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Alternative view of MP3s
A reader sent us an alternative viewpoint of the MP3 craze.
Although the writer likes MP3s for their ability to allow small artists to get their material out,
or to catch those last few B-sides, he still wants to collect actual physical media.
I'm sorry, but I just can't relate at all with the author. Having my collection of cd's (about 110 of 'em) stolen a couple of years ago, I place more value in actually being able to listen to the music than having a bunch of jewel cases. That's all I was left with, since I had the cds in one of those fabric 100 cd holder cases.
;)
:)
As far as sound quality, I notice a difference between 128 kb/s and the actual cd, but 160 sounds great, going from soundcard->stereo reciever->speakers. It's a hell of a lot convenient, having access to 100+ albums at once, instead of having to search for a cd among 100 others.
Gee, I don't think my room is small enough, maybe I should take up another 10 feet of wall space with a cd collection. Is it just me, or does this sound like the mentality of a certain company whom shall remain nameless? Gee, I think I have too much RAM, maybe I should waste some more with useless eyecandy.. and maybe throw in a couple memory leaks for good measure.. (hehe... sorry, I couldn't resist
I wouldn't worry much about lightning taking out my collection, since I have 2 cd backups up every mp3 album I own (me, paranoid? naaah). One at home, and one at work... 140+ albums on 12 cd-r's.
Definitely nicer to carry around. I don't think I've ever hurt myself lugging those around... And if the collection ever does get too big, by then DVD recordables (or some other format) should be out, and i can just convert them to that... quite quickly, too.
Disposable? I download my MP3s over a 28.8 modem, trust me, they are definitely NOT disposable.. That would definitely be a plus. Let's not forget that cds, just because you can hold/feel/smell/taste/etc them, doesn't mean they're not disposable.. Why, just ask AOL!
True, people treat physical objects differently than data, but that's just because they don't appreciate the data contained therein.
How many people really need to start fires by hand
? Lighters were invented to make life easier; there's simply no point in spending 30 mins starting a fire w/ flint and steel. How is this a bad thing? I don't know how to hunt down a deer, either.. why? 2 reasons: One, I don't *need* to, and two, it wouldn't be something I enjoy doing. Music is different; no, you don't need to create it, but it IS enjoyable. This is why I play guitar. I don't record my playing, nor do I play for audiences (well, ok, just when I'm forced to).. I do it because I enjoy it. Digital music is not going to change this, they are just a format.
And perhaps the thing I disagree with the author most about: his bragging about hist collection. Great, so you've made a lot of money in your life, and been able to afford to pay for a huge collection... Rubbing it in the face of others is just wrong. I understand the mentality of being proud of something you've discovered, especially where others have failed; however, I have the same experience finding rare bootlegs/import albums online (and then sometimes finding out it has a pop, scratch, or is encoded badly). I can actively hunt for a rare album, without have to pay a large amount of money when I actually find it.
Ok, enough ranting, I should've gone to sleep 18 hours ago..
-dilinger
Here it seems that we disagree on the meaning of listen. When I want to LISTEN to music LP's are the only things that will really do (Although a well recorded CD is pretty close). Compared to vinyl, everything else just sounds flat and boring. If I just want to hear some music in the background then CD's are fine and MP3's might do if the music is fairly dynamicly flat to start with, and it's done with a good comp. rate.
No matter how you argue, you will never get away from the fact that MP3's are of lousy quality. They have little dynamic range and lack true stereo. Their only feature is they are convenient if you have a computer handy and sound quality is irrelevant.
Face it, Mp3's will not kill records and CD's. Nobody puts Mp3's on for critical listening or for listening to clasics (like Oldies or Classical Music).
Mp3 are great for disposal music, like the lastest 'craze' song like 'Millienuim' (robbie williams) or 'Get A Job'(offspring). Songs like those die quickly, and you never want to here them again.
But then again, you can listen to songs like 'Yesterday' (beatles) or 'I'll be Back'.
I don't plan on replacing my records or CD's with mp3's, that's silly. Mp3's don't dent my CD purchases at all. Mp3 are fun to play for non-critical listing, but just don't compare in value to Records or Mp3s.
And NO, I don't own tapes. Tapes are evil, records (Lp, Ep, 72s) and Compact Discs rule!
Look, let's face facts. MP3s are nice for your brother's band's first delving into the "internet world," but there's more to CDs and records than the songs on them. Artwork is a key issue that MP3s blatantly ignore. No nice looking artwork there, eh?
Zahora obviously understands the merits of real releaes as works of art, not stupid ways to pirate the newest Green Day tune.
Obviously, the folks at Splendid E-zine (http://www.splendidezine.com) have a much better conceptualization of music than you 13 year olds, wondering around with MP3 player in one hand, hard drive in the other, and a ridiculous looking smirk on your face. Slap yourself and let us know what you figure out...
>Other than that, help me understand why everyone
>within a few hundred feet should have to listen
>to your car stereo, anyway.
Squarepusher. And that's the only reason. The rest of that stuff... yeesh.
My feelings, personally: screw MP3--I want a portable mod-player.
-rozzin.
The sound quality upgrade (190+kHz/96 bits if I recall, compared to CD's 44kHz/16bits) will be noticeable, but only to people with good systems and who know what to listen for. But that is not what they are using to market DVD audio to the masses. The main selling points are 5 channel surround music and extra info on a DVD.
A DVD can hold a lot more data than a CD, but people are not going to start recording 5 hour albums, just because of it. So the record companies are going to use the extra space to include things like interactive info and pictures about the artist, music videos, lyrics scrolling by as the song plays and other extra bits, just like they do with DVD movies now. They are assuming that most DVD players will be connected to a TV so they are going to use this to offer a more mulitmedia presentation.
Trying to argue higher music quality with people who think MP3s are good is a waste of time and they realize this. Thus they are focusing on the "added value" they can bundle with DVD's.
DAVEO, cut the crap already. Know when to shut your trap (or in this case, quit typing useless shit). Go home. Nobody seems to like you.
Yes, you can spend your days complaining about the quality and formats of MP3/CD, but no sound quality is better than a live group of musicians playing right in front of you. No amount of technology will ever be able to change that.
Linux: Long live the source code.
I have to laugh a bit at some of this "binary data can't be art" stuff. By the same token, how can a bunch of molecules on a canvase be art? Art is about communicating a mood or feeling or an experience - true art tends to trancends the medium on which it is recorded.
But I understand wanting something tangeble to hold. I also like the liner notes, cover art, etc. But the reason I like it is because I first became attached to the music contained within. The liners improve my experience of the music and my feeling of connection with the artists.
I don't read liner notes while driving in the car. I do read them while relaxing at home or at a friend's. Surfing for liner notes is a reasonable substitute. Saving pictures and lyrics with the music is pretty easy. So in my opinion, as long as I can play the music where and when I want, the rest of the present day packaging can go.
Actually 74 min is a standard for CDR because they are not as accurate writing as the mastering plants, a CD can hold upwards of 80 mins of music.
Actually, the audible range of hearing goes all the way down to about 20 Hz. It is easy to hear frequencies this low, but it is very rare for a sound system to be able to produce these frequencies at the volumes that it can produce higher frequencies. It is quite an experience to hear frequencies this low when they are well represented... it's almost more like _feeling_ them.
well, that being the case, thank you.
"onward!" cried the copper man, little knowing brass corrupts...
DAVEO SMOKES CRAK!
you many want to be accepted as having some sort of logical thought in your messages, however, you can compare your style of writing to the fact that if you walk into job interview wearing a burlap sack you're not gonna get a job
What are you talking about?? Cinema replaced by video? No one in their right mind prefers video over the big screen unless you own a $3,000 high powered entertainment system! And even those that do own them I bet go out to the theater. Why? Because there's something exciting about the theater, and at the least, you don't have to wait six months until the video comes out. It's a symbiotic relationship; there would be no videos without the cinema (unless you want the straight-to-video releases, shelves and shelves of "Iron Eagle III"; loved that one!)
This is to both of you. I have Boston Acoustics 6000's on my computer...
http://www.bostonacoustics.com/home/dt6000.html
I'm also using the Gateway 36" monitor and have a 22GIG hard drive. My computer is my entertainment system. It has an ATI all in wonder pro card so I can watch TV with it and an FM tuner built in -- of course I can watch DVD's on it as well. I have more than 100 CD's and they are quickly becoming MP3's. It also runs Linux. What more could I ask for?
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Resume
Football Sports Contest - Win $500 for having an e
I don't understand the complaints about sound quality. Is there really much difference between 128 and 160kbps? Who cares?
I've ripped many MP3s myself as low as 48kbps, and, yes, one can tell the difference between it and the orignial, but only if they are played back to back. 48 is more than listenable. I can hear every nuance of the music, and there is no added noise or anything else that detracts from my enjoyment. Isn't a tape as good as a CD?
Maybe it's just me, but I want to HEAR the music.
With MP3s encoded at 48, I can download more free music faster.
Oooohhh the poor guy who doesn't have a wall full of CD's, but instead could afford an 18Gb portable SCSI drive (not to mention his potencial backups in CD's, or tapes, or other drives) and who can carry his pitifully small collection to work (hey, can't he be a DJ carrying a selection of songs ripped from the pub's CDs, instead of changing a CD for every song? What the heck, even to his office!) or maybe he'd rather carry a wall of CDs all the way through his 'round US car trip.
Come on, that is pure FUD... just look at it.. it even can fit into a tamplate.
He starts by stating he doesn't like them, then immediatly says that they have CD quality (when it's in fact near CD Q.), and then he throws up a bunch of reasons not to like MP3 who seem to lie solely on the human desire to cause envy on others by showing how phisically huge his collection is.
Another example of FUD is when he states that a lightning strike on your house could damage the 18Gb drive. PHU-LEASE! If a lightening stroke on my house (suppose I don't have an antenna to protect me) I would be worried about having it burnt from attic to cellar, carrying me with it into hell and oblivion.
Get real...
I understand where he's coming from, but I don't see how he can deem it to be important that music have a physical basis or be "limited edition". Part of the wonder of MP3s is that the problems that come with the need for physical storage of music are no longer issues. This may make it, in some odd way, less "special", but we shouldn't forget that this is ultimately about _music_. I don't care what I listen to my favorite songs on, so long as it comes through loud and clear. I find the liberation of music from matter to be a positive thing. Before the advent of recording media, music was about performers and an audience. Then Edison and his cylinder appeared, and music suddenly became property. Why must music have a physical basis? It's only sound, after all.
