Physical Media vs Ripped vs legal

[redm]

Originally Posted by mbovaird

I'm not. Space shifting has to do with using your stored media on multiple boxes with something like a Slingbox. This is about your right to rip your legally purchased music. It's about your right to sell your CD's. Not space shifting or place shifting.

Regardless....I don't want to turn AA into a legal forum. I have to deal with legal issues and lawyers everyday. I don't want to do it here. I much prefer to discuss amps, speakers, room acoustics and way more interesting things.

So....back to more important things.

It can be that among other things. Our difference in understanding is exactly why it's a grey area. Your not going to find clear consensus with today's laws.

Sent from my iPhone

[Wasatch]

I'll stick with physical media.

[MyPal]

Originally Posted by Wasatch

I'll stick with physical media.

+1 Physical for me. I'm in IT & despite having a play from time to time & keeping myself apprised, I have not made the transition to any digital file based system. In fact my investment in music has been quite the opposite being a strong advocate of the vinyl revival. Not to mention a newfound interest in R2R. Personally, for its lack of convenience, analog when done right continues to sound more organic than digital. That sense of realism makes the inconvenience worthwhile.

My lack of interest in digital was initially attributed to the lossy MP3 format. Now that we are past that ugly era, storage, redundancy & bandwidth have continued to improve but are still cumbersome technologies at the pro-consumer end of the IT spectrum. I guess I'll get there eventually but I'm still inclined to sit back & watch the landscape continue to evolve. Perhaps when I'm ready, the next generation of music/media server will have no storage capability at all for works but will rather be a cloud centric device, totally dependant on an Internet connection. Storage will be limited to credential rights data & of course your credit card number!

The following points on digital continue to frustrate me.

1. My biggest gripe, is a lack of format standardisation.
2. Ambiguity in relation to DRM, personal title, usage rights, the lack of usage right transferability.
3. The industry's motivation to want to control the manner in which digital medium is consumed whether that be via a streaming subscription or playback key. Either way means the future is cloud storage & out of the consumer's hands. You will need a fast & reliable Internet connection to play music or watch movies according to your paid-up non-transferrable entitlements. And for the foreseeable future, that will continue to be lossy. Most of the younger world is too dumbed down to care anyway as long as the JIT fix is immediate.

Point 3 is akin to Application Service Provisioning in the IT industry. Despite it being a personal gripe in relation to the above context, it is also a saviour to those that actually own authorship. Our company made the transition to this paradigm back in 2005. Ironically, had we not, we probably would NOT be in business today. Why? This distribution model offers the best protection for a provider's intellectual property & it guarantees a consistent & non exhaustive revenue stream.

It might be a cynical perspective of the digital future, but hey, it's already happening with download sales overtaking physical medium sales & CD on the decline. By 2016, record store sales are projected to drop by another 77%. When I think about all the great remasters coming out on superbly cut vinyl, this projected statistic is very saddening for me.

The Audiophile could be doomed to extinction as dictated by those who control music.

NO SOUP FOR YOU!

[Masterlu]

Originally Posted by Wasatch

I'll stick with physical media.

Me too!

[Dom_P]

Originally Posted by MyPal

The Audiophile could be doomed to extinction as dictated by those who control music.

NO SOUP FOR YOU!

I agree with all your points, though I believe the definition of audiophile changes as well with the times. Todays digital reproduction of music for the masses is orders better than could have been imagined by an audiophile say in 1970. I'm not sure that audiophiles are on a path to extinction because music is released in particular formats (at least not anymore than they were in 1970). There will always be those who wish to reproduce music with the best possible sources, amplification and speakers and it seems they will always need deep pockets to do so

[MyPal]

Originally Posted by Dom_P

I agree with all your points, though I believe the definition of audiophile changes as well with the times. Todays digital reproduction of music for the masses is orders better than could have been imagined by an audiophile say in 1970. I'm not sure that audiophiles are on a path to extinction because music is released in particular formats (at least not anymore than they were in 1970). There will always be those who wish to reproduce music with the best possible sources, amplification and speakers and it seems they will always need deep pockets to do so

This is an interesting thread. Certainly....i have to agree that is the situation today. But will the mega corporations of the future who are & will be in control of music supply going be nice to the consumer? I for one relish my privacy & personal enjoyment of music at my choosing. I'm not particularly keen to provide big brother consumption data every time I feel like listening to a track from the cloud for their commercialisation benefits or worse.

