[Sonnova]

On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 20:22:43 -0800, vlad wrote
(in article ):

On Nov 23, 10:06 am, Greg Wormald wrote:

. . .

And lastly, if sound quality was most important to the masses, we're
going to have a hard time explaining the overwhelming migration to 128
bit MP3's and the huge popularity of Itunes-sold music. Of course, if
your ears and mind can't tell the difference between LP or CD and 128
bit MP3, you are in the wrong newsgroup.

Greg

Is not it a little bit elitist: if you don't hear the difference, you
don't qualify for this group?

Oh, That's right. Almost forgot. Anything that even suggests a hint of
elitism is politically incorrect. Everybody's opinion, even if it's totally
ignorant, has worth. God, what nonsense. Next time you need to see a doctor,
call me instead, I don't know anything about medicine, but doctors are
elitists, and my opinion is just as good as theirs under the doctrines of
"PC" and I'll charge you less.

I do hear a difference in LP and CD, I do not hear difference between
CD and MP3-320mbps. And I prefer CD or MP3 on my iPod to LP's. Does it
disqualify me?

Before invention of portable MP3 players the only option to listen to
music was to spend time washing your LP and then spend couple hours
sitting and doing nothing but listening to music. For many busy people
who could not afford this luxury it meant that they did not listen
music at all.

I agree, but why not use a loss-less compression scheme instead of MP3. The
one that I'm most familiar with, Apple Loss-less (ALC), is indistinguishable
from the source CD. Some folks say that loss-less is better than CD because
the ripping software keeps on re-playing the same word over and over until it
transfers error-free (something that even the best CD player can't do in real
time.) or times out. That means much fewer read errors. Does this make any
difference? It shouldn't , but some say it does.

Now with invention of portable digital players you can have all you
music collection in a cigarette pack ( I have 32GB of music in my
iPod, neatly classified and I am adding every day). Not only you can
listen to music wherever and whenever you want, but the easy access
makes all the difference in a world. Before that if I wanted to listen
some obscure recording of Samuel Barber, I would have to spend time
searching for it on my CD shelves, then putting it into CD player,
after all not to forget to put it back, etc. etc. All this hassle made
it almost impossible. Now 2 clicks on iPod bring me to Samuel Barber
and the next click brings me to a piece that I want. After listening
no hassle either, just turn iPod off.

I don't know about you but I consider it as a great progress, I listen
much more music now then before. In a way of putting my music in my
iPod I made few discoveries in my collection, like there were two
recordings of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" that I did not even
know that I have. Now they all neatly organized in my iPod with easy
access. Is not it a progress?

Not at all, Lossy compression is a step backward from CD. Loss-less
compression, OTOH, is step forward by allowing you to pack a lot of music
into a relatively small space with no loss of quality. My iPod gas nothing
but ALC ripped music on it and it sounds as good as the D/A in the ipod will
allow it to sound.