Before I say anything else, I'll preface it with the fact that nobody has yet mentioned that the article is hosted on what appears to be a site that sells "physical" media music. Sounds like not exactly the place to find an unbiased essay.
;-)
However, I do agree with most of the points that the author makes. But, I also believe he made the wrong argument. Personally, I believe that mp3s's are much more of a threat (if you can call it that) to the radio industry than to the record store industry, as that is where the real comparison lays.
I am one of those people who believes that the sound of MP3s really sucks on decent audio equipment, but I'm also one of those people who thinks that any (consumer) digital audio sucks. Given a good stereo, good vinyl, a good vinyl scrubber, and the time to swap sides, I'll always prefer that medium.
But most of the time, I'm listening on rather marginal equipment where it is difficult to hear the difference between vinyl and cd-audio. It is also difficult to hear the difference between MP3 audio and cd-audio. It is also at these times where I don't want to have to be bothered with getting up and DJing -- I just want an endless stream of background music... SOmething kind of like the radio.
But radio sucks these days. Yeah, maybe you are lucky enough to have a decent local or college station, but they rarely last too long. I was very fortunate to have been able to listen to WHFS in the Baltimore/DC area in the early '80s and I can't count the number of days I skipped school and layed in bed or drove arround just listening to that station.
The great thing about radio (or at least this particular station at this time) is that it exposed me to just an incredible array of music. The fact that the signal really sucked didn't matter. What mattered was the music.
Well, this particular station sold out somewhere arround 1986 and my life hasn't been the same since. Until the advent of MP3s, that is.
I'll be the first to admit that I'll burn whole cdroms full of MP3s and swap them with friends. But I don't even begin to think of it in the same way as I do my record collection. I pop a cdrom in the drive the same way that I would tune up my radio. The only difference is that if I want to change stations, I have not one to choose from, but several hundred.
So, do I think MP3s will take over? I'll reserve judgement on that one. The technology allows the record companies to make even more money than they have ever been able to make before, even with the piracy issues unresolved, and I don't think that people care about music the way that they used to.
Yes, music really is disposable these days. All top 40 these days is the same schlock with just a slight variation on the same theme. Does it really matter that this music becomes a throw-away item?
-p.
I can't say I agree with much of what he says. His point about the ease with which an MP3 collection can be destroyed assumes that you're treating MP3s as you do physical items like CDs - when in fact you could/should be paying for the *right* to listen to the music, rather than the file itself.
"With MP3s, rarity does not compute." Sure you can have limited edition MP3s - in fact, by lowering the cost of getting music out there you can have a lot more, in the form of live sessions, less "saleable" recordings etc.
As for blurring the lines between art, music, and data... is music heard on the radio intrinsically different, or lacking in "artistic" value because of the transport mechanism used to get it to you?
"People will forget how to make music the old fashioned way." Oh *please*. There's no reason why MP3 should change the way music is made - it's a distribution network.
I really enjoyed reading his article, and I agree with most of what he had to say. I do have one problem with the following paragraph:
MP3s also blur the lines between music, information and data. I don't have any problem thinking of music as data, but it takes a lot of the art out of the concept.
The fact that mp3 is a binary data does not mean that it is not an art.
When I program I don't feel that I do ordinary work like a salesman or a bank teller. I feel that I create new things, and this is some sore of art.
Moreover, there are some sorts of music that cannot live without mp3 (like Techno -- since it is computer generated music mp3 is the format most of the creators use, and then if they are successful they might distribute also on CDs) are those not considered art?
Is creating binary images with The Gimp of Photoshop not considered art?
That fact that binary data files are easily reproducible does not necessarily mean that the content is not considered art.
Liran.
I am not a fan of MP3s as a way of replacing
CDs, but I think that the focus of this article
on how wonderful it is to be able to stare at
your CD collection is a bit silly.
The reasons I still like CDs over MP3s are
simple. First, I like to listen to music without
having to sit at my computer. Second, I usually
listen to entire albums rather than just songs,
so I don't need or want to deal with playlists.
Third, and most important of all, my stereo is
a better sound system than my computer.
Obviously as more MP3 playing devices come
on the market (and the price starts to come
down) and as better sounding MP3-like standards
come into existence my opinion on the matter
will likely change, but given the way things
currently stand I'd never even consider switching
over to MP3s as my primary music format.
Having said that, I do love them as a way of
supplementing CDs and as a really great way for
artists who aren't on major labels to get their
music heard. Frankly the fact that the author
sort of seemed to sneer at independent artists
by referring to them with terms like "bush
league" would have left me disliking the article
no matter what else he had to say. The fact that
the "bush league" artists stand to gain so much
from MP3s are the reason I cheer every time the
RIAA fails to restrict the format, even though I
personally don't have a hard drive full of them.
Posted by !ErrorBookmarkNotDefined:
Ahh, but you see Mike, the DVD collection would only signify music. In Saussurean terms, the sign is missing, at least until either (a) Roland Barthes learns to watch when he cross the street, or (b) a DVD driver becomes a reality for Linux.
-----------------------------
Computers are useless. They can only give answers.
I didn't understand that the acceptance of the MP3 format would end the distribution of other formats. I thought that MP3's were better suited for some situations, and CD's for others. I didn't know I wasn't allowed to have both. I suppose that having a hard disk full of MP3's and a few racks of CD's is a disaster waiting to happen.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
Caveat: My comments only apply to those whose musical tastes are relatively MP3-encoding-friendly, and for those who don't consider themselves audiophiles; that is, those for whom 128k is adequate for their needs, and to whom 160k is indistinguisable from the original. I believe my comments would also extend to most MP3-"unfriendly" music with a sufficiently high bit rate - try VBR, 160, or higher, until your ears don't notice.
The author writes that "there's something about looking at a big mass of music". I get the same feeling when I look at a hard drive full of MP3s - it's just as big a "mass" of music, just in a different form.
Ane yes, you can have the same feeling of "hunting down" MP3s as with other media. I find it odd that the author writes that one can build up a huge library "with a T1 and a healthy dose of spare time" (emphasis added), and then goes on to say in the next paragraph says that only collection of physical media offers the feeling of reward that comes with finding a long-sought item. If the "item" is the experience of being able to listen to the song at any time you like, it's not just a matter of downloading it. Someone else has to have it, rip it, encode it, and post it to USENET or an FTP/WWW site. If an FTP/WWW site, you've gotta find it, and then you've gotta get through to it to make the download. If USENET, you've gotta be reading the appropriate group at the right time, all the pieces have to propagate from the poster's server to yours, or you've gotta hope/pray/beg for a repost. In either case, music that's "rare" on physical media can often be every bi n MP3.
The author's snort of derision ("Oh, how impressive") at the notion of an 18G hard drive of MP3s strikes me as bizarre. I think what we have here is a culture clash. I'm a geek. I think small is cool, and the thought of having 18G of MP3-based music in the palm of one's hands as immensely attractive. Does the author snort just as derisively at a CD of music when the bulkier 78RPM vinyl format could have been used? (A hint - we call them "albums" because a collection of songs from a single artist in the days of "78s" was a hefty book of discs. Each "track" was roughly the mass of a 12" vinyl recording. I snort in derision at the notion of a CD as a tangible item :-)
How many of us have looked at our hard drives and remembered when floppies were king, pondering the question "how many rooms full of floppies are on that drive?", and marvelling at the answer? I think of it the same way - how many shelves of CDs can I fit in the palm of my hand?
As for permanence, I think the /. crowd needs little reminding that backing up an 18G hard drive (or transferring it to some other storage media when "hard drive" technology is replaced by something else) is far simpler than backing up a wall full of vinyl or CD. A safety deposit box in a bank costs as little as $20/year. A spare 18G hard drive, a little over $250 and falling. If you've got 18G of data, a monthly trip to the bank for offsite backup is the least of your worries.
Lastly, getting back to the notion of collecting as a hobby that requires effort - how long does it take to download 18G of data? And given the impermanence of FTP/web sites and USENET binary postings, how long would it take one to replace every track on those 18G worth of MP3s? About as long as it took to find the MP3s in the first place, assuming a random probability of any specific MP3 showing up in any given place. I dunno about you, but at the rate I've been accumulating MP3s, our author's hypothetical 18G collection would represent several years of work.
To recap - yes, if you're interested in "original" material and the ability to say that you have one of the 500 pressings of Foo's limited edition single, maybe an MP3 collection isn't for you. But if it's the music, not the packaging, that you collect, collecting MP3s can be a hobby that's every bit as rewarding as collecting physical media.
He said "I've written software to allow me to convert my CD collection into MP3 format" before that comment, so I assume that means that he's got 64 albums he owns on his computer at work. I personally have 30 or so here and it's nice to be able to put a playlist on and not have to hear the same song twice all day or switch CD's. In fact I don't hear the same song more than twice all week usually. Compared with the hassle of switching CD's a dozen times a day or listening to the same old crap over and over on the radio mp3's are nice. They're not perfect, but when I'm working it's little more than some nice background noise. (and I am definitely confident that my boss would never read slashdot :-) )
Downside:I once helped a roommate move his very fine collection of 8000 vinyl albums (we worked in radio). It took all day, a truck, special shelving and a reinforced floor in the place he was moving to.
Upside:A truly great collection. Album cover art and copious liner notes used to be a competitive and ever-escalating standard.
Downside:Tiny CD's= tiny art.
Upside: We cheered when we saw the first demos of CD's (They don't wear out!). I'm still cheering.
More upside:Digital storage means you can have great large art that you can interact with - MPEG4 specs lead me to believe this will be easy to do.
Final Upside: Yeah, 20 bad-fi albums on DVD, 10 super surround with fine art and maybe even videos. And the record companies already know this. This alone will sink MP3.
daveeo should not even bother responding to these midless drivels but he must defend himself against the evisl of this board and protect all the good ones
-DAVEO
no daveo is sorry mastagee daveo does not currupt his body with these durgs, and he does not believe your comparisons are corect so please leave daveo a lone and talk about mp3s which is the topic of this thread
-DAVEO
Well, it isn't a particularly bad essay for the first half. He lost his point about halfway through, but forgot to stop typing. Slightly better than a university newspaper, but not by much.
What good is 20 kHz you can't hear going to do?
Quite a lot, actually.
Music (and musical instruments) are not undifferentiated collections of mere frequency.
The frequencies we don't hear have a profound effect on the frequencies we do hear. A clarinet playing C#5 and a bassoon playing C#5 sound different, even though they are playing the same note.
