Cd’s when are they obsolete ?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by pocofan, Apr 7, 2018.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. MaestroDavros

    MaestroDavros Forum Resident

    Location:
    D.C. Metro Area
    I meant "high quality radio" in terms of the programming, not the sound.
     
    brownie61 and scobb like this.
  2. Carl Swanson

    Carl Swanson Senior Member

    I sit corrected.
     
  3. Takehaniyasubiko

    Takehaniyasubiko Forum Resident

    Location:
    Void
    That's where you're wrong. Unless somebody is deaf, they will hear a bad mastering. For example, a lot of people ignorant to sound engineering told me that Kavinsky's OutRun sounds way too harsh on CD. No wonder it does with an average DR of 5, but those people just blame it on the CD format. They think the CD itself is harsh. They translate vinyl logic to CD and think plastic is harsh and the CD is too small for good sound. It's stupid as hell, like kindergarten reasoning, but that's exactly how typical people see it. I've seen this happen in real-life conditions and I know what store owners hear from their customers.

    Music is produced the way it is because marketing people rule over the industry. They want to make everything as loud as TV commercials because their stupid way of seeing the world is all about getting attention. They want to push the music down somebody's throat, so to speak. Because of that, sound engineers are trained to make everything absurdly loud, and the way to do that technically is to compress the dynamic range. It's not about customers' needs. It's about what corporate idiots think will make the biggest splash.
     
    Last edited: May 11, 2018
  4. shaboo

    shaboo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bonn, Germany
    It only needs a single good-sounding to CD to prove all these people wrong. Do actually that many people you know or you heard of never in their life heard decent sound from a CD? At least once? Poor Poland ...
     
    dkmonroe likes this.
  5. Takehaniyasubiko

    Takehaniyasubiko Forum Resident

    Location:
    Void
    Poor Poland indeed, but stop trolling, dude. Most people act with feelings, not logic. Of course they've heared a good CD at some point, but the loudness war started at least two decades ago, so there hasn't been that many great CD masterings the past twenty years in the popular music field. The popular music people actually buy on CDs is almost always compressed to hell. Look at the DR values for Celine Dion's CDs from the years 2002-2016. Dreadful.

    With Kavinsky, many people bought OutRun only because Nightcall was in THAT movie.

    The fact is, many CDs produced since ~2000 do sound like crap. That's why CDs got a bad rep. It's hard to track a good edition. Only niche discussions like this one touch on the problem. You don't see the big media putting this problem out there because it's not in their interest.
     
    Last edited: May 11, 2018
  6. Technocentral

    Technocentral Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dublin, Ireland
    Was in one of the Tower Records in Dublin about two weeks ago, only people browsing the CDs were two shabby looking men, mid to late 60s. Vinyl section had a good selection of ages, maybe 20s to 50s.
     
  7. Takehaniyasubiko

    Takehaniyasubiko Forum Resident

    Location:
    Void
    Because vinyl is the new cool. Famous youtubers (famous for being famous, BTW) push it as the hip product. Many publishers push it in ads as well because you can put a premium price on them big discs. Hell, even old laserdics are becoming popular again in certain fields because people like the idea of having something big and oldschool to hold in hands. It's a mixture of fashion, social conditioning and hoarding tendencies. It has nothing to do with music quality and that's the tragedy of it.
     
    Grant and nosliw like this.
  8. sleeptowin

    sleeptowin Forum Resident

    Location:
    Birmingham
    what gets released is how they want it to sound. no matter what you think about it. that's the final product that has been approved. they don't care what a tiny amount of people on a forum think
     
    Grant and dkmonroe like this.
  9. Takehaniyasubiko

    Takehaniyasubiko Forum Resident

    Location:
    Void
    Except they are wrong. Crushing the dynamic range so much as it the norm nowadays destroys music objectively. It's approaching the loudness and flatness of TV commercials and that's anti-musical. If they want to sell that crap, better stop calling it music.
     
    ClassicalCD and nosliw like this.
  10. shaboo

    shaboo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bonn, Germany
    True.
    No. Either people know and care about CDs and are still buying them. In this case they know how good it can sound and how bad many masterings are nowadays. Or people don't know and don't care (mainly because they are younger and/or using downloads and streaming). In this case they also don't care about the CD's capabilities or its reputation.

    So people bought OutRun only because Nightcall was in THAT movie. And the CD sounded bad. And the download or Spotify stream sounded bad as well, because it (supposedly) was the same mastering. And from that people concluded that CDs are crap. Bizarre logic ...

    It's your observation and your opinion that CDs have a bad reputation. It's not my observation and I have a different opinion. Let's just agree to disagree on this.
     
    dkmonroe likes this.
  11. sleeptowin

    sleeptowin Forum Resident

    Location:
    Birmingham
    they do sell that "crap" and it is music. its also exactly as they want it to sound
     
  12. Takehaniyasubiko

    Takehaniyasubiko Forum Resident

    Location:
    Void
    Nope. People liking the material enough to Google about it a bit found out that the vinyl version sounds much better. And from that people concluded that CDs are crap. Nobody told them this album wouldn't work on vinyl with such crazy loudness levels and it's the mastering of the CD to blame, not the format. They didn't research this for themselves because their 5 minutes attention span ran out, so they left the matter with the conviction that CDs are crap and vinyl rules. This happens over and over again because vinyl is too limited for crushing dynamic range. It's actually hilarious when you think about it. The format is too old for the corporate idiots to make it loud.
     
