CDs Are Officially Over

[nigthstar757]

i guess books will be gone later as well?. all books will able to download to your device.
blue ray disc....... who knows how long it will last.

 

[mynamehere]

As long as bands keep releasing vinyl records I don't give a crap.

I recently read that vinyl's actually been making a bit of a comeback, though it never truly died off. There are still some vinyl pressers out there.

Personally, I'm waiting for reel to reel to make a comeback (okay, maybe not)!

As far as downloadable content, I'm not about to pay $1 a song for a lossy format that's DRMd to death and AFAIK, comes with no artwork or lyric sheet. I do miss full LP size artwork and lyric sheets. Back in the day, they were a big part of the album buying experience. True, now you can just buy and download the 1 or 2 decent songs (if there even are that many), which is great, but they really do need to be lossless and DRM free for the money they charge.

 

[Conker]

Mp3 at 320kbps was my minimum awhile back but now if i have to pay its either FLAC or nothing pretty much. CDs at least gave us the FLAC versions out there. If there are no more cd versions then i'm not sure where the FLAC versions will come from. They might have cds out there still but they will be in limited quantities.

 

[Impulse]

I don't know. I can't tell the difference. I like CD's because I can rip them and store them in multiple locations, IE the mp3 player, the laptop, different computers around the house, etc. I always rip my CD's at 320, I am just not sure I want to go through the hassle of re-ripping them all to FLAC. Plus you can't get much simpler than Audiograbber along with the LAME mp3 pluggin. Actually that brings up an interesting question, what does everyone use to rip to FLAC? I want something simple and free. Thanks.

Exact Audio Copy

I use Media Monkey to add album art afterwards and do batch conversions to MP3 for portable use, but EAC's all you need to rip to FLAC accurately and without hassle every time.

 

[hity645]

People still buy CDs? lol.

I bought a couple hundred blank ones about three years ago. Still have most of them. I think I've burned six cds this entire year.

 

[Impulse]

As far as downloadable content, I'm not about to pay $1 a song for a lossy format that's DRMd to death and AFAIK, comes with no artwork or lyric sheet. I do miss full LP size artwork and lyric sheets. Back in the day, they were a big part of the album buying experience. True, now you can just buy and download the 1 or 2 decent songs (if there even are that many), which is great, but they really do need to be lossless and DRM free for the money they charge.

Amazon and iTunes and most other online stores have been operating DRM free for a few years now you know... There might be a scant few holes in the Apple catalog that are still DRM'd but AFAIK Amazon's offerings never had any DRM to begin with. The consumer actually won this battle years ago, bringing it up now is beating a dead horse.

All digitally distributed tracks usually comes with album art but it's just the album cover (and not high res enough for anything but portable players or thumbnails)... Amazon does offer a digital booklet (PDF) with most full albums tho, I assume it's higher res content... I wouldn't know since I still grab the actual CD when I want an entire album. I believe Apple offers something similar, possibly richer in content but you have to put up with iTunes.

 

[Impulse]

Also, it's not exactly hard to get or add the lyrics yourself... I've got an app on my phone that actively seeks out and displays lyrics for anything I play (Smart Lyrics for Android users), no input whatsoever required. If you wanted, you could even add the lyrics within the digital tags on the tracks themselves, any decent player (portable or otherwise) will then display them on playback.

There's a million advantages to digital distribution, and very few drawbacks... Most of the drawbacks are artificial ones not directly tied to the medium. If consumers actively demand it, we'll eventually get more lossless format distribution options; but that won't solve any of the mixing and revenue sharing issues that plague most new artists, since it has nothing to do with the distribution medium.

 

[munkle]

I use cd's for my 2007 car that doesn't have a tape or aux input.

 

[Impulse]

Does it play MP3 CDs tho? It's pretty rare the recent model car that doesn't have one of those 3 options, or BT, or an SD/USB slot. I don't think there's ever gonna be a direct physical replacement for CDs, we'll just end up with a variety of different wireless/USB/3.5mm aux options... Just like a direct replacement for CDs & floppies as data transfer mediums never materialized, people just started using a variety of different options depending on the task (thumbdrives, external HDDs, the cloud, SD cards & readers, phones, etc.).