A lot of the dynamics of the character of an instrument are expressed in the additional frequencies that are imposed on the base frequency by the physical nature of that instrument, and some of these additional frequencies are themselves beyond the range of human hearing.
Granted that some of these artifacts are digitized as part of the original sample, all you have to do to hear the difference is to record an audio input at an 11kHz sample rate vs 22 or 44 kHz. The difference in sound quality between the three is obvious.
Past a certain point, the limitations on the playback equipment will swamp out digitizing differences, but the sound then is limited only by the playback equipment, not by the frequency limitations AND the playback equipment.
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
I guess if you are more interested in looking at and thinking about your music collection rather than actually LISTENING to it CD's win out. Myself I'd rather que up a playlist and do something constructive with my time, besides splitting fingernails trying to open jewel boxes.
All I want out of MP3 is to record my tapes and LPs onto my hard drive, squunch them into MP3 format, and burn them onto a CD, 100 at a time, so that I can play them in my car. Anybody with a How-To?
The sound quality of MP3 is only fair, just like that of CDs and tapes, so who cares about physical media anyway? Only LPs have the proper dynamic range and low and high end response for demanding music (opera, Judy Garland). Yes, I know about those clicks and pops.
Foreign Aid: The system by which poor people in rich countries give their money to rich people in poor countries.
I don't have any problem thinking of music as data, but it takes a lot of the art out of the concept. I think there's a fundamental difference between a creative work, be it a song or a drawing or a story, and an Excel spreadsheet.
Seems to me like this is what's happened as vinyl has disappeared and cd's became dominant - digital format, no?
Still, I kind of admire his love of stacks of records - I love it when I go to someone's house and they have shelves of vinyl and are actually listening to it. Record collections take up _space_ and become a part of your surrounding. But for someone who spends lots of time on the computer, that partition of mp3's can have the same meaning.
As to who's collection would survive a lightning strike, 2 things: a) tape backups , b) melting wax.
Try not to be too harsh. Years back I bought a Lear Siegler ADM3A dumb terminal (the predecessor of the iMac) at a surplus store, to use as the terminal on my Altos CP/M box (it had no keyboard or screen, just a RS-232 console port.) I discovered it was permanently modified to be all-caps-only. I disassembled it to find a wire had been soldered over the caps-lock keyswitch, making it permanently upper-case.
Maybe this fellow can't find his soldering iron.
Ok, I can understand that people would want some visual art with their music, but visual art could be distributed with MP3s too. Maybe some artists could even sell advertising by embeding HTML and related files in MP3 headers if the players would show the stuff. Regardless, a phyisical media is not the answer because it constrains the lissener too much. Why should I be forced to lissen to music in the order someone else prescribes or even in the random order prescribed by a large CD changer. Hell, I think playlists are even too constraining. I have writen a simple perl-GTK front end to mpg123 which uses a simple AI and attempts to learn the users moods (check it out here). It also allows you to cancel songs before you hear them which keeps the user from waisting lots of time lissening to the beginnings of songs they dont want to hear (unlike more random play options). Note: since the palyer is in perl it is easy to modify the AI with your own rules that consider things like artist or song name similarity. The point is that we to have the needed flexibility in players we need the player front end to be implemented in software and to be easy to modify. I never lissen to CDs not because they waist too much time.. my player is writen specifically to save me time.. that is the beauty of software. Jeff
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Collectors have always been interested in the ephemera of their subject; a stamp collector, for instance, is often much more interested in a stamp if it has a unique history (saved from the Titanic or something). Even with ordinary CDs, it is possible (and fairly easy) to make an exact duplicate, byte for byte, of the original. What he as a collector thus is interested in is the package; the original artwork on the CD, the booklet that accompanies the CD, and most of all, that it is an 'official' CD. A perfect CD copy would not interest him, for the same reason mp3 doesn't.
Thing is, he would probably change his mind if record companies would start putting out 'official' CD collections of mp3 songs just as they are doing now, complete with covers, 'limited edition' nonsense (that made some sense with vinyl, but not with CDs) and so on. The difference between mp3 and the CD format is only one of data structure, after all.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
You've just taken the wind out of the sails of everyone proposing that just because music can be digitally encoded, it is therefore "information," and should be free.
I don't see your point.
The fact that music can be digitally encoded does not mean that it is information. On the other hand, a lot of the OpenSource products you use may be considered art and those are free too.
It might be the time that music artist, like computer professionals, started giving something back to the community. Music can be either information, art or both, but that does not mean that we have to pay a lot for it!
Liran.
I've got a friend who might agree with this guy... he collects vinyl and dats and whatever else he can get his hands on... matter of fact, he has my record player. :) But he also uses mp3's, I assume because they're convient for him. But it proves you can have it both ways, imho.
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Frank Zappa used to say that "fondling and fetish potential" were an important part of the experience of owning an album.
---Joe Merlino gnupg public key ID: 1E91EBAF
Subject says it all.
"Traditional Music Storage" would be ink on paper. If it's good ink, on high rag content paper, or parchment, it can and does last a long time. It also appreciates significantly in value, as any owner of a Bach manuscript knows.
I understand where the writer is coming from in many ways. However, there are A LOT of times that I would gladly have bought a single vs. the entire album. Most artists have one or two tracks that I am actually interested in - with some notable exceptions. Still, after you get the CD you have this large piece of plastic and aluminum media with a jewel case and a 4-6 page insert. If you are lucky to find an artist that has disdain for jewel cases thats a rarity. I like the comment about this technology being for the "bushes". I also know that markets haven't emerged just yet for when media is transferred to a new supreme format. I mean how much cool collectible visual information can you put on the cover to a MiniDisc? How about if music starts being sent out on smart media cards? Maybe that is the time when large throw away lcd panels that are the size of a poster come into vogue. You put in the media and it will tell your poster what to show off. Just a thought. I also don't think that MP3 will be the end all be all of formats *cough 8 tracks* but it will last through the time of cheap disk space and plentiful bandwidth for some. Basically, it is rare to find what you want when you want unless you have a small out of the way record store (why do they still can them this when they rarely have records i.e. wax?). Sometimes you can get lucky and they have the promo stuff with the song you actually care about. Most often though there are the music walmarts and the mega mega music wholesale places inside malls. At least with new technology you get some input into the purchasing. So, the writer has some points but those points don't apply to the way I think about music distribution. Record companies might set up those central servers but that isn't happening right now but MP3's for those of us here in the "bushes" are happening right now. When I can dial in the local college radio station and hear an entire nights show composed of mp3's of artists I would never have heard of in a mega mall record store I think this MP3 phenom is doing just fine without critical acclaim. :)
"You cannot uncook Mushoo pork once is has been cooked" -- wiseman
http://fudge.org
KILLRAVEN ROTE: > Here it seems that we disagree on the meaning of listen. NO RAVEN UBUT DAVEO THINKS WE DON"T. MAYBE YOU LIKE LIKSTENING TO SOMETHING DIFFERENT WITH DIFFERENT FORMATS BUT WE BOTH NO WHAT LISTENING MEANS. >No matter how you argue, you will never get away from the fact that MP3's are of lousy quality. They have little dynamic range and lack true stereo. Their only feature is they are convenient if you have a computer handy and sound quality is irrelevant. THAT'S A GOOD POINT, HOWEVER DAVEO USUALY DOOESN'T NOTICE THE DIFFERENCE THAT MUCH. DAVEO THINKS THAT THE TRADEOFF BETWEEN HAVING BAD QUALITY AND GETTING FREE LARGE AMOUNT OF CONVENIENT MUSIC IS WELL WORHT THE PRICE
-DAVEO
Factory Records (the sadly defunct home of such luminaries as New Order and Joy Division), made some interesting comments on
...
Digital Audio Tape that relect my thinking on MP3's.
They stated that ignoring DAT as a format, which many record companies wanted to do, was a daft idea. Mainstream record
companies were worried about promoting the format, as they saw the proliferation of DAT recorders as a threat to CD's. Fears of a
piracy boom, as people made CD quality copies on DAT, lead to a dubious copy protection system being used on many DAT
machines.
Ultimately DAT was only ever really used as a cheap mastering format, and never made it into the home.
However Factory Records attitude towards DAT as a commercial format is instructive. They argued that when most people bought
records, tapes, etc. they were buying an 'artifact' not just the music contained on the storage media. To counter the desire to pirate
the original media Factory declared their intent to package their products to enhance the status of the artifact. They had been doing
this anyway, with packaging like the Blue Monday record sleeve - a die cut imitation of a floppy disk.
If the music industry sees the MP3 format as a threat to sales, then they shouldn't try to end it's existence, but encompass it within
their marketing. Working with equipment manufacturers they could produce alternative distribution formats, that enhance the choice of
waht the consumers buy. No more buying a CD album just for two great tracks and ten filler ones - the buyer could mix and match
tracks from artists on the label, and pay for some form of digital media
An idea anyway.
Chris Wareham
Oh yeah? I don't know a gentle way to break this to you, but...
Standard DVD is copy-protected too. It seems to be doing ok. Granted, it's copy-protected will become irrelevant the moment that someone figures out the scramble algorithm and posts a decoder to comp.sources...
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
A lot of the research that went into the compression involved in MP3s was basically seeing how much could be taken away before you started to notice. The MP3 encoder then samples the "important" part of the song at a variable rate.
For instance, a high quality mp3 (not the ones you listen to when you're listening to samples on artist webpages or online CD stores) takes more samples of the important part of the music. The crappy quality ones take fewer samples.
Listen to an MP3 with lots of cymbal crashes on some really good speakers. Not on computer really good speakers, something like studio monitors... you'll be able to tell right away that something is very wrong with the cymbals. Then everything starts to sound really flat, and pretty soon it starts to drive you crazy, and you have to go find the CD that you copied it from and listen to it, just to make sure that you're not going completely out of your mind.
VFQ and AAC (AAC is the Sony MiniDisc format, VFQ is something that Yamaha dreamed up) both try to fix some of the problems with MP3s. AAC sounds the best to me, but some people swear by VQF. I suppose MP4s or whatever the hell they'll be called will fix some problems too.
I'm also sure that at some point people are just going to accept that the music doesn't sound as good as it could, and that, for convenience's sake, we can all just live with it. Our stereos will be connected to the cable in our house, and we'll be able to download the song that's been stuck in our head for $.99... By then I hope to have destroyed my hearing enough not to care, but there will always be a gnawing feeling in the back of my mind that I'm missing something.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. -- Oscar Wilde
okay Daveo, I'm sure you are all "kewl" and stuff now.
