Tír Na HiFi

DaveF wrote:The 5% figure is BS but I get where he's coming from.

I suppose you already know that 53% of all statistics are made up!

Young has a point though, not sure about the 5% bit. For the life of me I cannot fathom why CD standard is not the base level of music whether on a mobile player [iPod thingy] or Internet radio as there is lots of Internet bandwith available and hard drives are both cheap and large these days.

Rocker wrote:Young has a point though, not sure about the 5% bit. For the life of me I cannot fathom why CD standard is not the base level of music whether on a mobile player [iPod thingy] or Internet radio as there is lots of Internet bandwith available and hard drives are both cheap and large these days.

I think it stems from the early days of mp3 players when hard disks where relatively small compared to what you have now. Therefore low bit rate mp3 rips were deemed to sound good enough with the advantage of being able to put 100's if not 1000's of songs on your mp3 player and this portable mass storage of your music library was the main appeal to the majority not sound quality sadly.
Plus the little white in-ear ipod headphones are a popular choice of many it seems. Certainly not good enough to differenciate between lower bit rate (256Kbps) and CD quaility rips.

DaveF wrote:I think it stems from the early days of mp3 players when hard disks where relatively small compared to what you have now. Therefore low bit rate mp3 rips were deemed to sound good enough with the advantage of being able to put 100's if not 1000's of songs on your mp3 player and this portable mass storage of your music library was the main appeal to the majority not sound quality sadly.
Plus the little white in-ear ipod headphones are a popular choice of many it seems. Certainly not good enough to differenciate between lower bit rate (256Kbps) and CD quaility rips.

I take your point DaveF but that was then and now is now. Time to move on from MP3. Similar to how TV has slowly moved to HD...

Rocker wrote:Time to move on from MP3. Similar to how TV has slowly moved to HD...

in the case of mp3, the majority of people are just not interested in High Fidelity playback and as a result I think mp3 or other lower bite rate digital formats are here to stay for a long time. The high res stuff will only appeal to a very small minority, the hifi buffs.

The comparision with HD tv is not really a valid one. HD video matters more to people than HD audio. They are willing to fork out for HD tv's and SKY HD subscriptions etc so it's a big market for the TV and video designers/manufacturers. Plus video has standardised calibration/setup methods etc, there isn't anywhere near the level of bullsh*t in video as there is in the audio side of things.

Watching TV or movies, people will sit down and give it their full attention mostly.

How many people do that with music these days? Not very many. They usually have other distractions like driving, jogging, commuting on trains/buses etc while listening to their ipods. They aren't as critical of the sound quality as a result.