It's just gonna take a lot longer for CDs since it's a standard that a lot of less technically adept consumers adopted. Vinyl stuck around because many perceive it to have advantages over newer formats tho, the CD didn't have any big insurmountable advantages over digitally distributed lossless formats (or even high quality MP3s)... It has certain situational advantages right now because it's still very much entrenched in the market, despite reports to the contrary.

 

[cold&damp]

I live in New Zealand. I have been looking for the past week for a place to purchase and download a 256Kbps or higher (Preferably FLAC) version of "Fallen" by Evanescence. (My GF loves them). So far I am totally out of luck. Unless I want to buy it through iTunes, which doesn't suit me at all. I want DRM free. So IMHO, CD's are not dead for a while yet.
I am trying my level best to do this legally, but to be honest, its such a pain in the ass I might just buy the CD and rip it.

 

[munkle]

Does it play MP3 CDs tho?

Nope, it takes plain old cd's and that's it. I think who ever designed the radio was a retard, it has a 6 disk cd changer, and it says to use 1 and 2 to go track up and track down on the disks. Those just change to disk 1 and 2, you have to use channel to change tracks. Obviously the radio designer was smoking some crack.

 

[Deviationer]

Are there any legal places to download lossless albums? If not...big problem.

there are but they are only for really obscure artists and classical music. It's sad. Looks like I'm going to need to get myself into what.cd if cd's do go the way of vinyl where they are expensive and limited.

 

[Deviationer]

The audio CD was ALWAYS a terrible format. It is not audiophile quality in the least. We can also blame this terrible format for the complete junk that music has turned into.

In the early days of the format every prominent audio engineer around complained that it was not a good format. Yes it allows for lots of digital information.... it still isn't enough room to capture music. The dynamic range on modern CD recordings is terrible. Even worse modern music producers have more and more pushed recordings into a narrow band of freq.

Honesty its about time we say no thank you to the CD.... let the market dictate a lossless audio format that will hopefully have enough freq and res to be a true digital representation, 24/96 min.

Also support the superior format Vinyl... in particular 180 and 200 gram audiophile releases. Let the music business know how much real music resolution means too us.

Sounds like you need to go back to the Hydrogenaudio Forums and the dark places of the Head-Fi forums.

 

[DeathPrincess]

Also support the superior format Vinyl... in particular 180 and 200 gram audiophile releases. Let the music business know how much real music resolution means too us.

Not sure if serious or sane...

You do know that vinyl has horrendous limitations worse than even CD? e.g. no sub 30hz frequencies due to the motor and the physical limitations of the disk? That "warmth" is blurring of audio quality with fuzzyness caused by the irregularities in the medium. It would be like you getting a blu ray and putting film grain over it then saying it was superior. No vinyl released in a long long time (unless by some retro audio nutjob) hasn't been through a digital stage (during recording mixing), and seriously shouldn't. Analog audio on tape etc. sounds nothing like the actual material being recorded, more like that n64 superman game in audio form (heavy AA to the point of blurring). But any effect of analog can easily be added to a digital recording (do it all the time with programs that simuate the vinyl degradation).

Digital recording sounds exactly like what you are hearing, analog never sounds the same. This might be fine for old jazz records or something like that where people like it as part of the sound, but for crisp clean audio vinyl is crap. One thing to always remember is that digital can sound like analog, but analog could never sound like digital. The same goes for the output. A vinyl record will never sound exacly like the master, as every analog stage always equals a loss in quality whatever gear you use, whereas digital to digital there is no loss of information, outside of the original conversion or if you downsample. Added to this analog records are slowly being destroyed every time you play them.

 

[Impulse]

I live in New Zealand. I have been looking for the past week for a place to purchase and download a 256Kbps or higher (Preferably FLAC) version of "Fallen" by Evanescence. (My GF loves them). So far I am totally out of luck. Unless I want to buy it through iTunes, which doesn't suit me at all. I want DRM free. So IMHO, CD's are not dead for a while yet.
I am trying my level best to do this legally, but to be honest, its such a pain in the ass I might just buy the CD and rip it.

