Old man yells at cloud
Dec. 21st, 2020 10:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plonqI am tempted to go into a long argument over the merits of analogue versus digital music, but it's hard to give a fair comparison.
Modern music is almost exclusively digital from start to end, and a lot of it is crap, but that is not an inherent property of it being digital. Through the 90s and into this century there was a loudness war, and producers began compressing the shit out of music and boosting its loudness. One only needs to listen to something produced in the 70s or 80s to hear the difference in dynamic range. Some artists seem to understand that they don't have to keep the needle at 11, and compress their entire track in that range, but thanks to the rest of the artists out there, you kind of need to listen to their music that way. If you have ever noticed a feature for "volume equalization" in an application like Spotify, it's so that you can hear your older tracks when they play without having to turn up the volume.
I think that analogue music objectively sounds better - at least in terms of harmonic range. Digital has it (potentially) beat in terms of dynamic range, even if most modern mainstream music doesn't take advantage of that range any more. I will never forget when I picked up a Japanese press of the Rolling Stones album Black And Blue at a used record store. My brother and I shared an apartment at the time, and he had a pretty decent stereo set-up with a better-than-average turntable. I put on the album, turned up the volume, and about 45 seconds into Hot Stuff he came storming out of his bedroom and demanded to know what I was listening to because, "that sounds amazing."
While I don't think that digital music sounds as good, it has a whole lot of other advantages that make up for that - ones that it did not have when it was limited to physical tapes/discs, mind you. As long as I have my phone with me, I can listen to my music library. If I have data, I can listen to ~5,500 tracks in my Spotify playlist. If I don't, I still have ~150 songs in an off-line playlist that will tide me over for awhile. As long as we've had AM/FM radios, we've had portability in our music, but digital gives me all of that along with control.
Conclusion: Oh hell yes, I'll take digital over analogue any day. No more juggling of mix tapes, the music I want when and where I want it. My opinion might be different if I owned some good, high-fidelity equipment (something I vowed I would do once I had my own house - that and a darkroom). When I have my headphones on at the computer, or hooked into my phone, I don't think I could hear the difference between the analogue and digital versions of a song if I tried. Digital music is ... good enough.
While I'm a child of the analogue age, I had no trouble transitioning to the new world.
Here is a picture of a stump in the snow that I took while I was out for a walk last week. It was warm enough that things were turning slushy, and at the time, we were in danger of possibly not having a white Christmas.
Uh.. yeah. That's not a worry now. We got a big dump of snow last night, and they have issued a special weather statement for heavy snow and winter conditions again tomorrow. I think this Christmas will be much whiter than most people wanted.
Modern music is almost exclusively digital from start to end, and a lot of it is crap, but that is not an inherent property of it being digital. Through the 90s and into this century there was a loudness war, and producers began compressing the shit out of music and boosting its loudness. One only needs to listen to something produced in the 70s or 80s to hear the difference in dynamic range. Some artists seem to understand that they don't have to keep the needle at 11, and compress their entire track in that range, but thanks to the rest of the artists out there, you kind of need to listen to their music that way. If you have ever noticed a feature for "volume equalization" in an application like Spotify, it's so that you can hear your older tracks when they play without having to turn up the volume.
I think that analogue music objectively sounds better - at least in terms of harmonic range. Digital has it (potentially) beat in terms of dynamic range, even if most modern mainstream music doesn't take advantage of that range any more. I will never forget when I picked up a Japanese press of the Rolling Stones album Black And Blue at a used record store. My brother and I shared an apartment at the time, and he had a pretty decent stereo set-up with a better-than-average turntable. I put on the album, turned up the volume, and about 45 seconds into Hot Stuff he came storming out of his bedroom and demanded to know what I was listening to because, "that sounds amazing."
While I don't think that digital music sounds as good, it has a whole lot of other advantages that make up for that - ones that it did not have when it was limited to physical tapes/discs, mind you. As long as I have my phone with me, I can listen to my music library. If I have data, I can listen to ~5,500 tracks in my Spotify playlist. If I don't, I still have ~150 songs in an off-line playlist that will tide me over for awhile. As long as we've had AM/FM radios, we've had portability in our music, but digital gives me all of that along with control.
| Format | Advantage | Disadvantage |
| Analogue | (Arguably) better sound Better harmonic range | Everything else. |
| Digital | (Potentially) better dynamic range Portability Flexibility Doesn't degrade over time | Inferior harmonic range Most formats are lossy |
Conclusion: Oh hell yes, I'll take digital over analogue any day. No more juggling of mix tapes, the music I want when and where I want it. My opinion might be different if I owned some good, high-fidelity equipment (something I vowed I would do once I had my own house - that and a darkroom). When I have my headphones on at the computer, or hooked into my phone, I don't think I could hear the difference between the analogue and digital versions of a song if I tried. Digital music is ... good enough.
While I'm a child of the analogue age, I had no trouble transitioning to the new world.
Here is a picture of a stump in the snow that I took while I was out for a walk last week. It was warm enough that things were turning slushy, and at the time, we were in danger of possibly not having a white Christmas.
Uh.. yeah. That's not a worry now. We got a big dump of snow last night, and they have issued a special weather statement for heavy snow and winter conditions again tomorrow. I think this Christmas will be much whiter than most people wanted.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-22 12:34 am (UTC)I really ought to get back to sifting through brony music before it all goes poof.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-24 01:09 am (UTC)Some locals are whining that they wanted more snow for Christmas, but I suspect they are all apartment dwellers who have never lifted a snow shovel in their lives.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-24 10:16 pm (UTC)