is Dylan right?

[dola]

Or is he just being crabby (http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyid=2006-08-22T152139Z_01_N22476890_RTRUKOC_0_US-DYLAN.xml) again? I have to admit, it made me fire up the ole Limewire again with significantly smaller pangs of guilt this time around. That's a lie I don't feel guilty at all. Tickets and merch, man!

Seriously though, is he talking about the enormous compression that albums are mastered with now? I might've even fucked up the lingo on that one, so give it to me in english, docs.

[Patrick]

"CDs are small. There's no stature to it."

Well Dola, MP3s are even smaller and there's even less stature, both literally and figuratively. What's happened to modern recording? you figure it out.

Patrick

[johansen smith]

the songs on his new album would have sounded even better if they were actually good songs.

[dola]

yeah but that's just it, what does "stature" and "smaller" mean? smaller sound? a smaller amount of information between vinyl and mp3s (with the intermediate technology in the middle)? in what terms are the two quantified and compared? it reminds me of the time my chemistry teacher asked me if i had the answer to a question and i said "15." he replied with, "15 what? 15 frogs?"

by your snarky tone there i'm guessing that the mp3 comment put you on edge. i don't blame you, and when i'm able to move from income labeled "rent" to "disposable", i'll buy more vinyl or cds or slacks or whatever will ensure long-term job security for everyone at my favorite label.

[Moon Pix]

the songs on his new album would have sounded even better if they were actually good songs.

So you're saying it isnt a continuation of the return to form he made with Love & Theft?

[Patrick]

Sorry to be snarky... it's less the piracy and more the degradation in sonic quality that everyone puts up with these days. CDs sounded worse than vinyl because they (a) compressed the information and (b) put the sound through two digital/analog conversions that were less than smooth (in all senses of that word). MP3s sound worse than CD because they are even more compressed (and "lossless compression" is an oxymoron, by the way).

Bad sound is rarely heard as bad sound; more likely it's heard as bad music. So it's bad for everyone, and music turns from something that was at the heart of people's self-definition into background noise, something disposable, something free, something annoying at worst and mood-enhancing at best.

It SHOULD be difficult to listen to great music, just like it is difficult to make.

Patrick

[rhoops]

it's less the piracy and more the degradation in sonic quality that everyone puts up with these days.

don't you think that this will be solved in the near future as CD's fall away and MP3's (or their modern equivalent) replace the CD format? I think it'll be funny to watch as vinyl outlasts the CD. . . but seriously, as memory gets cheaper and cheaper, why don't they increase the size of those files dramatically? I hate it when i rip a CD i own to my hard drive and it goes from 700mb to fuckin' 35 or whatever and the same could be said for MP3's. forget the small file size shit, up that to the full analog master, no matter how big the file is.

[johansen smith]

mp3s will never "replace" CDs, period.

[tinobeat]

I dunno, I can see it happening. Vinyl fetishists keep the wax from going totally obsolete decades after it was predicted, but there really aren't any "CD fetishists" who swear by the values of a CD over a lossless file format. I think the exponential increases in digital fidelity combined with the exponential drop in the cost of storage space will mean that you can get "better than CD" quality within the next coupla years via digital-only means.

Us crabby ol' vinyl-loving luddites will keep buying records as long as we can, though, and hopefully getting a younger generation to do the same.

I give LPs another 20 years at least before they're totally gone, and CDs 6-7 max.

[johansen smith]

mark my words, mp3s will never overtake CDs.
come find me in ten years and if this happens I will give you one hundred American dollars.

[Paul]

come find me in ten years and if this happens I will give you one hundred American dollars.Great! I'll be able to get that 800 Terabyte hard drive I've been wanting.

[ginge82]

I completely disagree fella. Dylan's 'Modern Times' may not be the quality of 'Desire' or something but its the most interesting stuff released at the moment, apart from Cat Power of course! In terms of sound quality vinyl is always available for big releases. Mp3's are rubbish generally but thats the way it is. People want music cheaply and easily so I think we only have ourselves to blame.