiterate morons who are too ignorant to care what the quality of their music sounds like. They would rather download a low-bitrate version of their song, instead of getting the CD at full quality. I saw this happening back in 98-2000 in my high school years, when morons didn't care how distorted the music was, "THATS MAH SOWNG ON DA RADIO!!!!1" It is sad that most people don't care how it sounds, as long as it is loud, and if you try to help & mention that it's playing at very low quality, they get MAD AT YOU because of some silly emotional attachment to their song, instead of trying to re-download/rip at higher quality.
3. Low quality digital garbage released into the market/miniaturization. Push to have everything smaller or "modern", Crappy MP3 players, garbage onboard soundcards, Most teenagers/20's don't even know what good SQ is anymore, and believe it or not, some boomers don't even care. Most people don't even realize the significant difference tweeters make, because they listen to everything on small speakers, and cheap headphones (earbuds), and listen to mostly MP3 that doesn't even allow you to fully hear the capability of your speakers.
There will only be a few of us that want full quality sound. Few of us know what it is like to have a nice home stereo system with 100W/ch and nice speakers and a good sound source. Some peoples entire life view of music was developed on their portable Music Player/Smartphone and Headphones or their computer and computer speakers. When I was young, it was always the goal to GET AWAY from the portable music and hook up a nice amp and speakers!
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The most popular torrent DL's are "XXartist @ 320Kbs" (or FLAC). So it seems the morally deficient "morons" DO care.
OS
OS
I was at a demo at a NAIM dealer a couple months ago and watched with great amusement as they coached the listeners into hearing a difference between flac and wav files.
"coached the listeners" - there's gotta be a technical name for that, maybe double-sighted test?
I feel so sad for the human race when I read this type of stuff. Truly depressing.
I am not making this up: when I asked if they had ever done a double blind test, they answered, "Oh, yes, that's what we all just did!"
well, that's when you close both of your eyes while the salesman is yapping away
in another lifetime as an "audio product consultant", we happened to have a customer who was indeed completely blind, and as I recall her choice at the time was Yamaha NS1000M
in another lifetime as an "audio product consultant", we happened to have a customer who was indeed completely blind, and as I recall her choice at the time was Yamaha NS1000M
and of course, now that Apple has stepped into the subscription streaming ring, things will only get better?
what, no curated Jazz? - I guess it's still KPLU.org for me
what, no curated Jazz? - I guess it's still KPLU.org for me
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The perceptive comments note that the data may be identical, but the processing during playback varies. This may have an impact, depending upon everything - my approach is to always decompress prior to playback, and the playing field is then nicely levelled.
yup - already have that and the KPLU.org streaming app on my mobile devices - provided wi-fi or cel data reception, it's much better reception & fidelity than the car radio - even when bluetoothed (is that even a word?😀)
I particularly like Ken Wiley's Sunday afternoon Art of Jazz, and the Sat / Sunday 6:00-12:00 PM All Blues - then there's some pretty damned fine Live Studio Sessions.
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To say this shows an inherent misunderstanding of what is going on. FLAC is lossless, regardless of what (if any) compression level is used.
So it doesn't matter whether the player software is decompressing a compressed FLAC, or simply "playing" a non-compressed FLAC, or simply "playing" a WAV file... the exact same bits of data are being dumped to the DAC via the USB port. The "decompression" here cannot be compared in any way to the way a software player "decompresses" lossy formats such as MP3, AAC, etc.
Lossless is lossless. The player software has zero influence on the "sound", just as WinZip has no influence on the content of your Word documents therein.
Those who claim to hear a difference between compressed FLAC and WAV are flat out lying. Period.
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