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Comment by klingonopera | Hacker News Reader

A CD, and a FLAC-rip for me, please. I'd pick it over vinyl or any digital stream any day.

If you really just want a FLAC rip of a CD to play over a media center, then consider simply downloading the FLAC rip from a filesharing community, but then buying the vinyl release for the sake of owning the physical artifact. That way, you both get high-quality digital audio and you financially support the artist, but the vinyl release has larger artwork and is more satisfying as a collector item.

I personally prefer buying FLAC from Bandcamp. It's the most artist-friendly option I'm aware of (and the most environmentally friendly too!). Some of them even include the same artwork in PDF that would be printed for the CD/vinyl edition.

This or direct download, I want the artist to get as much money as possible. The bug companies run off pure breed and don't even give the artist 10% of revenue unless they are in the top 0.0001% who can afford to demand it or walk.

I buy the music, because I want to support the artists.

I buy the CD-format, because in theory, I can do that anonymously (cash at the store). I don't buy the vinyl, because I explicitly want the digital format (see my reply to another comment on this thread as to why).

I rip the CD, because, well, my phone doesn't have a CD-drive (wow, that would be weird...).

At this point... I'd actually throw away the CD, because I hate having stuff. I don't care about showing off my collection to anyone, nor do I care about collectibles, but having stuff is just... cumbersome. But alas, I don't throw away the CD, somewhat because of sentimentality and also because if you have a physical copy of digital data, that's not a bad thing to keep, just in case, so ok, it stays.

Considering a vinyl is analog and also more cumbersome, I think it's pretty clear why I prefer the CD.

Most new vinyl records I buy have a digital download code. If I buy them at a show it's definitely cash. I can also pay cash at the record store.

> my phone doesn't have a CD-drive (wow, that would be weird...)

How about a floppy drive? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT1l8Dcjb1Y

If you disagree with how music is sold, don't buy it. But don't tell people to steal or violate the terms of the license.

This. Just give me FLAC with vinyl artwork in PDF.

Vinyl actually has less dynamic range than CD - it's the equivalent of around 12 bit dithered PCM.

People buying vinyl are looking for a collectable. There is something to be said for the physical experience of physical media.

How about a FLAC rip of the first playing of a vinyl disc?

...would only make sense if everything was recorded and processed analog from studio to press, and then immediately converted to digital on that first play (...and then I'd also be hearing a lot of analog audio equipment, some like this, I hate it, clarity, cohesion and reproducibility float my boat).

I'm not sure, but I'm guessing in modern recording techniques, it's pretty soon converted to a digital format, and from that point on, vinyl wouldn't make sense, as any analog conversion (and even worse, a following reconversion to digital) is tantamount with quality loss (if you still know photocopiers, it's like copying the copy, and then copying that copy, etc.. or in more modern terms, endlessly resaving a JPG picture, or something like that).

At the risk of sounding polemic: There's a lot of ...sound from analog audio equipment on vinyl, that's non-existent on a digital format.

It's quite ironic, humans abandoned analog formats in video, where that is a definite loss (DS9 and VOY, anyone?), since we can always add more pixel density in playback devices, but embrace it in audio, which is... well, at least in my opinion, a subjective loss, too, and unless we can consciously slow down time-perception, 44.1 kHz sampling will forever suffice.

The playback process of a needle moving repeatedly through a groove tends to physically smooth out the waveform compared to a digital copy of the same recording. Speaking entirely subjectively, I think this makes bass sound warmer+smoother.

Besides, all too often your digital sound recording isn't making use of 16-bits of dynamic range, what with the loudness war peaking during the CD era. Oftentimes the vinyl versions of albums are mastered a lot more conservatively since brickwalling the recording with compressors and limiters will cause the record needle to skip.

Why bother with CD or FLAC? If you're not listening in analog, you're losing fidelity. That's simply the nature of digital.

I hope you’re /s

Partly. When I read his comment I remembered an argument some people had in HN a few months back where they were saying there's no point in listening to music in a car unless you had their particular brand and model of sound system because you don't get the full experience.

My thought at the time was that unless they have a string orchestra in the back seat, they're not getting the full experience.

I still maintain that a string orchestra in the back seat of my car will sound better than FLAC.

It's too cramped. If you can't move your bow arm freely, you're using pressure instead of speed to produce volume, which ruins the tone and kills projection. Might as well go with mp3 at that point, honestly.

I'm glad someone gets it.

I've listened to string orchestra reproductions of some of my favourite music and while it sounds nice, they couldn't quite reproduce every sound accurately.

And strangely enough, even with the usually great "right to repair" laws in the EU, unless you have a very specific and expensive license that takes many years to request, it is actually highly illegal to perform certain kinds of repairs on your string orchestra.

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