CDs made from 2020 onwards should surely be audiophile only...

Agreed - but isn't that the case with every format?

Records can sound awesome, but back in the '70s, they were pressing onto recycled or Dynaflex vinyl, and greatest hits albums of the era sometimes had 10 tracks on each side.

Chrome cassettes are capable of great audio quality, but pre-recorded albums were duplicated at high speed on ferric (Type I) stock to save a couple of cents.

And so it goes.

 

Not to the same extent, no. Dynaflex gets a bad rap but could sound pretty good. There were good cost reasons for fast cassette duplication, and at least recycled vinyl had upsides (it was recycling not landfill).

With CD it is deliberate failure to take advantage of the format's capabilities, deliberate processing to make it sound worse.

Tim

 

No, you don't need loud volume at all. This is harmonics we're talking about.

And it doesn't apply to soft passages only.

I'll put it this way... when I switched my DAW from 16 bits to 24 bits, the first thing that struck me was how sweet the reverb sounded. On 16 bits, it was drier and more brittle. I wasn't blasting anything, just listening to an acoustic guitar at normal levels.

 

I was out and about today. Very few high-street shops stock CD's anymore, but just to illustrate...

the CD must die and be reborn as a better product for those that still care about it....its at that point that vinyl was when it was dying out, even though it wasn't dying, it was removed to make way for Videogames, VHS tapes and Posters/T-shirts etc.

 

The are some CDs that were mastered too low. It has nothing to do with dynamic range. What actually started the whole messed up thing in the first place was the attempted to make the CD a mobile entity i.e. crappy headphones with portable players and extraneous noise while listening to CDs in the car. Oh and the Brit Pop subgenre. There's a whole lotta overcooked CDs in that mess.

 

Can CDs have the same surface coating as Bluray, or is it impossible with purely a CD drive reading the surface?

 

I'm glad you mentioned this, I can't either!

 

Saw this the other day, thought it belonged here:

Feel free to jump on.

 

agree 100........I buy SACD's not for resolution, but for a mastering option....... Given the same mastering, redbook every time.

 

I think what gets you heard is mass promotion and availability or established brand name recognition.......Both more important than the music itself. I've recorded a bunch of songs at home too.

The telecommunications act killed radio in America. Break up the media monopolies and things could get a lot better, if all the prospective buyers haven't written it off. IMO it's a timeless format marred by uninteresting content. I rarely listen to it anymore. Get some local geek on there who's passionate about playing what he feels like with a big signal........Who knows......could be great

 

I think lots of deep catalog artists like Benatar and REO etc will be eliminated on CD soon. The majors have just about had enough of the paltry sales. Just how many unit of a 1986 Benatar CD sells per year? Grab them now.

 

I've noticed an interesting trend when shopping on eBay/Amazon. The greatest hits collections of legacy artists can still be found on 'proper' pressed CDs, but back catalogue titles are increasingly MOD (manufactured on demand). If a title that I want is only offered as MOD, I will usually go scouting for a used copy.

 

The nearest Walmart in town has eliminated all but a tiny little display of cd's within the past two weeks. Target quit selling them a while back, so as far as I know the only place to buy cd's where I live is in used book stores, in used conditions. I think the cd is done folks.

 

My local Tesco has ditched both CDs and DVDs in the last couple of weeks. Vinyl too, what little they had!

This was the only place you could buy new physical media in the town I live in.

 

MOD, that's interesting. How many Who Greatest Hits/Best Of's have been put out by MCA/Geffen/UMG the past 40 years. UMG lives off those by back catalog artists artists. I wonder if their '81 album is on CD. It is "hard" to figure out. Blondie is another one.

 

And herein lies the problem. "As good as possible" is entirely subject. Many would argue that LOUD is "as good as possible".

 

That'll teach you for living in Derbyshire

 

You're not alone. I mean, I think it's cool in theory, but I would put any amount of money on most people failing a blind listening test between a 16/44 and 24/96 pop/rock recording miserably.

 

The 50th anniversary edition of American Beauty by The Grateful Dead, which came out only a few weeks ago sounds stunning on CD. Possibly the best it's ever sounded. Homegrown by Neil Young also sounds amazing on CD. Both released in 2020, and noticeably NOT brickwalled. So maybe the corner has been turned already.

 

To quote the great Molly Bloom: Yes!

CDs and lossless official downloads should only be audiophile from now on, specially HD downloads. Give that loud, brickwalled garbage to streamers and "mp3ers" (no offence), and give us the good, dynamic stuff, please! I'm tired of buying HD downloads and CDs (after mid '90s) that sound loud, cold, thin and that hurt my ears. A CD could sound as good or better than vinyl (i have many that do so), it all comes down to the source tape and the mastering. But the sad thing is, it ain't gonna happen. Only if the artists decide to do something about it, but so many of them don't seem to care, or worse, some of them even believe that loud, squashed dynamics is the way to go. It's one of the only cases i can think of where the know-how (music production, recording, engineering, mastering, etc.) seems to be getting lost and a lot worse with the passing of time. What a sad thing...

 

When A Certain Ratio released their latest album "ACR Loco" - I tried to box clever...

...I have a number of recent releases on vinyl and have been a tad disappointed by the quality of the coloured vinyl.

I pretty much knew the CD would be brickwalled...

...so I bought the cassette which was cheap and came with a Hi-Res 24-44 download.

What do you know - the 24-44 download is brickwalled...

...and so is the CD.

The coloured vinyl has better dynamics but has shortened versions of the songs on CD and download...

...you can't win!

Surely the Hi-res download should at least be unbrickwalled?

 

The bell curve in action.

 

In my experience, most of the HD downloads of recent albums are just counterparts of the brickwalled CDs. They have the same dynamics and sound exactly the same. But one is "hi-res" and the other isn't, that's the difference...

 

...llocks.

The Who - It's Hard
It has been released on CD, but I don't see a recent remaster aside from some Japanese versions.

 

SACD & HDCD are fantastic formats that are of exceptional audiophile quality