Digital Music Part I

Digital Music Part I

Digital music on CDs are essentially compressed, down to 16 bits around 44 kHz when most recordings are around 24 bits to 176 kHz. Some may argue that that is cutting the soul, and some may argue that its beyond the ranges of most human ears.

Listening to digital is super convenient. you can listen to it where ever you go. You can download music from numerous online sources. Starting form with compact discs life has changed, you can listen to what ever song when ever you want. And with the walk man you can carry the compact discs in a thin little case. instead of worrying about carrying fragile vinyls or bulky cassette tapes. But CDs soon found a new heavy weight champion, or should i say light weight champion. with the Mp3s and the internet sharing songs became easy. in stead of spending time rerecording” it on to tape. you can just “rip” it to an Mp3 files. But in the beginning Mp3 couldn’t compete with CDs for the fact that the CD quality was still superior. Mp3s only worked when you were sitting at you computer listening to them through your gawd awful computer speakers. And to really make a decent copy the bit rate would need to be higher and at the time of 500MB hard drives an full album could take up all the available space. But now at a time with ipod carrying available of more than a hundred gigabit... it is hard to see the CD compete. especially with the amount of consumer waste we produce to make just one CD.

Listening to the 128 Mp3 is just torture when you are listening through good speakers, a good format would be a lossless like a FLAC file, but they can take up al lot of space.