[Audio Empire]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:03:53 -0800, bob wrote
(in article ):

On Jan 25, 10:15=A0am, Audio Empire wrote:

I'm suspecting
that a lot of this audiophile interest =A0in high-resolution downloads ma=
y be
the result of dissatisfaction with the quality of commercial CDs. If so, =
then
that interest may be misplaced. IOW, these dissatisfied listeners (includ=
ing
me) may be blaming CD for something of which it is NOT guilty; I.E. being=
a
low-resolution medium when in reality, it's the production practices of t=
he
record companies that are causing folks to long for higher resolution
recordings, not the inherent CAPABILITIES of the medium.

And what a shame it is that the high-end community has spent the
better part of three decades wailing about the inadequacies of CD as a
medium, rather than about the quality of the recordings.

bob


Well, most of us aren't technical, and even those of us who are, if we don't
have any direct experience in making CDs from master. live, recordings and in
seeing just how good CDs can be, we simply have no way of knowing where the
problem with the sound we're hearing actually lies. All we know is that CDs
simply are not "perfect sound, forever" as advertised. It never occurred to
me, for instance, that the mediocre sound was a result of the front-end of
the process where the CDs are mastered and manufactured due to decisions made
by record company executives and producers that have nothing whatsoever to do
with the medium's ultimate capability. It is only after making my own and
comparing them with the masters that I saw that it was possible for me to
easily make spectacular sounding CDs. Discs, that for all intents and
purposes sound exactly like the digital masters (oh, there's a bit of
difference, but it's only noticeable via direct A/B with the high-resolution
master), and in all practicality, sounds simply stupendous when compared with
most of get to play on our systems every day.