Not a big surprise to me....
- Thread starter Not A Duster
- Start date
Not A Duster
Well-known member
Well, vinyl is making a comeback among the hipster and other "progressive" types. I own substantial quantities of both LPs and CDs in my collection. I can tell you what my choice of format is... (Hint: It ain't scratchy old records prone to surface noise, rumble, wow & flutter, and feedback.....) 
....Not A Duster
Well-known member
Actually, depends on the digital media. Most of it sounds like unwashed donkey ass...
MP3 accounts for 90% (or more) of downloaded content, particularly pirated material. It's overly compressed and lossy. Most people use (and offer for download) as low a bit rate as possible to fit more music on a given amount of disk space. 64kbps is the most common - and is what is also used in satellite radio, which sounds so bad it hurts my ears. A few people sacrifice disk space and "upgrade" to 128kbps and 256kbs, but even those formats lack definition, low frequency info while sounding compressed and "swishy." Especially when compared to a Compact Disc or clean vinyl recording.
There are so - called "lossless" compression formats such as ALAC and FLAC which sound a lot closer to compact disc. (assuming that's what the music was sourced from.) And there are specialized high end media players with tons of storage and hi-fi quality pre-amps that are pressing very close to what we expect from CD. Actually if you find an old apple 160 gb ipod classic and use something like the onkyo hifi dock, bypassing the headphone preamps, they sound very good when loaded with apple lossless (ALAC) content.
The audio outputs and headphone pre-amps on most computers and MP3 players are also the shittiest Chinese garbage you can find, which helps make them sound terrible. Matter of fact I'm convinced that the hipster rush back to the "warm" tones of old vinyl records has more to do with shitty MP3 and WMA files than it does compact discs. CDs when actually mastered for the digital realm, and assuming the source recording was of decent quality can sound many times better than vinyl, which had it's dynamic range hobbled by the physical requirement of not having the needle literally jump out of the groove.
I have an iPod classic loaded with lossless files and a couple docks for casual tunes in the garage and vehicle. But when I want to listen to music, to me nothing beats CDs played through a real CD player and a good set of loudspeakers.
69.5CUDA
Blah Blah Blah
totaly agreed..if you want flac..its all about privat trackers and thats where the flac outnumbers the mp3's
the trick with audio out on a pc is useualy using the HDMI port ..the sound quality from there seems to be on par with a cd/dvd..and will be as good as the sound was recorded in
typicly the only places i listen to any tunes is in my helmet on a long run....in the car if im going to be in it more than 2 hours.....or in the shop working..and thats useualy where the techno and such comes in as its got rythme and flow to keep a steady work pace......mth.house.de is one i use ALOT the variaty is astounding...i used to have a handfull of stations id bounce between but most went under..several of which were litteraly grab bags with wild dj's...playing anything and EVERYTHING remixes to vintage strange un heard of to comercial jingles....i do miss screwing with the dj's where i earned the name dj slayer..asking for the most obscure most hard to find tracks
the trick with audio out on a pc is useualy using the HDMI port ..the sound quality from there seems to be on par with a cd/dvd..and will be as good as the sound was recorded in
typicly the only places i listen to any tunes is in my helmet on a long run....in the car if im going to be in it more than 2 hours.....or in the shop working..and thats useualy where the techno and such comes in as its got rythme and flow to keep a steady work pace......mth.house.de is one i use ALOT the variaty is astounding...i used to have a handfull of stations id bounce between but most went under..several of which were litteraly grab bags with wild dj's...playing anything and EVERYTHING remixes to vintage strange un heard of to comercial jingles....i do miss screwing with the dj's where i earned the name dj slayer..asking for the most obscure most hard to find tracks
v8440
Well-known member
Back in the 80's and early 90's I had a radioshack cd player, a cd-2300 model. No remote control, single disk mechanism, but that sucker sounded GOOD. Decades later I read on the internet about how good many of those semi-early radioshack cd players were, so I know I'm not crazy. I had it playing through a 1961 Eico ST-70 integrated amp, which I still have. As expected, my phone playing mp3's through the same amplifier doesn't sound nearly as good. If another cd-2300 fell into my lap I'd sure buy it...
Not A Duster
Well-known member
Most older CD players were good... they were purpose- built devices using high quality components. NAD still sells good quality CD players with quality D/A convertors. I think the higher end Denon stuff does too.
Playing CDs with your DVD player is not the same.
Playing CDs with your DVD player is not the same.
Not A Duster
Well-known member
Crossing my fingers that it's a good buy for you.
The biggest risk in buying vintage digital gear is whether the laser has any life left in it or not. It's never worth the cost of replacing... Unless you have the skills to do it yourself.
Hope it works out for you.
The biggest risk in buying vintage digital gear is whether the laser has any life left in it or not. It's never worth the cost of replacing... Unless you have the skills to do it yourself.
Hope it works out for you.
Not A Duster
Well-known member
Yeah - they just stop working. A laser is basically just a light source and they burn out like any other light source. Most of the high quality stuff was built with robust mechanicals, that could often outlast the pickup.
I tend to buy quality gear... so much of the stuff I have is decades old. I have however lost one CD player laser quitting. I currently have an NAD player that is mid 1990's vintage and a Sony dual bay real time audio disc burner that I use for converting some of my irreplaceable vinyl to disc. The Sony lost a laser pickup after hours of use that I'm sure far exceeded it's design standards. It was a very expensive studio unit, so it was worth repairing. A little research taught me that if a quality unit is going to wear out, that was likely how it would go.
I'm certainly not trying to discourage you. If/when my NAD player packs it in, I would try to replace it with something vintage myself. I'm not confident the new stuff is as good.
I tend to buy quality gear... so much of the stuff I have is decades old. I have however lost one CD player laser quitting. I currently have an NAD player that is mid 1990's vintage and a Sony dual bay real time audio disc burner that I use for converting some of my irreplaceable vinyl to disc. The Sony lost a laser pickup after hours of use that I'm sure far exceeded it's design standards. It was a very expensive studio unit, so it was worth repairing. A little research taught me that if a quality unit is going to wear out, that was likely how it would go.
I'm certainly not trying to discourage you. If/when my NAD player packs it in, I would try to replace it with something vintage myself. I'm not confident the new stuff is as good.