    ClassicalCD and nosliw like this.
  13. Classicrock

    Classicrock Senior Member

    Location:
    South West, UK.
    Weren't we having the same conversation on this forum 10 years ago and CDs are still here with sales many times that of vinyl? I think the main threat will be lack of dedicated players if sales continue to decline.
     
    Grant likes this.
  14. Mogens

    Mogens Forum Resident

    Location:
    Green Bay, Wis.
    CDs have no intrinsic value, they were a convenient way of packaging ones and zeroes which no longer require packaging. Vinyl has intrinsic qualities that are different than the prevailing digital norm; some (including me) will value that difference. This is why cds are in decline and vinyl and streaming are ascendant. Personally the only CDs I’ve bought in the past decade were on merch tables (they continue to be the best value for musicians) or from record labels like ECM which didn’t allow streams or press LPs.
     
    Technocentral, shaboo and dkmonroe like this.
  15. nosliw

    nosliw Delivering parcels throughout Teyvat! Meow~!

    Location:
    Ottawa, ON, Canada
    As long as there is music on CD only that cannot be found through streaming websites or even download sites, I won't consider CDs to be obsolete.
     
    Grant likes this.
  16. Deek57

    Deek57 Forum Resident

    Yeah man. Could not have said it better. I love CD's, I'm still buying, so many of them I have a backlog of discs I need to listen to before I forget I've bought them and buy them again..
     
  17. Scott Davies

    Scott Davies Forum Resident

    And it will most likely always be like this. The material I'm licensing for release in many cases is not available for download or streaming. And the labels tell you right up front they won't license to you for those purposes either (not that I was interested). And if something already exists as an iTunes download or similar, if a licensing label does an actual improved remaster, it's likely going to remain exclusive to that physical release.
     
    Grant and nosliw like this.
  18. dkmonroe

    dkmonroe A completely self-taught idiot

    Location:
    Atlanta
    That's why I use multiple formats. I have vinyl to play at home and digital files to take with me. My CD's don't go anywhere anymore, their vaunted "portability" has been long ago superseded by other digital options. And I own many LP's that I bought when I was 14 years old (forty years ago) which still play and sound great. So the "vinyl wears out with multiple plays" line is a shibboleth for people who reject vinyl for other reasons. Which is OK, no one HAS to enjoy vinyl, but the idea that vinyl is inferior because it wears out is refuted by the hundreds of us here in the forum who have lovely huge and very old LP collections that we still listen to.
     
    Tullman, Rhapsody In Red and nosliw like this.
  19. Deek57

    Deek57 Forum Resident

    Maybe for you, I've never had a problem with card sleeves or digipacks. I do have discs with light scratches but they play alright. I have a couple of ex library discs that look as though they've been sandpapered but guess what they play perfectly.
     
  20. vinyl diehard

    vinyl diehard Two-Channel Forever

    Shabby looking men? I feel like a wino.
     
  21. shaboo

    shaboo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bonn, Germany
    On the other hand there are downloads (like HiRes stuff or even lossy Mastered for iTunes material) that aren't available on any physical medium, some of it even being superior to much of what's available elsewhere. Quality isn't exclusive to physical media.

    Audiophile remasters will always be a niche (like SACD or vinyl) and they won't play a decisive role regarding the fate of the CD format. Much more imporant are the masses of average or outright bad sounding CDs offering absolutely no advantage over what you can download or stream. They are kinda pointless and are surely accelerating the CD's decline.
     
    Last edited: May 11, 2018
    dkmonroe likes this.
  22. Takehaniyasubiko

    Takehaniyasubiko Forum Resident

    Location:
    Void
    It's official - the only humans interested in CDs are shabby-looking men, mid to late 60s.

    [​IMG]
    Don't judge people by age and/or social standing, spoiled millennials.
     
  23. dkmonroe

    dkmonroe A completely self-taught idiot

    Location:
    Atlanta
    If there's anything this forum is known for, it's "spoiled millennials."
     
  24. Stencil

    Stencil Forum Resident

    Location:
    Lockport, IL
    Ha Ha Ha. Yes. I somehow got my tape terminology mixed up with my CD terminology.
     
    Malina likes this.
  25. Stencil

    Stencil Forum Resident

    Location:
    Lockport, IL
    What you are talking about is the end of capitalism. Yes. That is a hopeful future, but it is not the posters "primitive fears about "ownership,"" that you should be concerned with. It the people who "own" the servers and connection methods that will quickly turn your utopia into a cost prohibitive "Disneyworld"
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine