If CD quality is less than ideal, is there a world where we sell like… Game cartridge sized USB drives with lossless audio files instead? Wouldn’t it be cool to have a new form factor that allows for the feeling of physical ownership but is modern and more universal.
“Lossy” and “lossless” are descriptors applied to data compression systems. So no one referred to CDs as “lossless” until MP3 (which is lossy) became popular, because there was nothing to contrast it with. CDs are not compressed at all.
If you buy music on BandCamp, FLAC (lossless) is often (always?) one of the download format options. FLAC is decompressed into a bitstream that matches the original exactly. You can put those files wherever you like.
Game cartridge sized USB drives with lossless audio
Lossless is a weird term here. Digitised audio is lossy by definition but CDs have been designed to be as good as our hearing, so their quality is usually considered to be the baseline of “lossless” that other media compare against.
Wouldn’t it be cool to have a new form factor that allows for the feeling of physical ownership but is modern and more universal.
No, because CDs are widely adopted and are a good form factor. MiniDiscs have already tried and failed to establish a new, better medium. What do you need that CDs can’t deliver that would have significant advantages over the convenience of streaming?
I guess I’ve always heard that CD quality wasn’t the “best” and upon Kagi’ing it, that seems to be correct as there’s a tier above it called Hi-Res formats. Now, you make a point that CD’s are as good as we can hear, but I’m not exactly sure that’s true in all senses (assuming perfect audio equipment). Either way, wouldn’t it be cool to have the ideal (best) format in a form factor that our audio players can actually play (phones).
I would much rather carry around a Nintendo style game cartridge case that carries mini USB-c drives that stored an album or an artist’s collection. That to me is pretty cool. At least to me, the combination of CD’s being not Hi-Res audio, a format that’s hard to play in my main music devices (phone or home theater, which in this case does not contain a CD player (although it does contain a vinyl player, go figure)), and that subjectively isn’t a cool form factor in the same way Vinyl or Game cartridges are makes me long for a more retro-scifi form with modern transfer mechanisms.
Obviously you can be better than CDs. The signal is sampled 44100 times per second, each sample being stored as 16 bits (twice, to have stereo). Increase either of these numbers and you’re immediately better than CDs. Increase the former and you’ll be able to store higher frequencies, increase the latter and you’ll have a higher dynamic range.
None of that answers why you would want to carry around a case of physical media though. With today’s tech it’d be easy to put high res audio on sd cards or create a new medium (and yes, please use the minidisc form factor for that). But with the storage capacities of rewritable memory being easily in the terabyte range even for consumers and broadband connections being widely available, why would you want to create the distribution network this would require instead of just letting people stream and download the music? Especially as you’d be limited to releasing new music that has been mastered in high res (as you obviously can’t get higher resolution data from CDs), so you’d only have a few artists on board and a few albums available.
You’re conflating my intentions with wanting to replace streaming or what you carry on the go. I do not want to replace streaming with CD’s. I want to replace owning my own music with streaming and I don’t like that the most prevalent option for purchasing physical copies of music is CD’s and vinyls - both of which have drawbacks in my eyes.
So I’m day dreaming about a new format that is essentially a cool SD or thumb drive in disguise that could host an album or an artist and be accessible via my phone in a way that vinyl and CDs are not.
You’re writing a lot about a topic I’m not talking about. CD’s are coming back, I don’t love CD’s, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a better version of physical music we could buy. That’s the whole Convo.
I still don’t get it. If you want a small device to physically store your music, why don’t you copy your music to a small sd card or thumb drive? If that’s inconvenient you could just buy it digitally and move it to a drive without having to rip it first, there are a bunch of providers for drm free high res music files.
Physical media had their time when read only media could be produced much cheaper than writeable storage. With people routinely buying thumb drives that could store their entire music collection and having data plans that could transfer said collection within half an hour, I fail to see where physical media (beyond what’s already there) would have any advantage. That doesn’t mean I don’t see any appeal. Having a small case for a bunch of sd cards you could just insert into your phone to listen to some music would offer a tactile experience. But with the cheap and available rewriteable media you could just do it yourself while I guess few to no people would be willing to spend 20 bucks on a 500 MB thumb drive just because it has a tiny album artwork printed on it.
I stand by my point that the MD was peak physical media and the CD offers all the quality humans could possibly need. If you’re so keen on physical media but want to be able to literally insert them into your phone, there are USB-c drives that are barely bigger than your phone’s port. Get one, put your music on it and plug it in. I still don’t see who would buy single albums on overpriced thumb drives instead of getting a single one for the price of two or three albums and putting enough FLAC files on it to keep them listening until they’re pushing daisies.
