I went to a Barnes and Noble for some reading material, and I figured i'd pickup some music too. I went to their music department and found the CD I had my eye on... for TWENTY DOLLARS. Needless to say, it didn't come home with me. It totally killed the impulse to buy a CD. Everyone knows that 'gotta have it now' impulse. Now, I have to go buy it on Amazon or some other place online and get it by the end of the week.
You might be asking yourself, why didn't I buy it on iTunes if I wanted instant gratification? Well, the fact is iTunes music sounds terrible for the most part. I'm not that big a snob that I don't buy it, but if I want to listen at home, my personal stereo has enough resolution to make iTunes sound like what it is, a compressed, strident, flat and generally poor recording. On a car stereo it's not that bad, but at home, for me it can't happen.
Now, with all this, i'm not saying that I miss CD or long for the 'old days' (which I sort of do, perusing isles and isles of discs was a favorite activity of mine) I just wish that downloadable music was higher res.
Bandwidth of your internet provider isn't much of a problem for music. Storage isn't much of a problem for most of us either, and we all know the people who make the music have the masters that have way more resolution than iTunes files, so what gives?
The answer is I don't know for sure, but i'm pretty sure most people don't know what really great, well recorded music sounds like, and these same people don't care at all about bitrates, they just want convenience. Instant gratification. More instant than ever before.
My real question is, what happens to those of us that do care? That's the answer i'm still waiting for. Until then, i'll keep buying records and CD's- online and wherever I can that isn't highway robbery. Sadly, I won't have as much instant gratification as I used to, but at least i'll enjoy it when it eventually comes.
Let me know your thoughts. Have you ever heard a really good stereo? Can you tell the difference? Do you even care about high end music reproduction. Sound off in the comments below.
Happy listening
I, too, am a music junkie, but I've never owned a high end stereo in my life. Frankly, my home CD player hardly gets any use anymore. I listen in the car, I listen on my computer, or I listen on my iPod. I have an excellent ear, but I guess my lack of a premium player has robbed me of the "experience" of listening to music in high quality sound. I honestly don't hear the difference between a CD and an mp3 or m4a.
ReplyDeleteJacktion, it's been my experience that most people don't know what they're missing until they do a comparison. The side by side can be startling, and it can be even more so for CD to record.
ReplyDelete