iv been stewing about this and lots of other things too (i have a lot of spare time) and i just want to see what every one els thinks about it , is it true that pcm at 16bit 44.1 khz dosent do a good job of keeping an audio signal??

Hehe,

I like this subject

To start with, at the end of the day it's all a matter of personal taste, but the fact is that all forms of music compression like MP3 and WMA cut out parts of the original that are not relevant at first glance.
While a MP3 coded at high bitrate might sound good, compared to the original you can notice the difference IMHO.
Perhaps not on a pair of PC speakers but if your computer is connected to your Hifi (like I have done) you'll notice.

Now, is analog (tape, LP) better than digitized (CD) music ?
In theory not, a good digital recording picks up every pin drop, while on analog recordings this pin drop might get lost in background hiss.

The question is do you want to hear the pin drop ?
That all depends on the music you listen to.
Analog recordings might just sound better for some kinds of music.
e.g. Blues, blues should be played from a analog source over a Tube Amplifier so you'll end up with some hiss and the warm distortion of the amp.
While electronic music is better from a digital source played over a classA amp, everything clean and pure.

But as I stated , it's all a matter of personal taste.

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This argument has been around since CDs first hit the market. Many audiophiles or "purists" believe under controlled settings and all things being equal, a good pressing of an LP will sound as good or even better than a CD. Their argument usually stems around being able to hear many intangibles such as "warmth", "passion" or even "livliness" of the performance. The problem is that all of those are very subjective and cant be measured scientifically. These are the same people who usually claim they can hear the difference between mega-expensive audio cables and generic ones, usually citing the same reasons as above. (this is also another hot bed topic of discussion between self-proclaimed "audiophiles"). Anyways the LP vs CD debate I think centers more around people who spent alot of time and money building an LP collection and dont want to admit that their investment is basically obsolete because of newer (and better IMHO) technology. But the battle rages on......

I moved the thread here because I think that it is indeed an interesting thread and more people should read/present their opinion(s).

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LW 4.10.5 Basic
ADSL anything from 3 to 8Mbps/around 1024kbps

"Raise your can of Beer on high
And seal your fate forever
Our best years have passed us by
The Golden Age Of Leather"
-Blue Öyster Cult-

i can hear the shitty sound of compressed music (this is y i download lossles music .wav .aiff .flac ect) so i avoid mp3s ,i think that cds do sound verry good , im just curios if they sound as good as the master tape?? iv looked at some diagrams and stuff and i see how a cd might not be able to do a verry good job of keeping an audio signal (at least the verry high frequencies anyway) . the sampel rate is 44.1khz ...this means that the frequancies in a song at about 20khz will onley be sampeled slightley more than 2 times per cycle....if this is correct it means that the high frequencies will be distorted . if thers a capacitor of some sort on the output of the DAC it should smooth out the waveform so it will be allmoast exactley the same as the origanal sound? is this how cd players actualy work??? also is dvda and sacd just marketing scemes to try to get ppl to re-buy all there music and to try to get every one using a format with heavy copy protection???

To start with, Speaker cable :
In my opinion the special thick cable is better than average.
At some point I wanted new speakers, but a friend of mine had Monster Cable, I asked if I could try it out and ended up buying good cable in stead of new speakers, the cable improved the sound that much especially in the high and low frequencies. (and no I wasn't using telephone wire before )

I don't concider myself a audiophile I just like my music good quality at low costs.
That's why I don't mind downloading high bitrate MP3 alltough I know the original sounds better.
When I get the choice .flac or .mp3 I go for the .flac of course.
Hoever....My car MP3 player won't play flac.

I don't know enough of the technical specs of CD's but on average the quality is good enough for me.
I did hoever once bought a CD by Talk Talk - Laughing Stock, I did have the music on tape, taken from a LP but the tape sounded better "warmer" than the CD.
But this was the only time I came across this.
I concidered it merely to be a poorly produced CD rather than my tapedeck outperforming my CD player

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I too have come across CDs that are poorly mastered...but I would still think the resolution of a CD would be more faithful in reproducing a master tape as a needle dragging along a groove or a bit of tape dragging along a tape head would produce artifacts (unwanted sounds) inherent in its technology.

by the way I agree that a thicker speaker wire is better than a thinner one esp. over longer runs or to a subwoofer. I was talking about the wires made out of exotic materials that some claim to be able to hear a difference from. My position is this....generally any difference might show up on a spectum analyzer or oscilloscope but probably wouldnt be detectable to the human ear assuming perfect hearing to be 20hz-20khz.

concerning audiophiles....If you are that concerned about sound reproduction I wouldnt download off LW at all. How do you know the person didnt take the WAV file and put it thru some kind of effects program? (bass boost, low/high cutoff, reverb etc) which would give you results not found in the original recording? If a piece of music is that important to you, why not just go out and BUY the damn thing? even though I use LW I still buy music esp. if its an artist/ song that I want the best audio reproduction possible.

Funny thing...even though the RIAA is worried that people arent buying music anymore because of file sharing,I actually think since using LW I have been buying MORE music because of the stuff I found on LW that I never thought existed....food for thought....

Heyhoho

I do buy cd's
And if a music file sounds poor I bin it .
But I have to agree that it is better not to download from LW.
I find my good quality MP3's on newsgroups but I do share them on the gnutella net with either LW or Phex.
The same goes for my homebrewed MP3's
and they are needless to say all h.q. vbr

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i would love to just buy all my music ...but the record store dosent have half the stuff i want ,and when they do its on a cd that has 2 songs i like and 16 that suck! not verry cost efective. all the wavs i dl i listen to VERRY carfley, and i can usualy tell if it was alterd or made from an mp3 ect. plus im broke so i cant buy cds if i wanted to . so its eather limewire ....or the radio. i have bot some cds (about 6 total) and iv gotten some as gifts and i riped them along with tons of friends cds into my comp as wav files and i share them (i allso lable them "from origanal cd -no mp3 conversions" so any 1 else who dls from me wont go thru hell hunting for one thats "true"...like i often have to go thru when i dl a song). i just plan to keep my wavs and then in 5 ,10 ,or 20 years when the record industry gets its **** together and starts selling music on a soled reliabul high quality format for a resonabul price , il buy my entire music library . it would be great if music was sold on flash memory for like 50 cents a song. 1 song would be on a 1 gig flash rom chip at a verry high sampel rate.

Does anyone know of a programme that can give a tube amp effect ?

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