Amazon's MP3 store not available there? Even if it isn't you could still purchase stuff with a pre paid CC and any bogus US address assigned to it... Or you can try MS' Zune store, I used that for about a year before I started using Amazon, I used Lala for about a year in between those two but Apple bought and buried them (such a shame). Most of them use VBR rather than a set bit rate, which is usually better anyway.

 

[pigwalk]

4No ones mentioned how affordable used CD's are yet have they? I've bought dozens of tons of CD's for a buck or two (plus shipping) off Amazon over the last few years. Beats paying 2-5x as much for "files".

 

[Gnasher]

I think the last time I bought a CD was around 2001.

Lately I have been using Amazon MP3. The quality is acceptable at 256kbps. Most of the music I have is between 256-320kbps and I can't tell much of a difference between 320kbps and FLAC, even on my Sennheiser HD600.

You say you can't tell "much" of a difference but I am betting if you set up an ABX test of lossless vs 256kb/s lossy in foobar2000 you wouldn't be able to tell any difference. I set up such a test and both me and a friend failed to tell the difference. People that claim they can are mostly FOS.

 

[TechLarry]

This is bad

 

[burnin8r]

That's because most music today is made to be listened to on an iPod with its crappy earbuds, not a high end stero system.

this. I am fine with FLAC or 320kbps mp3 as long as they are not shit source transcodes.

http://www.spek-project.org/

death to fake lossless audio!

 

[Zoomer]

Are there any legal places to download lossless albums? If not...big problem.

This. Really bad news.

I think the last time I bought a CD was around 2001.

Lately I have been using Amazon MP3. The quality is acceptable at 256kbps. Most of the music I have is between 256-320kbps and I can't tell much of a difference between 320kbps and FLAC, even on my Sennheiser HD600.

For most of the world 256kbps is more than adequate. Especially these whippersnappers driving around with so much bass that you can't even hear the music in their cars.

With your current equipment. Storage is so cheap there, why not go to lossless and be done, at least until they release 24/96 tracks?

People will still use CDs... much like people whom still use floppies. Its probably like One in a million people will still have a huge CD collection and CD player to listen to their favorite tunes.

But with DVD, why even use CDs anymore with those resources?

Many people buy CDs just to get digital files which are/were not lossless compressed.

That's one reason vinyl is still popular among audiophiles. High quality analog vinyl recordings have less loss than CDs.

DVD-Audio / SACD. Or a digital file with high resolution and sampling rates would likely do.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Are there any legal places to download lossless albums? If not...big problem.

I feel similarly.

I'm not necessarily a fan of lossless formats, but at the very least they allow you to recompress at a quality level of your choosing.

Flacs are somewhat overkill, as the human ear is unable to tell the difference between lossless and a good encoded mp3 (like a lame alt-preset standard, or whatever they are calling it these days)

The good part about CD's is that they allow you the control of how you want to compress them. Streaming / Downloads don't allow this control.

That being said, I have been pretty happy with the sound quality out of Spotify's optional "high quality" bitrates. Unfortunately far from everything is available in these higher bitrates.

 

[Met-AL]

4No ones mentioned how affordable used CD's are yet have they? I've bought dozens of tons of CD's for a buck or two (plus shipping) off Amazon over the last few years. Beats paying 2-5x as much for "files".

They aren't too bad in the stores either.

I just picked up Five Finger Deathpunch - American Capatilist for $10 from Walmart. That is about the same price Best Buy was charging back in the early 90's when I was going hog wild with my music collection.

Is that like $5 in 1994 dollars?

 

[wiseoracle]

Forgot to mention one other thing that could prevent me from switching fully to digital:
If the artists still use the current iTunes/Amazon model, I'm not buying.
I'd rather pay the artists directly than using any intermediate parasite company, or using a model that pays the majors such a disproportionate amount of money for services not rendered.
The recording and digitalization of the album should be a one-time flat fee, the reseller of digital music will still make a profit if they get 1 cent per song.

