The sound quality and emotional value of CDs
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 at 23:31 tagged compression, quality 
The way we listen to music has changed a lot over the last decade. The iPod was only introduced in 2001, hard to believe in this world full of MP3 players. Many people even listen to music on their mobile phone. But do we still recognize quality?
I have a nice set of speakers and a good amplifier. It is great to be able to listen to music without being distracted by too many technical shortcomings of the system. But then I play back an MP3 I just bought on eMusic or an AAC I bought on iTunes, and somehow it doesn’t feel right. It sounds fine, but I know I’m missing out the details and dynamics of the original recording.
So I started ripping CDs in the Apple Lossless format, and buying uncompressed albums from online shops like bleep.com. You lose the benefits of smaller file sizes, but the quality you gain is worth it. Not many online shops sell uncompressed music though, so buying CDs and ripping them is the best solution most of the time.
Here is a thing I miss about the pre-digital era (no it is not the cassette tape): Do you remember going to the record store, excited about the new album you were going to buy? Then cherishing it like an artefact and listening to the tracks over and over again, while reading the lyrics in the enclosed booklet?
We used to treat an album the way it should be treated: as a piece of art. Next to the higher sound quality, most records we bought had a high emotional value. And because of its uniqueness we gave this piece of art the chance to grow on us. Some music just doesn’t ‘get you’ the first time around.
Last week I bought a CD player and, for the first time since years, some new CDs. It does not send data to last.fm, but I do not care. And I found myself playing the albums over and over again, enjoying the uncompressed sound quality.
Some people might actually be better off with the functionality things like iTunes bring us (like genius play lists), but I like things to be simple. I actually listen to an album from beginning to end. Do you?
Photo by: The Artifex
Reader Comments (16)
Music is now entertainment to a lot of people - not art. I still too buy CDs. It means that I can rip them now to 320 AAC, but I have the option of having portable full resolution wavs in the future.... and the lyrics book. :)
I still buy CDs because they are, for me, still a work of art. I still get excited when I touch an album that I like a lot and it's somehow difficult to find, even though I've hear it in my MP3 player dozens of times and it's easy to find anywhere on the internet...
For me, is still a collectible item. And buying a CD makes you actually pay more attention to the music you're listening to: enjoying it while reading the booklet and seeing photos/artwork makes it a complete experience :)
Quite right. With a CD, I choose a disc and listen to it from start to finish. With MP3s, I have hundreds of albums and dissociated tracks equally available, and it's almost always set to shuffle. The different media encourage those modes of listening. MP3 is half way to radio - somewhat out of our control, single-track oriented, and much more disposable.
CDs vary in their added emotional value, of course. A commercially successful album of which a million other people have identical jewel-cased copies is eminently replaceable. One in a hand-made card sleeve, with the artist's fingerprints on it, can be very precious. Not to mention proper vinyl records. Then again, some very ordinary albums that I remember buying on the way home from school, in a beloved record shop that closed years ago, have that added intangible significance. I don't think an MP3 could ever acquire that.
As for sound quality, I hope fervently that as the storage capacity of hard disks and mobile devices increases, we'll switch to better formats. 128 kbps MP3 used to be standard, and inaccurately known as 'CD quality', but it's considered pretty poor these days. But even if we all switch to 24-bit FLAC, you can't smell a digital file.
I listen almost totally digitally now, but I always listen to albums from beginning to end. It's rare that I even skip songs that I don't like on albums I do like. I don't understand listening to songs.
I listen to tracks. I don't think highest quality vbr mp3 is bad at all. compression might be a compromise, but a good one in my opnion. although I prefer Ogg (Apple will never support this though)
@Ryan: Yes, it is a good idea to keep the original as a back up!
@Pedro: I agree! It was that complete experience that I was missing.
@Hugh: Very good comments! I have some old albums by artists like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and even if I hardly ever play them, they mean a lot to me. Just looking at the artwork brings back memories of the times I played those tracks over and over again. I still know many of the lyrics by heart, as about fifteen years ago, listening to such an album while reading the lyrics was an intense experience.
@Nuuj & Marco: It's funny how some people always prefer to experience an album as a whole as others prefer listening to songs and set their iPods to shuffle. I belong to the first group. It's all about preference and finding the right balance for you, between ease of use and sound quality!
Hey, nice post.
Just before last Christmas, I went into a record store for the first time in years.
Still the same cheap plastic jewel-cases packaging like 25 years ago - no innovation at all.
It is ridiculous.
No wonder the industry has been in a decline.
You cant make music like you make yoghurt.
You need to add some additional value.
Give them sth special and people will start buying again.
Just my 2 cents.
Cheers
Some people just don't care about having a cd as an artefact and they don't care about the quality that uncompressed formats (don't) have.
Cd is a art piece as any other and i still have that excitement feeling every time i buy one, even knowing that the last Cd's i have bought i've already download it from p2p site engines.
Xau,
João Menezes
Great post. The same reason why I still buy vinyl records. I love music, I want to buy it and really own it. A physical medium you can really own and respect. Digital media are for the commons.
@Bob: I have to agree with you, the jewel cases are not great. Many artists use carton cases, but they're not standard. There is innovation, but it's not universally adopted.
@João: Right, I bought one today, and I can say it has much more value to me than something I buy online.
@Jeroen: Thanks! Vinyl is an even better example of a 'physical' piece of music.
I think this has (somehwhat) to do with my observation that most modern music sucks ass and with very few exceptions is not TRYING to be a piece of art. They're no longer making an "album" as you or I know it; a cohesive piece of art. They just see it as a plastic disc with a bunch of songs on it in whatever order they felt like. If the digital market is where the money is then that's where those "artists" are going to migrate to.
I realize that this is a blatant blanket statement and could not possibly be true but I feel it at least has some grounding. I know bands that are still making albums in a traditional sense but there's just an AMAZING amount of crap today.
I agree that the only way to go is quality. I listen to vinyl when available and apple lossless when not.
Also, you stated, 'You loose the benefits of smaller file sizes, but the quality you gain is worth it.'
This makes no sense. If you are letting the benefits of smaller file sizes loose, which is a positive thing, all is well. To then juxtapose a quality gain, which is also a positive thing, against another positive thing, smaller file sizes, seems to be a logical mismatch.
I think you might have intended to say, 'You lose the benefits of smaller file sizes, but the quality you gain is worth it.'
This makes perfect sense, and I agree with it wholeheartedly.
@wat: There is a lot of commercial 'noise' blurring the market of honest, good quality and artistic music, you are right about that. And sometimes it's hard to find the masterpieces in this 'mess'. But when I do, I want to enjoy them at maximum quality.
@Myles: Thanks for noting that mistake! It should absolutely be 'lose' and not 'loose'. My English is stil not perfect, so it seems!
I'm a collector of physical albums (cd tape vinyl). I can appreciate MP3 format because of its portability and ease of sharing but I also think that the format lends itself to making music more vapid and a sort of "background stimulation" for many people. Sitting down to listen to a full album is a far different experience than walking somewhere with your IPod on shuffle.
Also, I couldn't agree more with the "Album as Art" concept
Now a days everybody is listening musics. weather they are listening from FM, home theatres, mp3 players, mp4 players and other systems. Now the recently ipod introduces in market. I think this is the good portable audio player. I am using this system because of its quality sounds.
Sound quality matters a lot when you are going to purchase a audio or video system because these machines are meant to do this works only. In case of cd's the quality of the cd's should be better can give a better result of listening . The digital bandwidth of the sound system matters more.