Digital Music Part II

Digital Music Part II

Listening to MP3 using programs such as iTunes and good speakers is a joy. It is organized for you into separate folders for you to burn them to a car radio compatible CD. What ever you want to hear is just clicks away.

with digital you don’t get the beautiful artwork. Usual the cover image can be found fairly easy with and image search on google, but the insides lay outs are usually harder find. Sometimes you get lucky and you can find them displayed in a series of JPEGs or and PDF file.. but seriously how often do you really look at the artwork... maybe at most 10 times, then the CD case just sites there collecting dust.

The type of MP3 II prefer is VBRs based on their size and quality, I Like the quality of FLAC files but they are way too big... and OSX doesn’t have a good program to manage FLAC files. You can certainly tell the difference in the quality of VBTs but not enough of a difference for me to give up convenience for quality.

Listening to Sam Cooke’s Live at Harlem Square is amazing on the record player, and its is s still quite good in VBRs. The sound on the record is more crisp and clear in the VBR and you can hear the professional mastering of the recording, however, with the record it is warm and inviting and give you a sense that you are their in the front row, the intimacy is unbeatable with the record.

A recent blind study listening test, with my age group, showed more of them preferred the digital copy, and it turns out that most of them preferred the lossy format.

I grew up in the age of technology, so for me the digitally compressed music is more nostalgic for me, I never really listened to records before so this is a new experience for me and I still prefer the record over the digital copy.