Viva Digital Music Old and New

I've been a fan of CDs from the very beginning. I hate surface noise, pops, scratches and the like, none of which are an issue on any form of digital media. When CDs first appeared in the U.S. classical music enthusiasts were the early adopters, In the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida area an almost exclusively classical CD only shop opened bringing in imported classical recordings. It was funny because while some audiophiles were (and still are) attacking the sound of CDs and claiming vinyl is forever superior the most demanding music fans in terms of sound quality were the ones adopting digital technologies early on. The same thing happened when MiniDiscs appeared in the early 1990s. A classical station in the area even did a special program dedicated to playing classical releases on MD. Somehow, though, vinyl is hip again. I really don't get that at all.

Today's file based equivalents are lossless digital modes, most especially FLAC (Free Audio Lossless Codec), which is an Open Source and works on almost any computer and a growing number of portable devices. FLAC won't displace lossy MP3 files until higher capacity SSD storage devices become both very small and very cheap. MP3s take up far less storage space and sound good enough to a lot of people. FLAC players have been on the market for home stereo systems for a few years now but they are still very much a specialty item. Some units from China with built in amplifiers are really inexpensive these days.

Getting back to CDs, which young people often dismiss as old tech: sales are way down and both used copies of albums and new multidisc sets have become very inexpensive. It's often cheaper to buy the physical disc and rip the music yourself than to buy a digital download of the same music. You then have the original source as a backup in case your favorite music playing device or hard drive dies. It's the best of both worlds: old school physical releases with artwork and often extensive information and the convenience of file based music.

Anyway, those are my ramblings from a discussion on Facebook about digital vs. analog media for music. For me its digital over analog every time.