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this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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Kind of late to the party here, but I'm going to offer my take anyway.
You're right, and you're wrong. CDs are better than vinyl records in terms of sound quality, but CDs are absolutely pointless. Instead of a CD, go to Bandcamp, send some money to your favorite artist, and download the audio files in FLAC format. You own the media (albeit digitally) and it can never be taken away from you as you make sure it's saved to a safe location. You may even be getting better quality audio than you would on a CD.
On the other hand, while I recognize that CDs are better quality, I am an avid collector of vinyl records, at least for a few specific genres. I've spent thousands of dollars on my HiFi setup, built my own tube amplifier, and I can say as a point of pride that there are absolutely no solid-state components in the signal path between the record and my speakers. While owning your own media makes sense in the era of streaming, owning physical media is in no way practical, but it's just fun. When I want to listen to a record, it's an event. I'll remove the record from its sleeve, maybe take it over to my record cleaner if it's a bit dusty or has some static charge. At the same time, I've just switched on my isolation transformer, and the tubes in my preamp and power amp are warming up. Then I'll place the record on the turntable, start the motor, drop the needle, and sit back in my recliner to enjoy the music.
If I'm sitting at my desk working, I'll put on some bluetooth headphones and play some music from my phone. But I'm not listening to music, I'm working and putting on music to pass the time, help get me motivated, whatever. If I want to listen to music solely for the joy of listening to music, I'm going to play a record.
Not disagreeing, but "may" is the operative word here. But it's always worthwhile to support your favorite artist when and where you can. :)
Here's the rub: It's possible to have way more lossless resolution than 44khz/16bit (CD audio) with FLAC, but that depends on what the artist is going to ship. And don't forget that your playback device also matters - not everything has a DAC that natively supports higher resolution audio, forcing some loss to perform playback.
Yep. That's exactly what I was referring to when I said "may." In my experience, most artists release 44k/16 files, but I have some 24-bit versions.
I would venture a guess, though, that given the same audio hardware, no human being can tell the difference. I can hear differences between lossy compression at "moderate" nitrates and lossless audio, but I feel like anything over 256k MP3 is getting into placebo territory.
That doesn't keep me from downloading 24-bit FLAC, though, because I'm s huge data hoarder.