But the third-person references and all-caps style is very childish.
Sadly, I agree (sort of) with what you said, but cant really support you because I refuse to fully read any of your messages.
please. i feel sorry if you go through your life refering to yourself in the third person as you yell at everyone around you.
- Glothar : a (semi) normal person.
> You've got 64 albums online at your place of
> employment? Don't you worry about getting fired
> for trafficing in illegal stuff using company
> resources?
No I don't. I have MP3 versions of 64 albums that I *own* on CD. This is a right I have as a music consumer (although the RIAA would *love* to take it away from me if they could).
--
Yes, this is different from what came before. You can bury your head in the sand and wish the change away, or you can embrace it, ride on top of it, and enjoy it.
>(b) a DVD driver becomes a reality for Linux.
I'm not 100% sure, but as I understood it you can use DVDRoms as filesystems under Linux now -- it's just the special video storage modes we don't have drivers for.
Of course, there is still the issue that DVD burners are quite expensive still (although I expect they will go down in price). I just need access to one for a day or so to burn my music collection to a disc, though...
--
By then I hope to have destroyed my hearing enough not to care, but there will always be a gnawing feeling in the back of my mind that I'm missing something.
I know it happens all the time, but why would anyone want to knowingly destroy their hearing?
By that logic, the author would rather have larger media then smaller. Wouldn't it be great if we all had giant spindles we could hang outside our doorway, where each bit measured 2 inches across
If he don't want mp3's that's fine with me. Just leaves more for the rest of us!
... hey wait a second!
PS: Why does he believe that *any* tax break is undeserved?
CD changes are mechanical. They're slow, and have many moving parts that can go wrong. You don't have this problem when playing MP3's, generally.
... There's no comparison!!!
I've _never_ had a problem with my CD changer. What's more, if you don't play back to back CD's on the same changer, you won't notice a break between CD's while the changers switch discs. Yes, it's quite easy to queue up enough music to last a week, and easy to play random tracks when I'm in the mood.
Also, there's this very obvious, yet apparently new concept of RUNNING A CABLE TO YOUR REAL STEREO SO YOU CAN LISTEN TO YOUR MP3'S AT HIGH QUALITY! Why is this so incredibly difficult? I feel sorry for anyone who DOES put up with crappy computer speakers! Just run a cable! $6, Radio Shack. (Or more if you're one of those monster cable freaks)
I have this setup, sometimes it's very nice for playing games in surround sound. However, the signal quality from the combination MP3 encoding + sound card on my computer is absolute shit compared to the crystal clear signal from my CD players piped through my very nice digital mixer, then amp,
no fete although daveo finds that sotry to be quite amusing he nos where his caps lock is and at the request of a *nice* /.'er he has stopped using all of his caps for the rest of his posting carrer
-DAVEO
ditto
-DAVEO
How can all you guys be so intolerant?? I mean, ok, DAVEO is different, he types different och not correct in many ways. But that doesn't give you the right to be mean to him, and calling him ugly things, does it? It makes me really really sad to see people I would believe to be tolerant and inteligent to act in this intolerant way. Do you react this way to foreign people and people that doesn't speak your language very well also? I have one word for such actions: facism! Stop it now! DAVEO is apparently a very nice guy and haven't by any means deserved your critics. He may be a little different then the rest of you, but that is his right to be, as a human being!
However, there are A LOT of times that I would gladly have bought a single vs. the entire album. Most artists have one or two tracks that I am actually interested in - with some notable exceptions.
I've done the same thing. Buy Albums/Singles/etc. for one song but then I'd find that there is another song that I like or even the whole album. I could list 30 albums/cds that I've bought over the years that I've grown to love. And just as many that I still only like the one song.
When you just download the one song, you can miss the point of the cd.
VA_BOFH
He sounds like those phonies who stack their bookshelves just to
have a library they'll never even start reading. If art is what he cares
about, then form factor is irrelevant.
He brings up an interesting point though: digital property has no
collection value, due to ease of reproduction. Does anyone know of
a way to make digital property collectible?
DAVEO DOES NOT WON'T TO BE "KEWL", AND HIS CAPS ARE PREFERENTIAL. MAYBE YOU LIKE TO KNOT TYPE IN CAPS AND USE LOWERS CASES BUT THAT IS FINE. DAVEO WILL KNOT BOTHER YOU ABOUT THAT, DAVEO WON'TS US ALL TO BE HAPPY, GET ALONG, AND TALK ABOUT OUR TECHNICAL ISSUES. PLEASE DO KNOT MAKE FUN OF DAVEO'S STYLE OF TYPING, HE DOES NOT LIKE THAT. DAVEO DOES NOT YELL AT PEOPLE; HE TALKS TO THEM KINDLEY AND GENTLEY; JUST BECUASE YOU INTERPRET HIS STYLE AS SCREAMING DOES NOT MEEN IT IS. DAVEO IS SORRY ABOUT THE LINE WRAP THAT DID NOT WORK ON THE LAST POST BUT HEY: THERE IS NOTHING HE CAN DO ABOUT IT! CAN'T WE ALL JUST BE NICE TO EACH OTHER AND PIECEFULEY WORK OUT OUR DIFFERENTSES? THAT IS ALL DAVEO WORKS FOR AND HE THINKS IT IS A NOBLE CAUSE. IFG YOU DO NOT AGREE, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS BOARD.
-DAVEO
Someone wake up and moderate him down...jeez. This is the kind of dreck that has people laughing at Slashdot's boards. We really don't need it. Besides, he isn't saying anything worthwhile and it's very offtopic.
As far as traditional storage, there's analog audio tape, and this has to be handled with great care in order to maintain its quality. Variations in humidity and temperature, as well as accidental exposure to magnetic fields, etc. can have a significant impact on the quality of a tape.
Vinyl has its drawbacks as well - each play introduces wear and tear on the record surface, and over time, diminishes the quality of the recording. The maintenance is higher, and warpage, if severe enough, will destroy its usefulness completely.
I think the CD is the clear winner, at least for now.
PLEASE BACON, DAVEO JUST WON'TS TO PARTICIPATE IN /.'S BOARD, HE ORIGINALLY POSTED A REAL REPLY BUT WAS THAN CRITICIZED. DAVEO IS JUS TRYING TO TALK WITH THE REST OF YOU GUYS BUT SOME PEOPLE WON'T LET HIM. HE DOES'NT WON'T TO BE MODERATED DOWN, JUST TALK WITH HIS GOOD FREIDNS, JUST LET HIM DO THAT HE IS NOT OFF-TOPIC OKAY?
-DAVEO
I also like to spell correctly, too.
Mine is the same way. I've got it set up so that I can tell it to play up-beat blues tunes, or slow soul songs. My most common thing to do is just to have it play random songs or random albums, though.
I have a large music collection, and having it stored as MP3s gives me a greater level of access to it. Sure, the quality isn't quite as good, but that isn't always my top priority (although it sometimes is).
BTW, if people are interested in improving the quality of MP3s, they might want to consider helping out with a freely distributable encoder that is rapidly increasing in both speed and quality.
--
AND DO YOU ALSO LIKE TO BE REDUNDANT, TOO? LIKE DAVEO SAID HE WILL KNOT CRITICIZE AND MAKE FUN OF OTHER PEOPLE FOR THEIR MISTAKES IF THEY DO KNOT MAKE FUN OF HIM, HE ONLY WON'TS TO TAKE PART IN MEANINGFULL DISGUSSIONS.
-DAVEO
I tried to judge based on content. Couldn't find any. Sorry.
You've just taken the wind out of the sails of everyone proposing that just because music can be digitally encoded, it is therefore "information," and should be free.
Different AC than the one who just called you an idiot.
DAVEO, the fact remains that even though you did stop using ALL CAPS(thank god), you are still using so many misspellings, broken grammar, and switching your referring of yourself from third(DAVEO thinks) to first(I think) and back.. Add to this the mangled bold tag in your sig, and I can't help but think that you are trying to be funny by impersonating a clueless user.
As I said before(and got moderated down for saying it), this is only funny once. After that, it gets on one's nerves.
Your original post was on topic, if sore on the eyes. It was also flamebait for the above reasons. If you actually want to have a decent conversation, drop the act. If you are trolling for flames, don't bother making the post on-topic, or better yet, don't bother posting here, take it to ZeeDee's forums.
Moderators, feel free to mark me -1 Offtopic, and hell, throw in redundant too and throw my ISP's class C in hosts.deny.
When i produced a band back in the 80's, we did
some vinyl and a cd. In all cases, it was the
COVER ART that cost as much as everything else about the work put together.
Some of my favorite artwork is from record covers.
The importance of cover art is dimished as the
CD shrunk it, and elimated altogether with the
media revolution that is taking place.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Perhaps this is a matter of personal taste in music, but I'm the complete opposite. There are very few songs that I'd really want to listen to more than 10-15 times each. However, there are quite a few albums that have many good songs on them, and I wouldn't mind listening to the whole album 25+ times. Plus, many albums have a coherent theme or progression throughout the album that you miss by just downloading one song. For example, "The Downward Spiral" by Nine Inch Nails has some individually good songs, but you miss nearly half the purpose of the album if you just listen to a few songs individually, rather than in order as part of the downward spiral.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I agree with this essay pretty much. I personally download mp3s to hear new artists that I haven't heard before. If i like them, I download a few more mp3s. If i still really like the artist, I don't download any more mp3s, and buy the CD instead. I make a point of *not* downloading the mp3s, so as not to ruin the CD when I purchase it (there's much less fun in purchasing a CD that you've already heard in its entirety). However, since I can't buy every CD I like, I do download entire CDs in mp3 formats from artists who are good, but not so good that I'd want the CD.
As for why I want the actual CD, there are several reasons. One is that portable mp3s players pretty much suck and are limited in capacity, while portable CD players work quite nicely. Another is the nifty booklet that comes with the CDs, often with artwork, lyrics, commentary/interviews, or other stuff that is interesting. Then there's the "show my friends what type of music I listen to" factor. I carry around my CDs in a portable CD carrying case (minus the jewel boxes), and that's what I show people when they ask what I listen to. I don't carry around a printout of my mp3s.