That's not going to happen for at least 80% of the music out there that is supported under a music label. The 20% independent artists out there will be the ones you can support directly. At that point most people don't listen to those artists.

The change needs to be the labels themselves.

 

[DeathPrincess]

You say you can't tell "much" of a difference but I am betting if you set up an ABX test of lossless vs 256kb/s lossy in foobar2000 you wouldn't be able to tell any difference. I set up such a test and both me and a friend failed to tell the difference. People that claim they can are mostly FOS.

Not all lossless is born equal. All "lossless" means is from 1 file type or source to another n no audio data is lost. So straight from cd to lossless would mean it would sound indistinguishable from the cd (as it still contained all the audio data e.g. 16bit 44.1khz wav). If you did a lossless conversion from a 16kb/s mp3 to whatever it would still sound shitty even though it was still a "lossless" form. But both of these examples, though lossless, wouldn't sound like each other. Damnit I said lossless waay too many times...

But ;listening experience depends on equipment being used and enviroment. For example on most mp3 player level headphones/iCrap docks you would struggle to tell the difference between high level lossless vs 256kb/s. Thats not to say you weren't using mid/high level equipment (there really isn't that much different). As location accoustics can play a big part in covering the major differences. Also factors like age (as you get older humans hearing of higher frequencies diinishes) can change how you perceive the differences. So when you take any one or a combination of those things together, it can go a long way to mask the effects for many people, but not all.

 

[Imaulle]

does not effect me at all. The only music I listen to is electronic music which can be purchased and downloaded in wav format from www.beatport.com \o/

 

[Ryoohki360]

Personnally i've been using Itunes for years, because it's the only music software in Canada witch you don't have to own a credit card to buy stuff from it.

Personally i only listen music in the public transport with my Crappy 20$ Sony headphone and sometime i listen to streaming radio via my Denon 3808CI. That's about all.

the HMV in Downtown montreal gone from 3 stories of Music, to half the basement now. They sell movies and Games.

Download Movies didn't really picked up here because they are big (4+gig) and 99% people here are limited to 50 gigs and less, while music is way smaller to download..

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

You say you can't tell "much" of a difference but I am betting if you set up an ABX test of lossless vs 256kb/s lossy in foobar2000 you wouldn't be able to tell any difference. I set up such a test and both me and a friend failed to tell the difference. People that claim they can are mostly FOS.

I agree.

Hydrogenaudio.org did a blinded study a few years back that was very interesting.

They created test CD's with a number of tracks on them. Each track came in two versions, one a track copied directly from the source CD as RAW quality. The other was he same raw track compressed using lame alt-preset standard, and then extracted and burned to the CD.

In other words, one of the two was just like it is on the CD, and the other was representative of a well compressed VBR mp3.

The tracks on the test CD spanned many different genres across the board. These CD's were then distributed to audiophiles, who listened to them on their own equipment (high end speakers, audiophile headphones with dedicated amps, etc. etc.).

For each track, they had to pick which one they thought was the raw source data, and which one had gone through lame mp3 encoding.

The data was then analyzed showing the following:

Not only were the overall results only correct ~50% of the time (or no better than would be expected from chance, by randomly picking one of the two), but no one individual across the test group was able to correctly identify which track had been compressed better than would be expected by chance.

What this means:

MP3 and other compression algorithms certainly have artifacts, but when compressed properly these artifacts can be minimized to the point where they are imperceptible to the human ear/brain, even when listened to on very high end equipment.

If you feel you are hearing MP3 artifacts when listening to MP3's this is likely due to:
1.) Poorly coded MP3's, or:
2.) Placebo effect. (your brain tricking you into believing you are hearing something that isn't there, because you are aware that it compressed).

A lot of people have a huge problem with 2. They like to believe that their perception of the world is absolute. This is - unfortunately - not true for anyone. Our human brains are predisposed to make us hear, see and feel what we expect to hear see and feel, whether it is there or not. No one is immune to this.

This is why I am more concerned with 1.) than I am with compression in general. I like having the raw source so I can make sure I am compressing something RIGHT. Storing everything as flac's or raw WAV's is just a huge waste of storage space and bandwidth.

