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Comment by 72deluxe | Hacker News Reader

He is wrong in this article: CDs did not suck. Compressed audio sucked, unless you had NIHL and love reduced dynamic range and poor attack transients.

I am glad CDs are still around to stop this MP3 slime from washing away all the uncompressed audio!

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You need to read this: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Very informative, thanks. I avoid 192kHz and record everything at 24bit 48kHz when I'm recording (I would like some hard disk space left, particularly if you're recording 24 tracks at once); 96kHz is only really useful in live applications as you obviously get half the latency which is important if you're flinging audio from one side of the arena to the other.

But with regard to the content within the audio file, uncompressed is obviously superior to compressed. It is particularly apparent on decent speakers, not earbuds.

I thought CDs sucked. Scratched way too easy. Don't let some children borrow your CDs or else they won't play when you get them back. Cassettes were much more durable and even repairable. A CD warped by the sun is garbage, but a cassette warped by the sun can be salvaged if you put the tape in another cassette case. You could also tape two ends of the cassette tape back together if it gets torn or cut. Yes the song is garbled for a second but the entire album isn't ruined. A skipping CD is a more annoying sound than my alarm clock.

CDs only sucked if you didn't look after them! The same was true of vinyls, and your mobile phone. If I drop my phone, it will be damaged.

I never lend my CDs to those people who leave them in the wrong cases, bust the cases, leave CDs floating around drawers with pens, paperclips and scissors, attempt to get sleeve notes out by incessant gnawing at the edges etc. etc.

Cassettes were pretty robust though. They survive handling by the older generation far better than CDs ever did (or will)

Apple wasn't marketing them to the audiophile - they came with cheap white earbuds, not Sennheisers.

CDs did suck for the mainstream consumer. Consumers are still opting for streaming music over high-quality FLAC tracks saved to their phone/PC/etc.

I think you meant to say: He was wrong as far as my use case was concerned.

Yes, you're right. It is entirely my own use-case, and hopefully CDs aren't going away!

In my defense, he said "CDs sucked" when he should have said "CDs suck in my use case" :-)

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