As for why I don't download music onto CD-Rs, you don't get the booklet with the CD-Rs, and CD-Rs suck in quality compared to real CDs (especially in portable CD players - they skip a lot more).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Remember a format called CD+G ? Sounds just like this DVD-Audio crap. It never took off, just like I predict the DVD-audio will not take off. No one wants to watch lyrics, pictures of the artists and other extra bits while they listen to the music. Once maybe, as it still is new enough to have the "cool" factor. But truth is, music is the background to our lives. It is not the focus. I almost NEVER just sit and listen to music. I almost always have music on. I listen to music while I drive, while I read, while I compute. I go to concerts to see a show, not to listen to the music. Music is a very important part of my life, I listen to it constantly. But I do not sit and focus on the music to the exclusion of other things. I use it to set the tone of my other activities. By attempting to turn a musical collection into a multimedia mess, the powers that be are missing the point of music. CD+G failed, and I predict the same fate for DVD-Audio. Music videos on a disc will succeed in the same niche as Music Videos on VHS, but no one would buy a VHS tape filled with lyrics and artist bios displayed on the screen while the music is playing, so why would they purchase it on some other format?
My stereo....it goes from 5Hz to 30KHz, and...*GASP!!!* I play mp3's on it!! (OH NO! SINNER! HERETIC!!) sure, it cost $1200 and took a week's work on my car...but it's worth it...I burn mp3's to CD format, and place them in my car's head unit, and get quite a bit of nice sound out of it(enough to have people inside buildings complain...and YES, they can hear the vocals inside, not just the booming ghetto thud that a pair of well-wired 10's can produce for blocks) the 1" titanium tweets take care of all those highs, the 5's, 6's and 6x9's handle the mids just fine(oh no! had to invest in an EQ and a crossover! but it's worth it, people...it truly is). I can listen to aqua, prodigy, mystikal, busta, CPD, squarepusher, chuck berry, elvis, talk radio, cyndi lauper(okay, well, my brother actually uses my car sometimes, and I think that's what he likes), Blink 182, green day, coolio, marky mark, snoop dogg, and even books on tape(well, after making them books on CD) without even readjusting my system...the only adjustment I make is +/- the volume...
please, please, PLEASE debate me...
also, don't argue with me if you don't have any experience or know what you're talking about...thanks
Dan!
It's alright, to tell me, what you think, about me, I won't try to argue, or hold it, against you.
you no what, you are one *fine* ac!! daveo is *elated* to see that he is not alone in tring to bring some piece to /., and that others would like us to all get along as well. daveo thinks every other ac and poster on this board should follow youre actions. he was getting sadder but the more people he sees like you the happier he becomes! :) daveo commends you for being such a great person and wishes you the best of luck in your ventures in life!!!
-DAVEO
Actually, you are offtopic. Right now, this thread has absolutely nothing to do with the story. If you want to talk to your friends, go on IRC or Usenet or someplace like that, and leave the Slashdot boards for discussion about the story.
Oh yeah, and lose the caps and the third-person talk, okay?
Moderators: Feel free to moderate this and all of my posts on this story down. They too are offtopic.
WELL DAVEO IS SORRY ABOUT THAT YOU COULD NOT SEE HIS MATERIAL, BUT AT LEASDT YOU TRYED, AND FOR THAT, DAVEO COMMENDS YOU. YOU ARE HELPING TO MAKE /. A BETTER PLACE.
-DAVEO
At least mp3's don't have broken or "Cracked" jewel cases.
As far as "CD Quality Sound" that is a crock.
However, as I can stream mp3's, I like them quite a bit. ( gotta love that corporate connection ).
Ken
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
I seem to have messed up the URL in the message above. For the page on the LAME encoder, go to this page.
Before we get into legal arguments, I should mention that this encoder is distributed as a patch on the ISO encoder distribution and, as such, does not violate any patents. Compilation of this code in a country that allows software patents is at your own risk, however.
--
Hm, not to flame this guy, he has his points but I can't stop poking holes in them. More than anything I'm a little ticked by the MP3 rarity.
Oh - I have this ultra rare live track by artist B, and you don't. haha, poor you.
I get pissed when people act like this. I'm a music lover, I don't care if its vinyl (though I DO prefer my 7's and 12's), CD, or MP3: music is music. I want to hear the music, I want to crank it loud. Rare tracks aren't rare anymore - so who really cares? Its not a collection game, its about getting the music you want to hear and enjoying it.
Sure I was thrilled to find a copy of DJ Cam's debut LP, or Orb's UFOrb on Vinyl, or a college only promo of Radiohead tracks, but life is more than collecting music. I love music, and I live in NC, definitely not the greatest place to live if you want to collect music. I'm still looking for this ultra rare bootleg of early Verve on Vinyl, or Ride's mega rare Kaleidoscope EP. And I don't want them because they are rare - I want them because I want to hear them and enjoy them.
So forget being so greedy about physical music. I don't care if its vinyl, cd, mp3, or tape - music is music and I just want to enjoy it. i guess i'm not a collector, I just love listening to music.
In the mean time, I have to move - but only 6 crates of vinyl. I'm sure I'll be at 18 some day.
DAVEO AGREES, THIS THREAD SO FAR _IS_ OFF-TOPIC, AND HE IS TRULEY SORRY FOR THAT, BUT DAVEO WAS NOT THE ONE WHO STARTED THE OFF-TOPIC PART, HE WAS ATTACKED AND ONLY SERVED TO DEFEND HIMSELF. DAVEO JUST WANTS TO DISCUSS LINUX AND COMPTUER ISSUES ON/. AND IN THE FUTURE WILL DO HIS BEST TO STAY ON-TOPIC IF HE IS NOT ATTACKED. HE IS VERY SORRY TO THOSE WHO MUST SIFT THROUGHT ALL THESE MESSAGES AND PERSONAL ATTACKS.
-DAVEO
Truth: MP3 isn't the perfect compression.
Its compression, you do lose signal quality. But for the most part, this degradation is hardly noticable. On Jazz and Classical, yes you can hear the difference. Thus for all practical purposes - MP3 audio is CD quality. Lets not forget that MP3 IS a very old algorithm.
False: DVD audio is a huge leap in audio quality
This is complete rubbish. The only thing that DVD audio offers is a higher bits per sample rate. It will make a difference, but its significance will not warrant replacing current technologies. Lets say it samples at 88 kHz. Whoop dee doo, it can accurately reconstruct a signal up to 44 kHz (but a safe frequency would be 40 kHz). What good is 20 kHz you can't hear going to do?
If you want pure signal with no distortion, buy a tube cd player - you'll hear the difference and wondered how you ever lived without it.
s!mon
If I really like an artist, I'm going to buy that person's merchandise no matter whether or not I can get the same stuff for free online.
i.e. I own the 15 anniversary edition of the Star Wars Trilogy. But I still want the original release copies of the videos. And the Special Edition. And...
I still bought 'Sesame Street Fever' on 8-trck, though I don't have an 8-track player. It was for sentimental reasons *ahem*.
I never buy an album because I like one song by the artist... it's a waste. Instead, I copy it off one of my not-so-restrained friends. This is where Mp3s come in handy for me; the record companies aren't getting my money anyway. I know this is small consolation for them, but what might make them feel better is that I'll buy anything REM puts out, even if it's a c.d. entirely of highway traffic noise. Because I'm a fan, and that's what I do.
Under very specific circumstances. My example is this:
A new band goes to record their first record in the local "good" studio for 100 bucks an hour. Because of money and time constraints ( a third of your time, for example, should be spent just tuning and getting drums to sound good ) they record hastily and get mediocre basic tracks.
They then attempt to "fix" during the mixdown proccess. Thats when the newbees see the signal proccessing gear. EQ, Digital Delay/Reverb etc. There is a tendancy among first timers to annoyingly over use these products leading to the "Stadium drum effect" and the "vocals from afar" i.e. buried in poorly chosen delay and reverb.
Then, even worse, when it still sounds like shit they even add more during the mastering proccess.
Here is the kicker:
When you take one of these over proccessed tunes and convert it to mp3 almost all of that reverb, echo gets lost during the compression and IT CAN ACTUALLY SOUND BETTER!
Ken
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
--
--
The Internet is the Suppository of All Knowledge. You get it in the end.
> I personally prefer to obtain unencoded audio on CD
I think mp3.com have hit on a pretty ideal compromise. They sell CDs (I think they call them DAM CDs) with the original CD tracks as well as the MP3-compressed versions. This way you can put the CD in your CD-player and get the raw audio, but you can put the CD into your computer and grab the MP3s without having to rip/encode them yourself. As long as you only use 9/10 of the CD capacity (which is the case for most albums) there is room for the MP3s.
Try convincing the RIAA that all CDs should be released this way, though...
--
[[[but if lightning strikes both of our homes, which of us is more likely to lose his entire music collection?]]]
Well, actually, you will. If lightning were to strike your house, there's a good chance it'd catch fire and you'd not have your 18 crates of low-melting-point vinyl out of there before the local fire department pulled you out kicking and screaming.
On the other hand, my music collection fits on two DLTs, and are backed up weekly. A copy of that backup is sent offsite (to a friend's house in a different state) every two weeks. If lightning or tornado or anything else strikes, I might lose one or two albums ripped in the last week or so, but that's it.
--
Neat! It's MikeO! I discovered DigitalDJ yesterday . Very nice stuff, especially since I don't know anything about SQL. Could use the ability to delete songs from the database, though :) Oh well, what do I expect from a 0.4 version piece of software.
EXCUSE DAVEO; YOU ARE KNOT ON THE SAME LEVEL AS PEEMT! EITTHER. DAVEO DOES NOT WAN'T TO BE LIKE ANY WON ELSE, HE HAS HIM SELF TO BEE LIKE AND DOES'NT KNEED TO BE LIKE MEEPT!! PELASE LET DAVEO GOH ON HIS MERRY WAY AND TALK WITH ALL THE NICE PEPOLP ON THIS CHAT ROOM WITHOUT DISTRUBANCES.
-DAVEO
a friend of mine had his collection bite the dust due to a hd phenomenom known as bitdrift. 5 gig about. i am currently not having this problem, being the owner of a cd burner, and an old 386-33dx box that has 3 NEC 4cd-6x changers. that's hmm.. 4 cds * 650MB * 3 drives = 7800 mb of online music per shot. figure about an hour per album @ 128Kb/44KHz is 100mb, sometimes less, thats 78 albums at once. now this is a shit load chaper than one of those 200 CD changers you can buy. 128K sounds bad only when burnt to cd, probably b/c of the 128 to 160 conversion. as for playing to a large stereo, its probably your shitty ass soundcard.
