Zia Records is cool. I was on vacation in Vegas must have been about 6 or 7 years ago and they have two Zia Records there. While I was there which was in the month of April John Densmore was doing an in-store and signing his new book The Doors Unhinged and one more item of your choice. I couldn't find any Doors LPs but they did have a few CDs so I got The Doors signed. Gave it to a friend of mine who is a big Doors fan. I guess Zia has in stores quite often, nice store.
The Amazing Collapse of CD Sales
- Thread starter DesertRatt
- Start date
Zia Records is cool. I was on vacation in Vegas must have been about 6 or 7 years ago and they have two Zia Records there. While I was there which was in the month of April John Densmore was doing an in-store and signing his new book The Doors Unhinged and one more item of your choice. I couldn't find any Doors LPs but they did have a few CDs so I got The Doors signed. Gave it to a friend of mine who is a big Doors fan. I guess Zia has in stores quite often, nice store.
Ultimately this post is about the collapse of CD sales yes. It mirrors the initial collapse of vinyl, subsequent fall of cassettes and 8-track and in the end the implosion of the entire physical media marketplace. I do kind of miss a brick and mortar place like Tower Records. I still enjoy hunting through a thrift rather than browse fb marketplace. I have nothing against digital or streaming, hell most of my listening day to day happens via a hard drive but I don't want to explorer, experience and encounter the world through a phone. I guess I'd rather twist a knob to turn up the heat at home than tell Siri to do it for me. Ironically one of the annoyances of vinyl is flippin that disc...
Well that's part of the paradigm shift a lot of folks seem to miss; young folks have less connection with brick and mortar. Many here grew up with dedicated record stores and large discount store departments where you could flip through LPs, CDs, 8 tracks and cassettes. That's largely fallen by the wayside, except for the niche record stores enjoying the revival. In today's online world, so much is done online and not in person. My girls do a tremendous amount online, including working from home, in 2020. They stream music, buy train/plane tickets, shop for cars (one just bought her Equinox on Carvana), home gadgets, preplace orders for pickup and delivery, the list goes on...
The change from LP to CD, and somewhat RTR/8-track/cassette, which were more alterative tech and not replacement like CD, at least used the same tactile distribution, but with the advent of computers and the internet all that changed. Anyone buy a newspaper recently? I haven't this millennium. I did subscribe to a couple magazines simply because for the giveaway intro rates they were worthy of the expense.
High tech moves on and bargains accrue to those who are satisfied with the discards, so enjoy the bounty while it's there! I've certainly have loaded up on media as 99% of my collection is second hand, but I need to cull it down as there are simply too many pieces here I may never listen too, especially when I can stream them in a matter of minutes in quite nice fidelity.
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gvader
New Member
I imagine there are book clubs that have the same kind of discussions we do on here about physical vs digital. Some people can't imagine going back to paper when a kindle will hold so many more books in a much smaller space. I'd be curious to know if the two groups correlate on that digital vs tactile mentality. Granted that not many will be entirely on one side or the other but shades of grey so to speak. I guess there are quite a few differences between the two medias though. I never got used to the online Cycle World format for instance where as I'd been a subscriber for years of the magazine. Newspapers and Cycle World are all but extinct now...
RunOutGroove
Addicted Member
The whole Kindle thing never appealed to me. I have too many physical books that I still haven't gotten around to reading to feel that something like that would be useful. For other stuff, I can usually borrow it from the library and I just like the the feeling of handling a real, physical book. If I traveled more and if I was a faster reader (like an old girlfriend who read lots and FAST) than a Kindle would probably make more sense and I would just have to get over my old fashioned ideas about handling physical stuff...
RunOutGroove
Addicted Member
Though if you were really "old school" you'd only buy vinyl... and then maybe only 78s... or wax cylinders.
AudioGMan
Well-Known Member
I do buy vinyl. That’s my actual turntable you see in my avatar.
A nice read about the many outstanding attributes of the CD:
https://kenrockwell.com/audio/why-cds-sound-great.htm
https://kenrockwell.com/audio/why-cds-sound-great.htm
With lots of misinformation:
1. "Perfect sound forever"
The reality is neither.
2. "16 bits is more than enough"
Virtually all recording engineers disagree even for playback purposes.
3. "44.1 ksps is plenty"
Such causes ringing or pre-ringing with the necessary brickwall filter. Higher sample rates allow for more gradual filters.
4. "A CD player has no measurable jitter."
Stereophile regularly measures otherwise.
I'm really glad we're no longer fenced into late 1970's computer technology media.
Rockwell lost all credibility for me with his review of the Crown IC-150 preamp. This is yet another example. It appears his forte is photography, not audio.
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intro6
Well-Known Member
A well made CD has always sounded just as good as a well made LP to me and I've listened to a greater variety of music than many on both formats too. One thing CDs don't have, of course, that LPs can have are pops and clicks (and potential warps). Other great things often not mentioned about CDs are their small size compared to LPs (which also have to be carefully stored in an upright position), and the fact that they're tangible objects & therefore collectible, unlike an electronic file. Of course, the music on CDs (& LPs) is only as good as how it was recorded (a wide range of quality), that is ... garbage in, garbage out, as the old saying goes. So many CDs have also for years included CD booklets, which are fairly analogous to the liner notes that LPs were known for.
