In the old days as i started to listening to audio per se, i did so using the LP with my turntable like some other oldies here.
Gee, that were the days. Full sound and of course, if you did not care, also skips and crackling sounds.
But overall it was a nice experience. Especially if you consider that if you really were into music, you were listening to the whole record and not just ‘a’ song. And also getting artwork and a readable booklet. I loved 'The Who’s Quadrophenia with the nice booklet inside. It was awesome in a way. The same recording on the cd was a lesser exciting experience. No booklet, but a paper folded with text. Wow, thats just great, isn’t it.
Since the 1980’s everything changed dramatically.
You found that you needed to get a CD-Player in order to play these new shiny disks and everything shrank so dramatically. Were you had before nice artwork and a readable text you had now a micro type font where you needed eagle eyes or a good eye wear.
Artwork was passe for the most part.
Sound was perhaps good, but during the transition i always felt like that something was missing. The bass was just to flat and everything seemed to sound like that someone squeezed everything through a narrow whole.
Then there were words of DVD Audio which greatly enhanced the audio experience with wider bandwidth and more precise studio recording the way it was originally. Full sound and hear every waveform.
But were is it now?
There are hardly any offering anywhere today.
CD was a cut down experience for what you had and still pay more as for LP’s. Now everything is in digital form available on your favorite storefront. But mostly you get worst compressions like mp3 and the worst is, that you pay a premium for the same recording just crippled a little more so that it fits on your mp3 player.
There is, however, a storefront i have seen that offers a better quality.
https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php (i found 1 ‘one’ Rush album…wow)
There is just not much available really. And thats the sad part.
I assume consumers caved in and accepted the crippled audio experience or just believe that cd are superior anyway.
The idea in the past was surely, that bandwidth is expensive and time is money. For that reason you were able to get a song in a reflectively small package and have the song in which turn you got a lesser quality of sound.
But today people surf with 10x the speed than they did 10 years ago. You could today download with no problem a audio dvd.
Amazon has been so far my dealer for songs, but even there you don’t get a very good quality of sound.
Plus, its only mp3 and thats it. No flag, no Ogg or any other lossless compression. Kinda sad considering that there is no DRM anymore in any of these songs.
If you have a CD you can of course rip the CD in you favorite format (perhaps Ogg) but it is still the lousy cd quality you bought and not a better quality.
I admit that there are people they are not into quality sound and a fantastic audiophile experience.
Since this is the soapbox area, you can think of me a little bit lala. But i really thing we, as consumers, get cheated.
I am tired of buying crippled cd’s.