Death to the Audio CD!

http://storage.ziffdavis.com/article2/0,3973,910056,00.asp

When CD-Audio was introduced, many hailed the format as a breakthrough. The disc was convenient and smaller than a record. And while the CD’s sound was compressed and didn’t offer the acoustical range of vinyl, the digital format held the appeal of consistency; it could be played perfectly, perhaps indefinitely, without the creeping degradation suffered by the earlier record media.

CD’s optical technology was adapted to computers and is now standard equipment in the computer world and in consumer audio. It has grown in popularity through its writable and rewritable formats. Still, the technology is slow, and its capacity is limited for today’s needs.

Sound familiar? If we look (and listen) hard enough, we can see that CDs actually produce mediocre sound and are mostly passé as a storage vehicle. Yet they’re everywhere. It’s the tyranny of the installed base.

My god. Where do I begin with this moron? Yeah, traditional audio CDs have “compressed range” and produce “mediocre sound”. What a ridiculous argument. I doubt that even 1 person in 1,000 could tell one of these super-zooty high-res super audio CDs from a traditional audio CD in a double blind test.

Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got Jason Cross, who swears that 128kbps WMAs are indistinguishable from the original CD content. KEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKE

I must tip my hat to the master troll.

“My god. Where do I begin with this moron? Yeah, traditional audio CDs have “compressed range” and produce “mediocre sound”. What a ridiculous argument. I doubt that even 1 person in 1,000 could tell one of these super-zooty high-res super audio CDs from a traditional audio CD in a double blind test.”

Yet everyone can tell the difference between a $500 DVD player and a $200 one. It’s so obvious!

Yet everyone can tell the difference between a $500 DVD player and a $200 one. It’s so obvious!

Stop by my house and I’ll switch back and forth between the PS2 and the Sony carousel DVD output for you. Believe me, it was obvious. The PS2’s DVD output is really noticeably poor. Still better than a VCR, but by DVD standards… bad.

Anyway, that was my point. Just do an A/B switch test; I can easily hear 128kbps WMA quality problems when switching between that and a CD. It’s actually trivial, as these things go. Not like we’re comparing MP3 to WMA… WMA to original CD source? Easy as pie.