In most cases you would be better off convincing yourself that there are no artifacts in well compressed MP3's, cause if you do, they will go away

 

[schizrade]

Classical music will die without lossless formats.

 

[jedijeb]

I guess I will one day have to upgrade from the two speaker AM/FM Cassette in my truck soon

 

[BlueMeanie]

I guess I will one day have to upgrade from the two speaker AM/FM Cassette in my truck soon

No need. Just get a MP3 player and attach to a "USB to FM" transmitter. Plenty of those around which plug into cigarette lighter. You attach your MP3 player, phone, or even a USB stick of full of MP3s. Then just select an FM Frequency on the USB to FM transmitter to broadcast your music to the truck's radio.

Works a treat and you don't have to worry about expensive hifi kit getting nicked.

Random example from Amazon UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/JSG-Transm...CK6M/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1320691958&sr=8-5

 

[Burticus]

CD's are not going anywhere. People still drive CARS and not everyone is an expert whistler. And good luck explaining to Grandma how to download, then burn mp3's into cd-audio cd-r's.

While I admit I don't purchase store bought cd's frequently, it still happens from time to time.

Hell my last car still had a cassette deck in it.

 

[Burticus]

No need. Just get a MP3 player and attach to a "USB to FM" transmitter. Plenty of those around which plug into cigarette lighter. You attach your MP3 player, phone, or even a USB stick of full of MP3s. Then just select an FM Frequency on the USB to FM transmitter to broadcast your music to the truck's radio.

Works a treat and you don't have to worry about expensive hifi kit getting nicked.

Random example from Amazon UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/JSG-Transm...CK6M/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1320691958&sr=8-5

FM modulators suck balls, I have gone through 3 or 4 trying to find one that sounded halfway decent.

 

[BlueMeanie]

FM modulators suck balls, I have gone through 3 or 4 trying to find one that sounded halfway decent.

I partially agree as this is cheapo Chinese tatt at under $10. To use your same technical terms, FM sucks balls anyway. So I use it as a cheapo answer to upgrading my car stereo. You get what you pay for.

If you are happy with FM - it is fine. If you want a CD quality audiophile solution then it is not an answer.

Have had to play with the choice of FM stations (higher seems better for me). But means I can keep the crud HiFi head unit in my car which is less attractive to a thief.

 

[starhawk]

Cassette tape adapter...? Looks like a cassette tape with a wire hangin out and a tape-deck head in the middle of where the tape should be. Cheap and effective, last time I bought them.

Also... if that truck has stock speakers... the audio is almost certainly gonna suck no matter what you do. Trucks are usually made for hauling either large objects or large quantities of small objects. They are rarely made for the sort of duty that an audiophile would demand of it, or anything close.

So if you want something that doesn't sound like crap... step one, cassette adapter, step two, better stereo (and car alarm with it if you live in an area where there's even a CHANCE of crime), step three, better speakers.

 

[starhawk]

Hmmm... someone's borrowed my edit-post button. Wonder what's up with that.

Note also, Burticus, that you may not need the cassette adapter if the stereo gets upgraded.

 

[BlueMeanie]

@starhawk: You forgot step zero: find the cash for the new hifi/alarm/insurance. I was happy with my 10 bucks on the adapter. My decent audio is in the house. I wish I had not mentioned it now as this is going OT.

 

[beowulf7]

I wish they'd bring back DVD-A.

 

[beowulf7]

I wonder if they predicted end of 2012 to coincide with the Mayan Calendar's prediction of the end of the world.

 

[beowulf7]

Zarathustra[H], that's a great post about the A/B test that HA did about uncompressed and compressed music. I agree with your conclusion that if compressed properly, the music will sound the same as the uncompressed version to the human ears.

 

[bluefirecorp]

My concerns are:

What is the next standard? USB ports on your car radio? Or are people just going to burn their own CDs? I just hope that whatever is settled upon is vendor neutral, and not just compatible with apple devices

People still play cassettes in their cars... just because the physical medium is out of production doesn't mean everyone will toss away their old systems.