Much is also made over the supposed ideal of recorded music capturing live music perfectly, but let's face it, so many live music situations are far from the ideal in presenting great sound from the music source. Not so great miking & speaker setups in a less than ideal space can often detract from the quality, and that's not even including extraneous noise. It is also well documented how people's hearing decline in varying degrees as they age and this process has already begun even when they're young. Of course, it can be accelerated more by exposure to loud sound. I guess my point is that, because the reduction in the listening quality can come from many sources (such as extraneous environmental noise or even the quality of our own ears!), the technology of encoding music to a CD is almost certainly a much less factor in the lessening of the listening experience than these various other things.
Much is also made over the supposed ideal of recorded music capturing live music perfectly, but let's face it, so many live music situations are far from the ideal in presenting great sound from the music source. Not so great miking & speaker setups in a less than ideal space can often detract from the quality, and that's not even including extraneous noise. It is also well documented how people's hearing decline in varying degrees as they age and this process has already begun even when they're young. Of course, it can be accelerated more by exposure to loud sound. I guess my point is that, because the reduction in the listening quality can come from many sources (such as extraneous environmental noise or even the quality of our own ears!), the technology of encoding music to a CD is almost certainly a much less factor in the lessening of the listening experience than these various other things.
SterlingOne
Super Member
I'm not amazed, technology makes many things obsolete. I appreciate technology, especially when visiting the dentist.
RunOutGroove
Addicted Member
I agree about the CD and about live vs recorded music. If you're talking about popular music, with amplified instruments and made with overdubbing, it doesn't even seem that most artists are looking for a live sound. It's more like cooking some kind of complex French type dish which has many different ingredients and involves many different steps. The idea then is to create a combination that's a unique flavor and texture, not to preserve the integrity of the raw ingredients. Every instrument or voice on a typical rock/pop type album has some kind of artificial effect on it and/or was miced in a way that brings out a really specific quality and not to appear naturalistic. With music like that, which is really the vast majority of music being made these days (and going back 60 or more years) there's really no basis for what a naturalistic sound is as the stuff wasn't recorded to sound natural in the first place...
Why limit the discussion to poorly recorded content? Do you listen to any acoustical genres?
RunOutGroove
Addicted Member
Yes, I certainly do but I find it curious that so many recordings that people bring up over and over again that they use as examples of how accurate their system is aren't acoustic recordings and aren't thus aren't the kind of thing that can be accurately used as this sort of benchmark. The best one could say about the reproduction of those kind of recordings is that they sound very good to us... and there's nothing wrong with that, but I don't see much of an argument to be made as far as accuracy/realism using this kind of music as a basis.
I would say that even with acoustic recordings though there's bound to be some level of agreement what sounds most accurate, it's difficult to be really objective with that as well. Live music in a real acoustical space is different enough from even a great recording on a great system, that what sounds closest is still likely to be pretty subjective...
intro6
Well-Known Member
It sounds like from your reply that you're saying that any music with amplification, overdubbing and I assume effects etc. is poorly recorded, when I don't think that's the case at all. There have been so many recordings going way back using these mentioned techniques which have been done in a quality way, but where the intent has been to create recorded music that sounds natural to the ears but is also fresh and exciting. I do agree that there is sort of an analogy to a prepared food dish. Spices, when used in proper moderation and proportions, will greatly enhance the flavor of the dish, and the big majority of people don't object to that. However, the poor cook will overload his dish with his spices, or use the wrong ones together, thereby ruining the taste for most people, although if they've conditioned their taste buds for the excess brininess of over-salting, for example, they'll prefer that flavor, but I'm pretty dubious whether that kind of prepared food could ever be considered one of quality. That kind of seems like the situation with much of the music that's more recent - too many "spices" added with no restraint in regards to the "preparation", while significantly more restrained use of effects & overdubbing in particular would sound much better IMO.
I personally appreciate acoustic but also music that has been more produced. There can be variation in acoustic recordings also, due to various factors, but obviously this is significantly more limited than with a more produced environment. Both, however, can be good, bad, & everything in between and both approaches are equally valid if they sound great in my ears. Talent shines through regardless.
Please refer to Aaron's complete characterization in post #353 to put my comments into perspective.
I listen to a wide variety of music and indeed much of it is a multi-miked studio production. There are certainly good examples to be found. I confess, however, that I am not a fan of hokey effects.
Tom Bombadil
AK Member
What I find interesting is that after all of these "CD quality is unacceptable" discussions I heard in the 1980s and 1990s, is that most CD sales have been lost to sub-CD quality streaming. Many people stream at 96/128/160 kbps. Spotify's best rate is 320K. Deezer's $10/mo service is 320K. Even many $15/mo to $20/mo services are standard CD quality.
The market share of greater than CD quality streaming is pretty small.
So this is mainly just a repackaging of digital audio, transitioning from a physical CD to streaming audio, much of this at lower audio quality.
The market share of greater than CD quality streaming is pretty small.
So this is mainly just a repackaging of digital audio, transitioning from a physical CD to streaming audio, much of this at lower audio quality.
Dr. Ears
Super Member
Amazon HD streams at CD quality, which sounds quite good, if you have the right equipment. Ultra HD can stream as high as 24/192.
I have been trying to warm up the sound of CD's and streaming since they came out.
Vacuum tubes help, so does vintage SS gear from the Seventies, I combined the two by using a Sansui with a tube buffer.
My DAC is based on PCM1704UK chips, which have always been knocked as being too warm, but I know of no other chips that have appreciated the way the 1704's have.
Streaming has enabled me to discover new music and re-discover my old favorites.
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