Well, I do know this...you can put all the money you want into a good stereo system, but at some point, the sheer volume of the sound causes the inner ear to generate its own harmonics, thereby making it sound WORSE.
Other than that, help me understand why everyone within a few hundred feet should have to listen to your car stereo, anyway.
Limited edition, in this sense, means something that has a relatively small amount of copies. Say, a CD with only 100,000 copies all told. That's limited edition. Not something that is otherwise hard to get, such as a sound check or unpublished recording session. Once you transfer an audio track to MP3 and put it on the internet, there's no way it's ever going to be limited. It's easy enough to click 'file copy'.
As for making music the 'old fashioned way', I don't think he meant the actual creation of the music itself, but the phenomenon of music getting to the audience. The act of going to a music store and buying the CD, LP , or cassette is part and parcel of the entire chain of 'making music', which all starts with a person's conceptual idea to his/her voice be heard. I can't say for sure that MP3's will destroy this ubiquitous 'making music', but there is a definite difference to buying a CD at a record store and downloading it off someone's site.
message. Use the word "I". It's a very important word. We're all a bunch of no good censorship haters here, and anything that looks like some sort of collectivist leanings or tendencies or behaviour scares us.
Note: collectivist means collectivist as in group-ist or lynch mob-ist or mindless zombie-ist not cooperative.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
with all this debate on mp3 quality, maybe it's time for a poll to find out what type of speakers we are using to listen to our music. this is just a suggestion:
most of the time i listen to music on:
a) cheap, nasty headphones
b) crappy computer speakers designed for gaming
c) small portable lo-fi stereo
d) home hi-fi
e) expensive audiophile gear
f) professional studio monitors
g) drugs
- choice
Music, in my opinion, is ear candy. It's something that you like to listen to. This guy is talking about furniture, not music.
I don't really care how rare the music I'm listening to is. If I like it, I'm going to listen to it. If I don't like it, I'm not going to listen to it, even if the CD is the only one that exists in the world. I'm just going to sell the CD to someone like the author of this article.
---
The CD/MP3 debate isn't the first of its kind. A few years ago, people were discussing whether the CD-ROM would replace the book; and further back whether TV would replace cinema. Reviewing the book-cd situation, the fact is that cd's have not, in general, been able to replace the printed page. However, in some sectors (e.g. encyclopaediae) the compact disc is now the predominant medium. If we look at the reaction to this story, we can see that there are some who advocate the CD, as they prefer to own "real" media. Others like MP3, because they are interested solely in the music. Therefore, I very much doubt that MP3 will completely replace "real" media such as the CD; the two will very probably (continue to) coexist. In my opinion, considering the fact that a large number of people are still willing to purchase CDs, it would be best if record companies were to make all material freely downloadable as MP3s as well.
Music is my hobby and I take my hobbies seriously. As such, when I heard about .mp2 I was interested and when I heard about .mp3, even more so. But so far they've all failed in some way or another, no matter what bitrate you choose.
/mp3/r/radiohead and ls reveals mp3s of the album. How will they know what the packaging looked like?
Why mp3 is good:
free stuff -- sometimes legally, mostly not
convenience -- It took me about 15 minutes to track down mp3's of the Moxy Fruvous indie tape. It took me several months to find the original tape those came off of, and when I did, it was an expensive, used tape, not an unsealed nor the super-rare cd.
space-savings -- It's true, if I put my 500 cd collection to mp3, it would fit nicely on a couple large hard drives.
why cd is better than mp3:
jewel boxes -- I like to see and feel the artwork, to read the original lyric sheets and actually hold the original case in my hands. Some CDs offer nothing in this manner, but some cd's have carefully chosen artwork, and even paper stock along with subtle things like unlisted alternate titles in the lyric sheets (check Smashing Pumpkins -- Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness for an easy-to-obtain album that has all of these things)
sound quality -- Nobody will ever convince me that mp3's are cd-quality, because if I A/B them it's not just possible to tell which is CD or DAT and which is mp3, it's downright easy, it can be done within the first 5 seconds usually, and that's using computer speakers. On a professional or high-end consumer sound system the difference is immediately apparent and to anyone who has invested serious money in their equipment, it's also immediately annoying. Who wants to playback mp3s on a system that they've dropped tens of thousands or even just thousands of dollars on?
collectibility -- the article hammered this one, but it's true. I own quite a few cd rarities, most of which I acquired before they were rare. Which is more interesting, a person's reaction when they turn to their favorite group and see all sorts of Imports, EPs, singles and concert recordings that they've never heard before, or if they do a cd
Just my thoughts.
> I can't see ANYONE being happy with a recording
> of Bach's Toccatta and Fugue in D minor or the
> Beatle's Abbey Road as their reference in MP3
> format.
I've got my (original CD) copy of Abbey Road in MP3 format to listen to at work. It's great, and available at the touch of a key (instead of having to remember to bring the album in).
Compressed music is not a replacement for raw audio (which isn't what you get on a recording anyway) but rather is an alternative that allows the listener to access it in different ways.
--
How does this AOLer get a score1? His caps lock key must be permanently stuck down.
Sick! All of this free beer OS talk has spilled into free beer music talk in the form of MP3. The only redeeming quality (sic) about MP3's is that you can get them for free on the Internet.
Hmmm.... It's a great digital music format for transmitting and backing up your collection, but a quick survery of any college dorm will quickly show you that 99% of MP3's are illegit. If you had to pay to download MP3's they wouldn't be around. You'd buy high quality CD's anyway, because MP3 quality just doesn't cut it!!!
None of this bullshit about sampling music out there either. You have a radio, right? They play legit music all day long at no cost to you, right? Aside from that there are any number of websites that have samples of songs from any genre imaginable. It's not hard to hear the music you like. Unfortunately, it's not hard to rip off the music you like as well. A lot of good that does anyone.
At some point people start bitching back... music's just data, what's the big deal. Oh please! Music is much more than that, and genuinely difficult (to make good music). Support your artists and buy music if you really like it, or just don't listen to it. You don't help the artists or anyone when you rip, and besides MP3 quality sucks. Do yourself a favor.
How true - there's some artists that I really like that I want to get the whole album from, but let's face it - there's usually only a single that you want. CDNow had the right idea - let you put all your favorite singles on a single cd and ship it - but that's inconvenient. Why is it illegal to be able to get what you want right now?
Anyway, I think the music industry is changing - maybe more like "open source" - give away the music, and charge for the "support"- aka concerts and shows. I for one like the idea of direct capitalism - nobody controls what I buy, who I buy it from, and for how much. It's all open to the market now. The RIAA is dead. It's a market inevitability.
--
I can understand the author's point to an extent. I have an old turntable (circa 1963) That I like to fix from time to time just because it's ancient and should be thrown away. The same goes for an onld reel to reel tape deck.
The author is a collecter of vinyl and CDs. What he doesn't understand is that some people collect music itself. For them, the format is irrelevant.
I like to ge through mp3.com an a more or less random way, and just sample things (instant play). The thrill of the hunt is in finding a few things I really like out of all of the stuff available there. When I finally do find something, I know it's something I would have never heard on the radio (if I still listened to radio), and it isn't to be found in the local Beast Buy, or even an unknown and out of the way record store. In many cases, it will never be seen in the record store or heard on the radio. It may be that I am one of the very few people who actually does like it, or it may just not be commercial enough for an industry that measures dollars first, and artistic value a distant second (if at all).
If I like it enough, I will buy it in CD form (with pre encoded MP3 as well) and support the artist.
It's all a matter of what you like to collect, and there's enough people to be sure that nearly anything will be collected. (For example, to me, a bottle cap is the thing you have to get past before you can drink the beer. Apparently, some people have vast collections of the things.)
just as a note to this posting, i agree about 80% to it. There is a big poorly drawn fuzzy line where quality and accessability are seperated. Problem is where people fall and this is why areguments between the qualities arise.
90% of my mp3's sound poor to me because of warvling, distortion and the such. As time passes, I am buying the CD's for them. Maybe I'm one of those that fall on the border of what sounds shouldnt' be thrown out for 'acceptable' quality.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Umm, I think you need to read the original comment I responded to. He was talking about copy protection scheme that was licensed to a particular player... i.e. DIVX.
DVD is copy protected in that you cannot make a digital copy of it. But you can take your original media and play it on a different player, or give it to a friend who can play it on her player, etc.
hough he makes some good points, I can't relate. I have a ton of CD's and I'm working on converting all of them to MP3's. I enjoy organizing my music into categories and playing music based on the category I'm interested in. I enjoy not switching
CD's or only listening to part of a CD or a single song. I like the background music to my daily work and listening to 120 mp3's before switching to something else.
Well, how many do CD's do you have? Here's an idea. Buy yourself a 100 CD jukebox (or 2). They only cost a couple of hundred bucks. They can be controlled through your serial port. Then, you can place your entire CD collection in one of them, and play songs at will, controlled by your computer. The best part is they play on your real stereo, not your shitty computer speakers. No need to take a cut in quality by using MP3, and it doesn't even cost that much...
first, i admit that this is very much off topic, and could even be construed as flamebait, and fully expect that it be moderated down.
/. needs to have killfiles. his first post (above) does indeed have a point, but the all-caps style is incredibly annoying. i can't even read his posts without getting a headache. all-caps is just plain difficult to read. however, what's worse than his potentially legitimate all-caps posts, are the multitude of all-caps posts defending the fact that all of his posts are all-caps. it's giving me a headache just thinking about it. anyway, the above should be fairly obvious to everyone, but i'm using it as an example. we shouldn't have to try to read (or even be presented with) such posts if we don't want to.
/. killfiles. i don't really think moderation can solve this problem because it's not really fair to moderate down a legitmate post simply because the poster likes his caps-lock key. however, many (most?) users probably don't want to deal with such posts at all. i think we should be able to killfile posters who may in fact make legitimate posts, but for whatever reason, we don't want to ever see another of their posts again. for simplicity, one could even be limited to 5 or 10 people in the killfile to conserve diskspace or whatever (and if you want to killfile many more people than that, then you're probably doing so for the wrong reason anyway).
now, i think that the posts made by DAVEO are a very good example of why
hence,
i don't expect too many people to read this, and that's fine. this issue may have even been tossed around before, i don't remember. so, whatever.
"onward!" cried the copper man, little knowing brass corrupts...
I remember when I got my first copy of "Let them Eat Jellybeans" when it came out. I lay down in my room with the poster that came with the album, and read the lyrics as I played the song. I examined the pictures. I didn't just put it on in the background.