It also goes to say that many of the recording studios did a superb job in the 60s & 70s. Praise be to Studer & Ampex & a few of the the other studio master magnetic obscurities of the day. We are very fortunate to have captured the last generation in such high fidelity & it is great to have better playback technology than our parents could have had back in 1970.

I don't know if I can say the same for the current generation mastering efforts whereby the digital mastering agenda is is not always about quality capture & reproduction but rather a means to compete in the loudness wars. And if the true agenda of capturing a work of art will no longer be about perfection, then how can striving towards even higher fidelity reproduction continue to be a relevant appreciation of the future?

Personally, I believe that vinyl playback will be a privileged form of enjoyment...an eccentric & rare form of entertainment. I hope I'm wrong & we will continue to see high quality vinyl production far into the future. For the death of physical medium will likely mean the demise of hi-fidelity equipment along with the stifling of innovation. What will remain, will be vintage & a tiny boutique market for the esoteric. (Pardon the pun, but those players will continue to work far into the future & our descendants will ask what the heavy duty transport mechanism was used for )

Last of all, watch out for those warped records....doesn't that piss me off.

[jdandy]

Originally Posted by Masterlu

I moved this interesting topic to it's own thread so it can continue, or not.

Ivan.......Thanks for shifting these posts to a dedicated thread. I find this an interesting topic myself.

[Wasatch]

It's also cool to be able to hold something and read the linear notes, especially on LPs. Lot's of great info can be had.

[Portugal]

I'm 100% digital files - server based. No physical media. All the CDs I buy are ripped and the CD is sent to storage not to be seen gain.

Also the selection of HD downloads is growing fast. I buy a lot from HDtracks to build my high resolution collection and incentivise the development of that site (in my opinion the best source for 24bit music files).

[MyPal]

Originally Posted by Portugal

I'm 100% digital files - server based. No physical media. All the CDs I buy are ripped and the CD is sent to storage not to be seen gain.

Also the selection of HD downloads is growing fast. I buy a lot from HDtracks to build my high resolution collection and incentivise the development of that site (in my opinion the best source for 24bit music files).

I'm not sure that even a 24/192 sampling rate it sufficient enough to digitise the organics of analog (natural) sound. Many will argue against this reasoning & say that it is sufficient with headroom to spare. What about in 30 years time, when perhaps someone discovers that an element of reproduction was inherently lost because too much faith was prematurely placed on digital recording technology as it was coming of age....

Do you test your 24/192 purchases to concur that data exists throughout the entire sample?

I wish to quote Mike Spitz of ATR Magnetics who believes the age of digital recording is still in its infancy.


"Nothing Sounds Like Tape

Why does music recorded on analog tape sound so good?

To understand why, a professional tape recorder provides the most lifelike reproduction revolves around a couple of important factors. The key lies in the inherent technology of the tape itself. Audio tape in use during the 1950s and '60s provided approximately 65,000,000 magnetic particles per second of recording a quarter inch format at 15 inches per second (ips) tape speed. Each magnetic oxide particle or groups of particles takes on either a north or south orientation after exiting the recording head. Starting to sound like digital bit stream? Well yes and no. However there is one huge difference between analog tape recordings and even the best digital recordings.

Resolution

The highest digital resolution today offers 4,608,000 bits switching per second. Not bad. Big improvement over the standard Red Book CD but it is not even close to sub-micron particle resolution of ATR Master Tape.

Random Particle Stacking

Quarter inch, two track ATR Master Tape running at 15 inches per second (ips) involves approximately 80,000,000 oriented and randomly stacked particles per track second. It's not just the particle count but the random stacking that turns this super binary resolution into pure analog playback. This is why even a narrow track width recording still sounds so detailed despite the lower surface area.

Music is an intrinsic part of the human soul. It plays to our emotions, it talks to us, it calms us, it makes us rise to our greatest accomplishments and brings back our warmest memories. Why not record it on the best medium to achieve the best quality of sound?"