I can still hear music perfectly well but not so ‘pitch-perfect’ that any hi-tech wizardry could improve…
It’s similar to people who buy the most expensive HD ready 3D and what not TVs, when their eyesight is so poor they need glasses with milk bottle lenses. Pointless and expensive really.
On your point about people analyzing instead of listening properly, I have a similar gripe with people who spend a fortune getting concert tickets to see their favourite bands and then proceed to “watch” the whole concert videoing it on their mobile phones. How can they possibly be “into” the band and their sound when they’re not even watching properly? Very sad.
If CDs are being ripped to another sort of media (a USB drive for instance), then the better file format of FLAC might as well be chosen. The advantage being that it can be converted to MP3 if needed while always keeping the FLAC files for devices that will play them.
The difference in sound quality between the two file formats may not be noticeable but the music may as well be played in the better file format as not. If the difference cannot be heard, at least you’d know it was a limitation of the ears rather than it being that the quality is just not present in the poorer file format.
‘Format shifting’ (putting CDs onto USB drives) unfortunately has legal aspect to consider. It was ruled allowable for personal use at one time but an appeal from the music industry overturned this. I believe it is now (strictly speaking) illegal again.
Whether this is taken any notice of (or even thought incorrect info.) is up to the individual but I think having copied the music, it might be good to keep the CD or vinyl record that was purchased. Then, in the unlikely event the copying was discovered, you could at least prove you had originally bought the music, rather than copied it from a friend’s music collection.
As regards HD television, I’m pleased to say I can still see the difference between HD and non-HD transmissions providing I have my glasses on. I much prefer to watch HD transmissions where the station offers the option.
I rarely download Mart - I buy the CD and rip to FLAC.
To me, there is a deffo difference in quality between say a 256kbps Mp3 and a FLAC file, but a 320kbps Mp3 sounds pretty close to a FLAC as makes no difference.
@Floydy.
My favourite music to listen to on my equipment is Pink Floyd, as it was always mastered very well in the first place. Especially the track “Sheep” from Animals.
That’s a great reason for me liking Pink Floyd so much I think. The production is fantastic. Did you ever buy their final album The Endless River, Fender? The sound is amazing:cool:
The problem I have with vinyl is the dust. No matter how careful you are and how much anti static cleaners you deploy together with groove following brush heads, dust will eventually mar the reproduction. Then there is sound compression used by the manufacturers to get some (not all) of the master recorded sound into the groves and the compression removes some of the performed sound input. Now with CD’s, the sound within the disc is genuinely as performed and dust is not a problem if care with the discs is taken.
There was something very tangible about playing vinyl, almost a ritual, I was allowed to use my parent’s Fidelity record player from a very young age during the 60’s. I can still smell the hot dust on the valves as they heated up.
Some of my records saw some action, they’d get taken to parties and get scratched or have the contents of a party four spilled all over them…played absolute havoc with my Ramones!
We weren’t the dancing around handbag types