Most humans on this planet aren’t able to audibly hear the difference between a redbook CD and a ‘high-res’ format in a blind test. The same is true for DACs and Stereos. There’s an incredible amount of audiophile snake oil that companies pump out because it makes insane money from people tricking themselves they can hear a difference (psychosomatic effect from spending so much).
What is readily perceivable is the difference between a good mastering and a poor mastering, which can effect any format. An old vinyl with its 60db of dynamic range has an inherent limitation of how loud music can be mastered which normally was a downside, but became an asset when CD’s began to go through the loudness wars in the 90’s and 2000’s (where CD’s were mastered to ‘brick wall’ the audio, removing dynamic range in favor of boosting gain so it would sound better in cars or poor equipment), so for music from that loudness war era, the vinyl often sounded significantly better just due to the better mastering, despite the worse theoretical specifications.
It’s also pretty much impossible hear to the difference between a high-bitrate compressed format (like 320kb mp3, vorbis ogg, or opus) or an uncompressed FLAC (I’ve tried, I couldn’t perceive any difference, try it yourself in a blind test where a friend switches between them), so either will be ideal for a phone, where you’re unlikely to be carrying around big bulky headphones that could take advantage of those high-res formats anyway.
I’d bet quite a lot of money that nobody here could consistently tell the difference between raw uncompressed audio and CDs in a blind test.
I’m not entirely sure anybody could.
I don’t miss carrying around or worrying about having stolen my cd collection, so smaller definitely would be better imo. I really liked the size of mini discs but they were too thick. Maybe about a quarter of that size and thinner cartridges made with solid state technology, made bigger than current tech allows in exchange for longer lifespans.
It sounds like by “quality” you are talking about the physical fragility of the CD. True, a more modern format might be nice, with a bump to 24 bit depth. I would want something a little more collectible than a thumb drive though.
I say this as an avid CD buyer who rips full quality to a Plex server. Also download from Bandcamp.
I agree, I want something more collectible than thumb drives but better (and cooler) than CDs. Ideally something with a retro sci-fi aesthetic and modern transfer capabilities (USB C).
If CD quality is less than ideal, is there a world where we sell like… Game cartridge sized USB drives with lossless audio files instead? Wouldn’t it be cool to have a new form factor that allows for the feeling of physical ownership but is modern and more universal.
CDs are considered lossless.
“Lossy” and “lossless” are descriptors applied to data compression systems. So no one referred to CDs as “lossless” until MP3 (which is lossy) became popular, because there was nothing to contrast it with. CDs are not compressed at all.
If you buy music on BandCamp, FLAC (lossless) is often (always?) one of the download format options. FLAC is decompressed into a bitstream that matches the original exactly. You can put those files wherever you like.
Sorry, I should have said a Hi-Res format (which tbh means lossless compared to the best recording to me or colloquially lossless).
Who said that cd quality is “less than ideal”?
Lossless is a weird term here. Digitised audio is lossy by definition but CDs have been designed to be as good as our hearing, so their quality is usually considered to be the baseline of “lossless” that other media compare against.
No, because CDs are widely adopted and are a good form factor. MiniDiscs have already tried and failed to establish a new, better medium. What do you need that CDs can’t deliver that would have significant advantages over the convenience of streaming?
I guess I’ve always heard that CD quality wasn’t the “best” and upon Kagi’ing it, that seems to be correct as there’s a tier above it called Hi-Res formats. Now, you make a point that CD’s are as good as we can hear, but I’m not exactly sure that’s true in all senses (assuming perfect audio equipment). Either way, wouldn’t it be cool to have the ideal (best) format in a form factor that our audio players can actually play (phones).
I would much rather carry around a Nintendo style game cartridge case that carries mini USB-c drives that stored an album or an artist’s collection. That to me is pretty cool. At least to me, the combination of CD’s being not Hi-Res audio, a format that’s hard to play in my main music devices (phone or home theater, which in this case does not contain a CD player (although it does contain a vinyl player, go figure)), and that subjectively isn’t a cool form factor in the same way Vinyl or Game cartridges are makes me long for a more retro-scifi form with modern transfer mechanisms.
Obviously you can be better than CDs. The signal is sampled 44100 times per second, each sample being stored as 16 bits (twice, to have stereo). Increase either of these numbers and you’re immediately better than CDs. Increase the former and you’ll be able to store higher frequencies, increase the latter and you’ll have a higher dynamic range.
