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Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ.

RE: Why are CDs digitized from master tapes?

Do you recall back in 2013 when the controversial blogger "Archimago" conducted a large, anonymous, online survey to test the audibility of 2 sets of FLAC-encoded audio files. One set of files contained segments of music ripped directly from audio CD (PCM 16/44) whereas the other set had the audio converted to MP3 then decoded back to 16/44 format where it was converted to FLAC.

The shocking (to this Bear's fuzzy ears anyway...) was the 320KBPS MP-3's sound was preferred by a statistically significant slice of the respondents who characterized themselves as "Audiophiles" and serious music listeners. Read the two parts pf the survey, link below. Maybe the erudite folks in the Digital Asylum think Archimago is full of BS, but I find his methods and tests useful and reasonable on the whole. So your cnclusion that human ears don't dig perfectly etched sonic perfection may be right. But there's many more links in the chain of musical pleasure...

Did music "really" sound better on the AM car radio in my dad's '60 Impala (white over lipstick red), parked at the beach with my cuddly high-school girlfriend? Yup, that' the way I remember it! Music appreciation is half technology and half emotional response. You may never resolve the question in your post.

As for questions that begin: "Why doesn't the music business..." The music business are a bunch of rampant scumbags who'd murder the last sea-otter to sell a crappy download for $1.29. Summed up best by Hunter S. Thompson: ""The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." There isn't a sufficient marginal profit in high-grade audio. Contemporary music is mixed, IMO, to sound punchy and bright on iPod stock $.99 earbuds and it isn't getting any better than in 1968 when it mix mixed to sound punchy on Dads Impala's AM radios. Shopping for high-resolution downloadable music today is like picking records from your weird Uncle's console Hi-Fi, plus it's bizarrely expensive.

If you want to hear vinyl- spin records and be happy. If you want to play CDs, streams, and downloads- do that. The music business isn't going to help you resolve that divide. This results in hard choices: I choose to direct my money and attention to my vinyl frontend because I have thousands of records and care somewhat less about digital music. For example I don't recommend that you buy the new $5k DCS streamer (yeah- a brand new $5000 Squeezebox- wow!- the future is here).

Sorry to ramble on so...





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