Later when I became a DJ and I was playing actual LP's, I would sometimes choose which song to play on an album just by looking at the texture of the vinyl....
The physical experience of bringing a record home and seeing the entire package has always been very important to me. This may explain why I don't have any MP3's on my hard drive, but I have a complete database of my music collection....
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
CD changes are mechanical. They're slow, and have many moving parts that can go wrong. You don't have this problem when playing MP3's, generally.
Also, there's this very obvious, yet apparently new concept of RUNNING A CABLE TO YOUR REAL STEREO SO YOU CAN LISTEN TO YOUR MP3'S AT HIGH QUALITY! Why is this so incredibly difficult? I feel sorry for anyone who DOES put up with crappy computer speakers! Just run a cable! $6, Radio Shack. (Or more if you're one of those monster cable freaks)
- =^o.o^=
Though he makes some good points, I can't relate. I have a ton of CD's and I'm working on converting all of them to MP3's. I enjoy organizing my music into categories and playing music based on the category I'm interested in. I enjoy not switching CD's or only listening to part of a CD or a single song. I like the background music to my daily work and listening to 120 mp3's before switching to something else.
I disagree with his philosophical views as well, feeling that the increase in competition will actually cause new forms of music to rise to the top. I especially like the idea that this is a world wide medium and that influences from different cultures than the US and Europe will play larger roles in what becomes popular.
But he does have a strong point of view when you look at your collection and start to drool... and then again -- so what.
-----------
Resume
Football Sports Contest - Win $500 for having an e
Music is music, no matter how you slice it, and I love being able to download that rare Ben Folds Five mp3 of Have Nagila or something along those lines, but I doubt that most people will want to commit their listening habits to sitting in front of their PC's just to be a part of this "revolution". When people show me how impressive their MP3 collection is, it's really difficult to take them seriously when their "collection" starts off with several "ABBA" tracks, then several misspellings of "Metallica". When you show off your CD collection, you make sure you hide the MC Hammer and Paula Abdul CD's. It's about the music, not how much of a hard drive you can take up. And unfortunatly, that's where it sits with most of today's MP3 "collectors". Present company excluded, I'm sure.
I can't believe people are saying mp3 is as good as CD. If you ever actually listen to a jazz tune on the original LP and then hear the same tune as mp3 all the fine ringing sounds of the cymbals are transformed into what sounds worse than a worn conventinal tape. You can even hear the difference between a Jimi Hendricks CD and mp3 very clearly by the mangling of high-pitched sounds, and most Jimi recordings are quite poor.
A bigger problem for me is that I'm really not all that much into pop music (I like techno but it about stops there). I mainly like jazz (think Lester Young, not KennyG) and classical ... jazz I guess is workable but classical pieces are far too huge for downloading. Not to mention the audio fidelity is MUCH more noticeable on classical than with pop.
So maybe these fat cat record companies will have to scale down and sell only classical. Now that's rich.
support gun control: take guns from cops
What in the hell are you babbeling about?
(2)Fear of new media ... I wouldn't call him a Luddite...
Why not? It's the same economic thing that drove the Luddites (followers of one J. Ludd, if my history is even vaguely correct): the social and technological changes that were erasing their lifestyles just weren't well received.
Not all change is good, and people do the Luddites a great disservice when they claim they were just unthinkingly against technology. It's much more important than that: they understood what it was doing, didn't like it, and objected in about the only way available to them.
The whole discussion is just a ramification of that "shaking the industry".
- Jojo
After reading this author wax fetishistic over the concrete quality of his music collection, and lament dismissivly against the rising tide of MP3s, I had to admit that somewhere in there he has a valid point, even if his arguments come over as a bit defensive and overwrought. Most of the discussion here seems to be building a case for one medium over the other without really getting down to what I see as the meat of the matter, which is what is it about a record that makes it cool, or a file in a directory that can become a tune? Where is the art? And how do these differing coolnesses relate, that's the really interesting thing. With an 'album', be it vinyl, a CD or a bootleg mix-tape bought on a street, there's one thing in common here, in that somebody somewhere once chose to put this thing together, and when they did it became more than its parts and became a thing.
I think it safe to say that by this point everything ever recorded ever is available on CD somewhere. Rarity isn't an issue like it once was, and good riddance. MP3s will just continue this on. The flip side of this is that too much information becomes an issue, and I hold the internet as a fine example. Here we have a sea so large it makes a research library hard to find. Which brings me back to my point, that part of the value of a good collection is put there by the person who thought to assemble it. This is the difference between a CD and the MP3 scene I see today. The rest is chrome. Its all a question of how you pack you bits, anyway. If we had the bandwidth we could just ship the cd tracks around. The quality issue will just go away. So what's the difference? Timing. Ambiance. A feel. Which is what musicians do.
There was a weird and very real adjustment when the platform shifted from a record, with two 22 minute sides, to a cd, with a continuous 60 minutes. People didn't have a feel for how to time it. You can burn five hours on a CDR now, but people haven't figured out how to make it really work. They will, because it's what they do.
In the end there isn't any difference at all between MP3s and CDs when looked at song by song. But music is more than just a bunch of songs. People like album art, because it adds a new element. People like MTV, too, although I've never understood why. Maybe someone could package a zillion tracks on a machine that would play like a radio but you could dial in your mood. That would be cool. Put an auteur's imprint on it, bundle in some extra info, and it's even more a thing. Which is where I agree with this guy, that things are cool. When you package enough good ideas together art comes out. Give it a collective noun, and its a thing.
ciao.
morvus
'Oh yea? You and what army?'
Er.. You can do mp3s in true-stereo as opposed to joint-stereo... I think you might need to get a better encoding program... :)
===
Old Fart!!! Of tha SENIOR DADS!!!!!
===
Old Fart!!! Of tha SENIOR DADS!!!!!
http://surf.to/seniordads/
Hi folks !
:minutes 90 :output 'soundcard)
:minutes 90 :output "c:/grosses_testes.ram")
:minutes 90 :date '(* * *) :time '(10 30 00))
What I would like to do is to use RealAudio as a radio recorder. I mean by that that I would like to be able to record radio from the internet to a tape. Why? Because I'm in Taiwan and I would like to listen to some French shows, but, of course, I would then have to wake up at 3 in the morning to record them... So, I was wondering: are there (Windows) utilities that do automatic connection to the internet, fetch my favorites shows and disconnect ?
Actually, I would like the stuff being played on my speakers, as I would link it to a tape recorder, which will be switched on either automatically or manually (time-programmable plug).
In Lisp, I would say:
(ppp-on "my-isp")
(ra-fetch "http://www.rtl.fr/les_grosses_tetes.ram"
(ppp-off "my-isp")
or
(ra-fetch "http://www.rtl.fr/les_grosses_tetes.ram"
or do like cron:
(ra-program "http://www.rtl.fr/les_grosses_testes.ram"
Thanks !
I agree with the author; I personally prefer to obtain unencoded audio on CD, rather than download from the net. But my price point is $5-6 per CD, not triple that.
I spend (what I consider) a huge amount of time on the computer (18 - 20 hours a day). I have a CD-ROM, and SB64 gold sound card and still went out and got a radio to listen to. The sound quality of a computer sound and a computer speakers is far lower then even a cheap radio. Now I realize that playing a cd or mp3 on a computer in the only option. But to play music on the computer just to play music on the computer seem like a waste of good processor cycles that could be used for Seti@Home or RC5.
I spend (what I consider) a huge amount of time on the computer (18 - 20 hours a day). I have a CD-ROM, and SB64 gold sound card and still went out and got a radio to listen to. The sound quality of a computer sound and a computer speakers is far lower then even a cheap radio. Now I realize that sometimes playing a cd or mp3 on a computer in the only option. But to play music on the computer just to play music on the computer seem like a waste of good processor cycles that could be used for Seti@Home or RC5.
I can't figure out how to get it working with MySQL. I downloaded the latest version of the server and client from mqsql.com, but neither has the file libmysqlclient.so.4, which DigitalDJ says it needs. Is this file on an older version of mysql, or do I have the wrong package?
Any help on this greatly appreciated.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
DAVEO DOES NOT USE AOL; HE WOULD NOT FORSAKE HIS GODS AND SINK SO LOW. DAVEO DOES NOT NO OF ANYWON WHO USES AOL THAT TALKS LIKE HIM, SO PLEASE "KNOCK IT OFF" YOURESELF WITH THIS BATTERRING OF DAVEO, AND LET'S GET BACK ON TOPIC WITH SLASHDOT AGAIN!
-DAVEO
> Could use the ability to delete songs from the :)
> database, though
I still use mysql directly for this...
As you say, it is still at 0.4 -- features will be added. It's amazing, though, how it has already completely altered my music-listening at work. I used to listen to CDs, and now I exclusively use DigitalDJ to play the MP3 versions of my CDs. No more being limited to the CDs I brought into work. No more swapping of discs.
--
It seems like everyone's confused by what the author meant by MP3s taking the art out of the concept. My personal interpretation is that sometimes there's a significance to the track listing, the layout of the CD insert, etc., and
even if you put the songs online in the proper order, people will only download what looks cool or what they heard is good. By doing that it's possible to miss out on a lot, especially with what the author was originally trying to convey.
-Vlas
"Support" is an interesting viewpoint. The only flip side to that is where and how many places an artist might be required to perform. Kind of like calling long distance numbers for support vs. a 1-800/888. What would also be interesting is if concert venues were to adopt a policy regarding those same concerts as immediately downloaded sessions. Call the bootlegit[tm] or something like that... charge a minor premium for these (i.e. non-free) since they are directly adapted from a concert (support) venue. I can almost guarantee you the sound off a mixing console and studio gear will be better than Joe 6-pack and his portable recorder at a concert. I didn't say Joe COULD'T make a recording.. I am just stating that the concert venue group could provide a better one.
"You cannot uncook Mushoo pork once is has been cooked" -- wiseman
http://fudge.org
That's all it is. It's not a new concept but it's rarely so openly embraced. With regards to music collecting, it still goes on with Mp3s. Just type @nick on IRC in an Mp3 room and see it in action.
Some people think about the music they listen to, while others think of the whole package. Truly, I prefer the music. I do keep cds around, but I don't drool over them or really care all that much about them. If I want music, I power up my computer and fire up winamp. If I wanted to have the whole package I go out and buy the cd.
Yeah, I know the music on the computer can be lost from an eletrical storm, but it's not like I lost $100+ on cds.
