MP3 questions
I'm converting a lot of old CD's to mp3 as a backup, but what do you do with albums that have tracks joined together? Is it impossible to listen to "What's Going On" or "Sgt Pepper" properly because the tracks don't have gaps?
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But if you are trying to back up old CDs, you should know what MP3s are not the way to go. Look at the AAC encoding scheme. This looses no where near as much sound quality as MP3 does.
Unfortunately by design the MP3 format is designed to dynamically shave bits of the upper and lower frequencies off to save space. You will also find that background sounds, and quiet sounds also tend to get much harder to discern.
Yeah, I know mp3's are not a substitute, and I dislike digital music in general, but it's just a cheap way of backing up stuff. I would never switch over to listening music entirely through mp3's. I'll be keeping all the CD's that have sequenced tracks, and a few more besides.
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If you want to do a good backup, with disc space being cheap now, you can use a lossless format such as FLAC.
Oh yes, CD's are dreadful too, in most cases. I bought these CD's more than ten years ago, when my ears were still able to tolerate the tinny guitars and huge empty spaces between instruments and voices. So I thought I would preserve them. As I'm sure you know, vinyl is 437 times better, and that's a scientific fact! :)
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that's cause of the way they're mixed, and compressed. aka the loudness wars, not because of a fundamental fault with the technology
I disagree. You simply cannot get a guitar to sound right on CD, simply because it's digital. It just doesn't sound as good as it would from a vinyl record. You can't go into the red with digital equipment because it sounds awful.
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b*ll*cks...
CD audio has a higher frequency range than vinyl. You might prefer the sound of a guitar on vinyl, but the cd audio version is closer to the real thing.
Well partly bollocks but not totally.
My CD player is a Marantz CD 63 SE which was ?450 when it came out in the late 90's. Yet, on some things my turntable (which was of similar value) conveys much more emotion. Kate Bush would be one such example, Kraftwek's Computer World is another such example.
A standard CD is a sample of the original sound so can never be perfect, reproduction. Where as a record is more faithful the original waveform on high end systems which can produce more accurate results, even compared to well engineered digital recordings. BTW in the world of high end audio I would consider my system entry level.
Bear in mind that the standard CD is a comparatively old technology digital technology, and was designed to be affordable whist managing to fit approximately 75 mins onto a disk of 4.47 inches. High definition CD's became available in the late 90's early 2000's but never took off.
The one good thing about CD's it that there is almost zero background noise, compare that to a dusty or scratched record and CDs win hands down.
Oh if you're talking about cold, clinical science, then I'm sure that's right. And scientifically speaking, stereo is better than mono as well.
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For me, if my ears/brain prefer it then it is better.
The whole thing about vinyl sounding "warmer" or valve amps sounding "warmer" is because they are distorting the sound, and people happen to find the distortion pleasing. The waveform on a vinyl record is not more faithful than what comes from a CD player. If you don't like the sound of a guitar on a CD, you probably wouldn't like the sound of the guitar as you hear it live in the recording studio either - if you like it on vinyl it's because of the distortion and the RIAA equalization process has given the sound. Vinyl has other significant disadvantages - each time you play it, the bandwidth reduces as the grooves are physically worn down.
As guesser pointed out, most harsh sound is through bad engineering (aka the loudness wars). The saving grace of vinyl is to make it sound good at all, these sort of shenanigans must be avoided.
Now there's nothing wrong about preferring the sound of vinyl - there are good reasons, such as the standardization brought by the RIAA equalization and the lack of a loudness war that has beset the manufacture of CDs - but there's one thing that vinyl isn't and that's higher fidelity than a CD. With the right equipment, you can make a CD sound like vinyl - except, that is, minus hiss and pops and clicks.
As Neil Young said "Analog recording produces real emotion, because there are so many possibilities for the sound in that recording, so many variations in sound that are recorded, that it's almost like real life...Someday, the digital age will be seen as the Dark Ages of recorded sound."
I'll take his word on that because Neil Young knows a lot more about music production than any of you guys do. And judging by all the comments about CD's superiority here, so do I :)
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Anybody know a decent freebie prog that I can just do like a media player burn list with. Suspiciously mine and my wifes media players both started having probs with the burn list around about the same day. It's like M$ used a windows update to sneakily disable it or something (probably not what happened at all but I wouldn't be surprised if it was :roll:).
Anyway I've been lazy for years now using the burn list with media player that I have completely forgotten which program I used to burn CDs before then? I think it may have been an old version of Nero, but I can't remember.
I've had a registered version of nero before, but it's old and I left it in England, and I'm not forking out for another one basically. I do remember it having a burn as track option though, I guess that's all I need?
It's been so long it's like the more I use computers the less I remember about how to use them :lol:
this vid could help... pretty sure you don't need any software to burn a CD off. you should be able to do it by going into start >> CD drive, then drag mp3s into it and burn away. (prob a bit more complex than that but I've seen my bro do it before...)
yeah! science, psht! you can prove anything with facts! ;)
true, digital recordings don't capture the whole of the sound waveform that was there in real life, however it captures more than an analogue recording on vinyl!
an analogue recording can't "produce emotion" if the emotion wasn't there in the live performance any "emotion" on the record is distortion...
I've tried converting my MP3 files to wavs, and burning them but I don't think any of my burner software on here has a burn as individual tracks option. Which is what I think I used to do?
Like I said I'm lazy I just want something that converts the list of MP3s into a playable CD so I don't have to mess around with MP3/Wav converters and different burner progs?
A quick and dirty fix I suppose, it's just for when I'm working in the garage so the CDs don't even have to be good quality burns they're just gonna get covered in dust and varnish anyway :D
I was going to delete all the shovelware and shite off this computer while my wife was away, but I'm actually quite glad I didn't now :D
Who would've thunk that record now would have a feature like that since it comes (or used to anyway?) bundled with Sony CD/DVD writers?
You can have your thread back now :lol:
I use NERO for doing just that. I've never had to pay for a license though as I've never been asked to. All the versions of NERO that I've had have come with my CD/DVD burner anyway, so i suppose the license is paid that way?
Itunes will also burn a playlist onto CD so that you can play it back on any cd player, but I get the feeling that it tells Apple (or whoever runs Itunes) what you have done, when, how many copies etc. I know it does this for any tracks that you download with Itunes, but I'm not sure if it does with CD's that you have ripped onto your hard drive and added into it's libary
lol but science isnt about facts its about gathering evidence to support theories
I like people that spend loads of money on stereo equipment and then listen to kate bush on it!!!.:-)
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Everyone's seen someone circling their finger on the rim of a glass so it makes a continuous note right??
Well - if instead you tap the glass(rather than keep contact at all times) as your finger circles the glass the noise doesn't build up into the full resonant note.
Digital sound suffers from the very same "tapping" effect. Big fat base notes CAN NOT sound the same when they're digital - that's both Scientific fact AND something you can hear and feel(spot the Jungle DJ ;) )
Absolutely right.
Actually, I heard the remastered version of Sgt Pepper for the first time last night. Mathematically perfect, devoid of background noise, surgically precise... and gutless. Absolutely totally gutless.
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