this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024
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Unpopular Opinion

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CDs are in every way better than vinyl records. They are smaller, much higher quality audio, lower noise floor and don't wear out by being played. The fact that CD sales are behind vinyl is a sign that the world has gone mad. The fact you can rip and stream your own CD media is fantastic because generally remasters are not good and streaming services typically only have remastered versions, not originals. You have no control on streaming services about what version of an album you're served or whether it'll still be there tomorrow. Not an issue with physical media.

The vast majority of people listen to music using equipment that produces audio of poor quality, especially those that stream using ear buds. It makes me very sad when people don't care that what they're listening to could sound so much better, especially if played through a hifi from a CD player, or using half decent (not beats) headphones.

There's plenty of good sounding and well produced music out there, but it's typically played back through the equivalent of two cans and some string. I'm not sure people remember how good good music can sound when played back through good kit.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Did you just wake up from a coma that started in 1985?

CDs are better than vinyl for every reason that MP3s are better than CDs. That’s not news to anyone.

Vinyl is not “better” by any of the metrics you mentioned, but I prefer it because if I feel like buying a physical medium for the purpose of collecting music, I want my music to actually be physical. I don’t want a collection that boils down to 1s and 0s, I want one that more closely replicates the original source of the music.

That’s the reason I like vinyl, even if I do listen to digital music far far more.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Nope, mp3 is not "better" than CD since its a lossy format. It uses how we perceive audio so we notice it as little as possible, but you definitely loose details

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Which is why I buy from sources like BandCamp when possible, that offer lossless download options.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Absolutely! With half decent very affordable headphones and my middle aged hearing it is possible to tell MP3 from FLAC pretty accurately.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You just can't tell the difference with 320bps mp3. Less yes for sure.

So sometimes yes, sometimes no 🤷🏻

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Study was done when most adults had hearing damage. I can tell the difference between mp3 and flac using headphones under $10 no amp just straight from laptop 3.5mm

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

128 bits mp3 sure, 160 bits mp3 too, 256 bits mp3 on an okay setup why not, 320bits mp3 no way Jose.

Are you also hearing the difference with gold cables and all that audiofoolery stuff?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

No actually i cannot tell the difference at all between 128kbps thru 320kbps but 320kbps sounds very different from flac lossless. Keep in mind the encoding used in the old days were very bad because it used to take more time to encode with old hardware so they used fast compression (kinda like how video encoding uses fast for encoding live streaming but it looks horrendous compared to slow encoding for non-live Youtube)

Modern high quality 128kbps encoding sounds the same as 320k

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Now you're just grabbing at straws. Back in the day you didn't encode to 320bps because your usb-player held like 64MB.

Also no, todays 128bps does not sound lossless, 320bps do. Try it out to see for yourself! From a nice wav or flac ofc.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

CDs more closely represent the original music than vinyl though and are physical media you can collect.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

mp3s are objectively inferior on all fronts except file size