None of that answers why you would want to carry around a case of physical media though. With today’s tech it’d be easy to put high res audio on sd cards or create a new medium (and yes, please use the minidisc form factor for that). But with the storage capacities of rewritable memory being easily in the terabyte range even for consumers and broadband connections being widely available, why would you want to create the distribution network this would require instead of just letting people stream and download the music? Especially as you’d be limited to releasing new music that has been mastered in high res (as you obviously can’t get higher resolution data from CDs), so you’d only have a few artists on board and a few albums available.
You’re conflating my intentions with wanting to replace streaming or what you carry on the go. I do not want to replace streaming with CD’s. I want to replace owning my own music with streaming and I don’t like that the most prevalent option for purchasing physical copies of music is CD’s and vinyls - both of which have drawbacks in my eyes.
So I’m day dreaming about a new format that is essentially a cool SD or thumb drive in disguise that could host an album or an artist and be accessible via my phone in a way that vinyl and CDs are not.
You’re writing a lot about a topic I’m not talking about. CD’s are coming back, I don’t love CD’s, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a better version of physical music we could buy. That’s the whole Convo.
I still don’t get it. If you want a small device to physically store your music, why don’t you copy your music to a small sd card or thumb drive? If that’s inconvenient you could just buy it digitally and move it to a drive without having to rip it first, there are a bunch of providers for drm free high res music files.
Physical media had their time when read only media could be produced much cheaper than writeable storage. With people routinely buying thumb drives that could store their entire music collection and having data plans that could transfer said collection within half an hour, I fail to see where physical media (beyond what’s already there) would have any advantage. That doesn’t mean I don’t see any appeal. Having a small case for a bunch of sd cards you could just insert into your phone to listen to some music would offer a tactile experience. But with the cheap and available rewriteable media you could just do it yourself while I guess few to no people would be willing to spend 20 bucks on a 500 MB thumb drive just because it has a tiny album artwork printed on it.
I stand by my point that the MD was peak physical media and the CD offers all the quality humans could possibly need. If you’re so keen on physical media but want to be able to literally insert them into your phone, there are USB-c drives that are barely bigger than your phone’s port. Get one, put your music on it and plug it in. I still don’t see who would buy single albums on overpriced thumb drives instead of getting a single one for the price of two or three albums and putting enough FLAC files on it to keep them listening until they’re pushing daisies.
Most humans on this planet aren’t able to audibly hear the difference between a redbook CD and a ‘high-res’ format in a blind test. The same is true for DACs and Stereos. There’s an incredible amount of audiophile snake oil that companies pump out because it makes insane money from people tricking themselves they can hear a difference (psychosomatic effect from spending so much).
What is readily perceivable is the difference between a good mastering and a poor mastering, which can effect any format. An old vinyl with its 60db of dynamic range has an inherent limitation of how loud music can be mastered which normally was a downside, but became an asset when CD’s began to go through the loudness wars in the 90’s and 2000’s (where CD’s were mastered to ‘brick wall’ the audio, removing dynamic range in favor of boosting gain so it would sound better in cars or poor equipment), so for music from that loudness war era, the vinyl often sounded significantly better just due to the better mastering, despite the worse theoretical specifications.
It’s also pretty much impossible hear to the difference between a high-bitrate compressed format (like 320kb mp3, vorbis ogg, or opus) or an uncompressed FLAC (I’ve tried, I couldn’t perceive any difference, try it yourself in a blind test where a friend switches between them), so either will be ideal for a phone, where you’re unlikely to be carrying around big bulky headphones that could take advantage of those high-res formats anyway.
I’d bet quite a lot of money that nobody here could consistently tell the difference between raw uncompressed audio and CDs in a blind test.
I’m not entirely sure anybody could.
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
Try the quiz, see how well you do. I have tried it several times and i rarely get but a handful right.
Ever since this humbling experience, I have stopped worrying about top-tier digital audio quality.
I don’t miss carrying around or worrying about having stolen my cd collection, so smaller definitely would be better imo. I really liked the size of mini discs but they were too thick. Maybe about a quarter of that size and thinner cartridges made with solid state technology, made bigger than current tech allows in exchange for longer lifespans.
It sounds like by “quality” you are talking about the physical fragility of the CD. True, a more modern format might be nice, with a bump to 24 bit depth. I would want something a little more collectible than a thumb drive though.
I say this as an avid CD buyer who rips full quality to a Plex server. Also download from Bandcamp.
I agree, I want something more collectible than thumb drives but better (and cooler) than CDs. Ideally something with a retro sci-fi aesthetic and modern transfer capabilities (USB C).