I’ve recently gotten hooked on this YouTube channel called SPEEED. As the title suggests, it’s mostly car stuff (the host, James Pumphrey, used to be one of the dudes on DONUT), but this episode seems most relevant to you bastards.
I should probably mention that the car videos are great, too. Pumphrey is obsessed with older, affordable foreign cars, and there are several videos devoted to modding and whatnot. Anyway, enjoy or don’t.
I only had two problems with the video. First, in the part where one of them was preferring either CD over streaming or vice versa, it wasn’t clear whether they’d matched the loudness of the two. It’s been shown many times that when given two options, people will usually think the louder version sounds better. Hence the loudness wars. Also, remember the days of audio showrooms? If you wanted new speakers, you’d go in and compare speaker A against speaker B. If the retailer was trying to move more sets of speaker A, the salesman would play it louder than speaker B. Almost everyone would pick speaker A. They became very annoyed if you caught onto them and asked them to play speaker B a little louder.
The other issue I had with the video is that they recommended a separate CD transport and DAC, without even mentioning players that combine both. Nothing wrong with separates, except that they’re unnecessary and generally more expensive. Someone looking for a cheap upgrade from bluetooth streaming can get a used DVD or CD player at a thrift store at a fraction of the cost. Makes me wonder if they’re getting sponsored by a manufacturer. People will argue that the internal DAC’s on combined units are inferior, but that’s mostly on paper. Anything from a major manufacturer will sound as good as anything else.
I think the only meaningful conclusions you can make about sound quality is that bluetooth is inferior to wired, and that speakers matter far more than any other component. If you play records, the phono cartridge matters a lot. Phono preamps matter too, but you don’t have to spend much on them. That said, bluetooth is perfectly fine for most people. For them, chasing better sound might be a waste of time and money, as current music is so compressed, brickwalled, etc., and so much rock is lo-fi.
CD’s beat vinyl in every measurable specification, better dynamic range, flatter frequency response, channel separation, etc. People tend to use fuzzy, subjective words when saying why they like vinyl better. I believe that when people say they prefer vinyl, they’re actually saying (without knowing it) that they prefer the RIAA curve over a flat frequency response. Nothing wrong with that. I tend to prefer vinyl for rock and jazz because I find that the RIAA EQ makes the music sound a little more edgy. I like the big cover art as well. For classical, I vastly prefer CD’s over anything else. No surface noise, no inner groove distortion near the end of a side, no flipping sides and changing discs for longer works. (Speaking of longer works, the first CD’s made in the 80’s had a maximum running time of 74 minutes, a length chosen to fit Beethoven’s 9th on one disc, specifically Wilhelm Furtwaengler’s 1951 Bayreuth recording. Before CD’s, the 9th took up two vinyl lps. Sometimes it was released on one lp with a side break in the middle of the third movement. Both options were annoying.)
As for CD’s vs. lossless streaming, they should sound the same unless your internet bandwidth is getting choked. I prefer physical media because I’m just wired that way. Also, the metadata for classical is a nightmare on all streaming services. There was a classical streaming service that people liked, I forgot the name. Apple bought it, killed it, then resurrected it as Apple Classical. I was not impressed. It has the same metadata issues that everyone else has.
Then there’s the whole high rez thing. It’s better on paper, and useful for mastering engineers. I can’t hear a difference between it and regular lossless or a CD. A huge double-blind, level-matched listening test was conducted in England several years ago. Listeners chose between various samples of the same music in high rez (24-bit/192 kHz) and CD standard (16-bit/44.1 kHz). Listeners chose sources correctly around 50%. So no difference.
The opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of Los Bastardos Reuindos Media Holdings, LLC.
I’m surprised to hear that you prefer CDs for classical music, but I understand your reasoning. I still have two huge storage bins of compact discs in our playroom closet, and NOTHING to play them on. Even the PC I purchased a couple of years ago didn’t come with a CD player.
Makerbot, I mainly prefer them because the dynamic range is closer to a real orchestra. Also, the clicks and pops on a vinyl record can get annoying in quieter passages.
They make outboard CD players you can plug into a computer, but there might be no point if you’re happy with streaming or downloads.
Great production on that video, and fascinating!
I’m going to print a couple of Renfield’s paragraphs and hang them on my wall. The whole enterprise is bogus without double-blind studies.
It’s all buzzes and whistles to me.
Anything above 1000 Hz needs to be absolutely cranked. Generally typical of age-related hearing loss in males, but my left ear (X’s) has the classic recovery at very high frequency seen with rock-‘n’-roll damage. No idea why it would be more pronounced on the left.
When we moved into our house in 2014 I put my CD’s on a shelf and never set up my receiver, CD player, or speakers. I listen to downloaded music in my car, or through headphones via desktop and chromebook. It’s compressed as fuck and I don’t seem to mind; I still love it. I suspect a lot of the obscure Bandcrap I enjoy was not studio engineered by Eddie Kramer.
If I were as sane as Monkeystador, my IRA would be way fatter.
Moral: great music sounds great on anything.
I remember now that back in the iTunes pre-streaming days when you had to download, I once downloaded an album in both standard AAC and lossless. I already owned a CD of it. I wanted to compare them. The difference between AAC and CD was slight and might have vanished had I not known which one was playing. I could tell no difference between the lossless download and the CD.
So Monkeystador, the compression in your downloads might not have any impact in the audible range. Even mp3 files are near-CD quality now. The early ones had a low bitrate and sounded pretty lousy, but were fine for background music. Today they’re typically 320kbps, far better.
But you’d still have to pry my CD’s, records, and their players from my cold, dead hands.