Summary: 160kbps and 192kbps have noticable artifacts if you have a good ear and good headphones. Even at 256kbps, BladeEnc has some slight artifacts. Use MP2 or MP3Enc V3.0 (V3.1 is just as good but takes 2-1/2 times as long to encode) for best results. Yes, you have to pay for MP3Enc... if you don't like that, use MP2 instead.
Curiously, tracks 5 and 6 of Fat Boy Slim's "You've Come a Long Way Baby" have some *really* noticable artifacts with any MP3 encoder at any bitrate. MP2 handles these tracks just fine. For music with strange phase-shifted vocoder effects or really "dirty" drum loops, like Fat Boy Slim, MP2 might be the only way to encode it reasonably.
BTW, the *only* disadvantage I've found to MP2 is that the EQ settings on x11amp don't work with MP2's (or WAV files for that matter). Everything else, including ID3 tags, work fine with MP2.
--
Jake
Always there are two. Master and Apprentice.
sounds kinda funny saying "1's and 0' on that platter aren't as meaningful as the 1's and 0's on this platter" but my almost exclusivly CD music collection means quite a bit to me, a long with those pain in the ass jewel cases. Only my data CD's are in wallets.
;)
Music for me is far from ephemeral, I buy stuff too listen to it forever. Just today I've listened to John Lee Hooker, some old R.E.M., DJ Keoki, and the new Blur CD; all 300 or so of my CD's have been listened to within the rememberable past. I know most of the song names on most of the CDs and and one point in time had the exact lengthes of all my Pink Floyd CD's memorized (over 20, I'll I've ever seen). My Shogo M.A.D. and Half-Life CD, as well as the SlackWare 4.0 CD's I just got will be coasters in 3 monthes but my Guns and Roses CDs, I'll take those to the grave.
My collection is my most expensive possetion at about $4500 (15*300) it tops out my PC and even my $4k baritone saxophone.
I can already seen my CD's one some shelf in the basement for my grandkids to sort through them and laugh while I blow the dust of my old DVD/CD player that I've hotwired to g/God knows what kind of stereo equipment I'll have and through in The Wall while I reminiss with my wife and kids.
Oh yeah, and they are and will remain far more portable than mp3s, but still don't beat tapes
--too lazy to log on
Someday the content providers are going to find a way to limit the playing of digital music to the person who bought it. There's too much at stake for this not to happen. What will be the impact of that? Right now, I can buy a CD and play it on any CD player that I own. I can loan that CD to friends, and they can play it as well. How does that work if I buy digital music that is copy protected? Will the digital music be keyed to my PC? Then what happens when I buy a new machine? How will I be able to loan it to friends? Will I be able to loan it? Will my right to listen have a time limit (e.g. five years costs more than two years) put on it?
Jonathan
I used to agree with the guy who wrote the article. I didn't really see the point of MP3s. I downloaded a few songs off the net (some legit, some not) and generally ended up deleting them.
Then I realized that on a 10 gig drive (which is pretty affordable these days) I could store over *200* albums. That blew me away! Then I realized that I could burn the whole lot onto a DVD. That *really* blew me away. Imagine taking your entire music collection over to a friends house in a single jewel case.
Now I'm an MP3 convert. I've written software to allow me to convert my CD collection into MP3 format ( Grip, a ripping/encoding tool and DigitalDJ, an SQL-based playback tool). I'm in heaven! I've got 64 albums online at work so far (taking up about 3300 megs of space).
--
Unlike most of the /. crowd, I guess, I for one prefer having a CD of music, or even a sheet of paper with the notes on it, than I do having an MP3. If records had better sound quality I'd be happy as a clam. What most of us forget is that all media decays, and years from now, bit rot on my harddrive will kill an MP3 collection before the plastic on the CD turns yellow and flakes off.
There is no ideal media other than making it part of a living culture, such that it is preserved by people playing the music itself. However, as the music industry is little different from that of the book publishing industry, mechandise and not the art itself, I'd rather have a hard copy than a soft any day. I'll pay for the physical object, but the bits and bytes are 'freely' reproducible as long as one has the technology.
That said, I think the same thing goes for books, as e-books also become an issue. I'd rather have archaic vellum & ink than a DVD filled with jpegs.
The tangible aspect is fundamental.
Also, as small scale reproduction of intellectual objects becomes a universal part of daily life, the sale of the physical media becomes the basis of exchange by which one supports an artist. It is not about stealing & copying, but about encouraging more art to be produced. MP3's will spread the word for lots of new bands, but unless people are willing to produce hardcopies from copying digital media, future generations will not remember the greatest works of popular culture.
MP3s are a means of distribution of information, CD's are tokens of appreciation.
I really don't see MP3 as a long term answer except for maybe top 40 or other throwaway music. The sound quality is really poor if you put it on a good stereo - the differences are really obvious especially at the frequency extremes or at low levels. It isn't so obvious with pop-rock that is dynamic range limited and frequency rolled-off, but with quality recordings it really is poor. Sure, it might be better than FM or as good as a cassette, but it really isn't 'near CD' quality. And when DVD audio starts hitting the market over the next year, with it's MUCH higher than CD bandwidth, MP3 is going to look pretty poor. I can't see ANYONE being happy with a recording of Bach's Toccatta and Fugue in D minor or the Beatle's Abbey Road as their reference in MP3 format.
The people collecting these MP3's and thinking that they sound like CD, are the same people stupid enough to blow $400 on a set of "high quality" computer speakers.
They very likely don't know what they're missing.
When I hear a single I like, I buy the CD. However, since I'd rather buy direct from the artist, make sure they're the ones getting the money, I hunt for their website and order from them.
:-)
Recently, I decided to buy Vanessa's latest album (special Internet-edition, direct from them). I placed the order, then thought to myself, since they're receiving the order themselves, why not ask her to autograph it before shipping?
It arrived last week, day after my birthday.
--The more you know, the less you know.
I'll admit, this guy's collection of music is certainly one of the most impressive that I've heard of. My own collection is maybe only a quarter of what he has. What seems to bug him is that he has 'lost' the bragging rights he once held of having this or that song. A lot of people have been in a situation where someone says, "Oh, I wish I had bought this song, it isn't on CD anymore (or never has been)", or "Where did you find that CD/LP?" With mp3's, people could care less if YOU have that song because they probably can download it. Sure, it may not be the same quality, but most people don't really care...they HAVE it. One thing the writer of this article should consider, if he dearly loves his collection just as much as I do, back it up by archiving your collection to mp3's. It sure isn't the original anymore, but with a good scanner, printer, and burner, damn, it certainly looks close to it. As for the vinyl, lock em up in a vault dude, they're irreplacable. =)
Well, this is damn cool.
.au files back in 1994, or Real Audio or MP3s now. If the increased accessibility has introduced you to just one new favorite song, then it's worthwhile. Forget format, forget the major/indie debate, forget sound quality. Besides, chances are we'll all see our favorite formats go belly up a few times before we die.
Having written the article in question, it's quite satisfying to see it generating this many responses. Thanks for reading it, even if you totally disagree with me (and I know most of you do).
I want to respond to a couple of points, though.
First off, there's a whole lot that's worthwhile about the online distribution model, whether we're talking about downloading
Second -- I want to clarify one point. "If lightning strikes both of our homes, who's more likely to lose his entire collection?" When I wrote that, I was thinking *power surge*. Apparently the brain cell that contained the information "Things that are struck by lightning frequently catch on fire" died that morning. Go figure. Yeah, if the house catches on fire, I can grab an armload of CDs or a crate of albums and you can grab your most recent backup. Neither of us will lose our *entire* collections. A lot of the people I know who collect MP3s don't bother to back up their collections -- they've got limited backup space and MP3s aren't priority data. YMMV.
Thanks again for reading.
George
http://www.splendidezine.com
I dunno, MEEPT is funny sometimes.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Daveo, all I ask is that you stop writing in all caps. That, and maybe use a spellcheck. It'd make your posts much more readable and less annoying, and make you seem more literate.
In the interest of the tree-hugging community I have to say that a CD you decide to throw away will have to biodegrade for a while, whereas an old MP3 can simply be flushed clean away from your hard drive. :-)
I wait for the day when consumers buy everything online, and the mall parking lots are all overgrown.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Actually, only mp3s encoded at 128 lack true stereo. True collectors such as myself only encode at 160 or higher which doesn't use joint-stereo but actually uses true stereo. It makes a WORLD of difference.
It'll never fly. The consumers have proven that they won't buy into schemes like that.
Man, all caps?!? I didn't even bother to read it. Looks like one big string of crap. No offense personally.
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"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
I REALIZE SOME OF DAVEO'S CRITICS WILL NOT EVEN JUGE HIM BASED ON THE CONTENT OF HIS POSTS, BUT ON THE CASE. NO OFFENCE TAKEN, MOONBOY.
-DAVEO
This guy is basically saying that having the physical storage material is as important to him as the music itself. Being a music lover myself, I think the important thing is having the music to listen to. This author (along with a lot of /. posters it seams) are very proud of their CD collections (as well they should be), but CD is basically just a very cheap storage medium that major record labels have used to make billions of dollars. The medium itself determines the quality of the reproduction of the music. It doesn't determine if it is good music or not. If a track sucks, it doesn't matter if it is on MP3, CD, tape or LP. The quality of digital music will dramatically increase as available bandwidth increases. There WILL be an electronic music format better than MP3 and even better than the currently existing CD format...it's just a matter of time. IMHO, having $10K worth of CDs is great, but along with LPs, 8-tracks and tapes, it will fall by the wayside when people start to adopt a technology that works better and allows more instant access to the music
But for portability and ease of use, the format simply cannot be beat.
As the technology improves and drives get denser allowing higher bitrate samples, perhaps even non-compressed, the medium will gain more and more value.
1) He does not mention the importance of data formats. Think about it - every single digital media storage we know of has a far shorter life span than traditional musical storage.
Tape, 5 1/4 floppy, 3 1/2 floppy, HD, fat32, ext2, and so on. Conversion is required every 5-10 years if your data is to survive. This is something that ambushes people after a few years when they scramble to convert. mp3 is hip today, but its successor has already been named by lucent, and it will probably last another year.
2) Fear of new media - this article is full of it. Every time something new comes along in telecom/media, people fear it. I wouldn't call him a luddite - he uses CDs after all. I'm sure people who played LPs wrote articles like this when CDs came along.
I think they are missing the main point - mp3 vs. CD has nothing to do with physical media - it has to do with distribution mechanisms that are shaking the industry.
L.