OTish what's going to happen to HiFi?

With everyone downloading their music in crappy compressed MP3 format,
has the desire for audio quality/HiFi been lost. Surely you would want
uncompressed files of your music (like a CD) for permanent storage of
your music producing MP3's only when needed. Should be using Ogg Vorbis
anyway.

"Rob" wrote in message
oups.com...
With everyone downloading their music in crappy compressed MP3 format,
has the desire for audio quality/HiFi been lost. Surely you would want
uncompressed files of your music (like a CD) for permanent storage of
your music producing MP3's only when needed. Should be using Ogg Vorbis
anyway.


Fair point, but I think these days, good quality MP3s are high enough
quality (not perfect I agree) for the majority of people to accept the sound
quality/convenience play-off. The whole point of MP3s is surely to reduce
the need for huge stacks of CDs, and to record most peoples record
collection in uncompressed format would be impractical. That said, over the
next few years, if storage continues to increase in size and reduce in cost
at the current rates, at some point, maybe compressing the music will become
less important?

At the moment though, considering the momentum behind MP3 I'm now not sure
how well alternative file formats are going to fare in the mainstream
market.

To be honest, I would argue that with most 'normal' (as opposed to
audiophile) home stereo equipment, and certainly portable players and car
stereos, most people would be hard-pressed to tell if the source was a CD or
MP3 anyway...
that should put the cat amongst the pigeons... ;-)

Chris.

Rob wrote:
With everyone downloading their music in crappy compressed MP3 format,
has the desire for audio quality/HiFi been lost.


When MP3 took off the internet connection speeds were slow and hard
drive capacities were low, and MP3 was the first audio codec that
allowed people to share files easily and that was because it was low bit
rate. If you compare that with iPod users with iTunes, the de facto
standard bit rate using AAC is still 128kbps, but 128kbps AAC sounds
very good.

Personally, I think things will get better as more people get broadband
and broadband bandwidths go up, and hard drive capacities continue to
increase.


Surely you would want
uncompressed files of your music (like a CD) for permanent storage of
your music producing MP3's only when needed. Should be using Ogg
Vorbis anyway.


I use FLAC:

http://flac.sourceforge.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

Find the cheapest Freeview, DAB & MP3 Player Prices:
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In article .com,
Rob
wrote:
With everyone downloading their music in crappy compressed MP3 format,
has the desire for audio quality/HiFi been lost.

Erm... I seem to be outwith the set "everyone" as you define it. I may not
be unique in terms of this form of non-existence... :-)

There was a discussion on this on R4 a few days ago. I can't recall the
figures, but they seemed to show that many people continued to buy CDs,
despite all the talk about 'downloading, SACD's, etc.

Surely you would want uncompressed files of your music (like a CD) for
permanent storage of your music producing MP3's only when needed. Should
be using Ogg Vorbis anyway.

Or perhaps even do what I do. Just use CDs, etc, in the boring
old-fashioned non-data-reduced manner... :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

I know people who download MP3s, only to record them onto a CD as an audio
CD then delete the MP3s! Resulting in, obviously, poor sound quality, and
only ten or twenty tracks, rather than a hundred or so, on the CD.
Ridiculous, isn't it?


But despite the poor quality, they have a CD of music that they can play
anywhere (that has a CD player...) and probably cost them nothing ;-)

Must admit, I wouldn't delete the original MP3 (were I to do such a
thing...)

--
Remove Elvis's shoes to reply.

"Chris Mayers" wrote in
eenews.net:

"Rob" wrote in message
oups.com...
With everyone downloading their music in crappy compressed MP3
format, has the desire for audio quality/HiFi been lost. Surely you
would want uncompressed files of your music (like a CD) for permanent
storage of your music producing MP3's only when needed. Should be
using Ogg Vorbis anyway.

Fair point, but I think these days, good quality MP3s are high enough
quality (not perfect I agree) for the majority of people to accept the
sound quality/convenience play-off. The whole point of MP3s is surely
to reduce the need for huge stacks of CDs, and to record most peoples
record collection in uncompressed format would be impractical. That
said, over the next few years, if storage continues to increase in
size and reduce in cost at the current rates, at some point, maybe
compressing the music will become less important?

I know people who download MP3s, only to record them onto a CD as an audio
CD then delete the MP3s! Resulting in, obviously, poor sound quality, and
only ten or twenty tracks, rather than a hundred or so, on the CD.
Ridiculous, isn't it?

"Rob" wrote in message
oups.com...
With everyone downloading their music in crappy compressed MP3 format,
has the desire for audio quality/HiFi been lost. Surely you would want
uncompressed files of your music (like a CD) for permanent storage of
your music producing MP3's only when needed. Should be using Ogg Vorbis
anyway.

Compression is OK if it is lossless.

--
Max Demian

In article .com,
says...
With everyone downloading their music in crappy compressed MP3 format,
has the desire for audio quality/HiFi been lost. Surely you would want
uncompressed files of your music (like a CD) for permanent storage of
your music producing MP3's only when needed. Should be using Ogg Vorbis
anyway.


The only mucis I have in Crappy MP3 compressed format is for my
mindidisk player and that is not even MP3. Most of the music I have got
is from the 60's, 70's and 80's, so it is either on tape or record. I
have got some CD's, but I prefer records or Tape.

I don't buy much music these days as most of the stuff is crap, if a
ring tone froma mobile phone can get to number oine in the charts, then
that shows how bad things are.

In article ,
says...
"Rob" wrote in message
oups.com...
With everyone downloading their music in crappy compressed MP3 format,
has the desire for audio quality/HiFi been lost. Surely you would want
uncompressed files of your music (like a CD) for permanent storage of
your music producing MP3's only when needed. Should be using Ogg Vorbis
anyway.

Compression is OK if it is lossless.


I still can not undertstand how compression be lossless?

A mate of mine who owns a studio, have had a look at this so called
lossless thing and told me the quality was worse than MP3.

"AD C" wrote


I still can not undertstand how compression be lossless?


one way is with "run length encoding" see

http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/dataformats/rle/

for a good explanation

hth
Neil