[ASTRO] Re: Help, Lookin' for M.F.T./1000x import

[kepler@astroman.metro1.com (Michael Kepler)]

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> 
> Ps. I said screw CD's a long time ago, and in the last 2 years, Ive bought
> about 3 as compared to the 600+ records Ive gotten.  Vinyl is prettier,
> cheaper and sounds better, Why do people buy cd's??
> 


Seriously folks, I fully concurr with and respect economic and
socio-political motivations for favoring vinyl over CDS, but
"sounds better"?  Come on, gimme a break.  Do you like pops and
crackles and rumbles and hiss? 

The CD format standard is far from perfect and was rushed to market
and carved in stone too quickly, but it is still a godsend compared
to vinyl.  I remember the stinking 1970's and the crappy pressings
and crappy turntables and cartridges that the average Joe could
afford.  Only the rich audiphiles could affort the virgin vinyl and
the nice turntables and cartridges.  Today, any old average Joe
with a Discman can enjoy the same sound quality as anybody else,
provided he spent more than five bucks on his headphones,
and most of it far superior to what Mr. Audiophile was hearing much
of the time in the 1970's.

I've said this before on this list and I'll say it again.  The bad
reputation that CDs have comes almost entirely from incorrectly
EQ-ed masters.  The first slew of CDs were made right off of the
LP masters which were EQ-ed to adjust for the characteristic response
curve of a phonographic cartridge.  So they sounded crappy, with really
harsh high end.  That was a production error made through either
ignorance or laziness, and has nothing to do with the relative merits
of the formats themselves.  But this created this whole urban legend
about LPs sounding better than CDs.

The early MOA? LPs _really_ do sound better than the CD versions,
if you don't mind surface noise thrown in.  This is, again, due to
errors made in the mastering process.  I'm not sure what went wrong,
or if maybe it was even intentional.  Personally, I listen to 
high-bitrate MP3s on CD-ROM more than any other format, just as a
convenience.  In the case of the first two MOA? albums, and all of
the 7" stuff, those MP3s were made from digital recordings right
off of my record player.

In the end, format doesn't matter, music does.  Secondarily to the
music itself, business ethics matter.  I certainly understand how
the big-lab CD industry is pushing people towards vinyl with their
unethical practices, but that doesn't have anything to do with
the technical merits of the format. How did we get into
this debate again?  Did I start it... again?  Doh!

Mookie

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